This song I sing of a man called Menlar,

a convict for you but a warrior for me,

imprisoned for defending his home with blood that rendered him feeling trapped and asphyxiated.

Never again the darkness behind the bars,

that smothering silence larger than space more sinister than a sadistic fiend threatening to swallow all of him.

That obliged him to exile into the wilds to breathe in the invigorating scent of freedom that controlled his entire being that his limbs he lifted to run as the voice cried,

Run, run, run for your life!

Let the branches bruise your body

Let the thorns tear your skin

Till the darkness is heartening.

These covered tracks of his forebear bore witness to the lives untold where the powerful Dikta bore stocky timber of weight unknown.

Into the torrent plunged he his two sons to fight to live resilient lives,

‘Swim, swim, swim for your life!’ – echoes that echo even today. 

No ruffian or a vagabond was Menlar,

a warrior who slayed for his home only to be embraced by the jungle for the love of freedom in self-exile.

His pale silhouette with patches light and dark,

on a sun-kissed hill against the slithering Ngopi river;

a distant longing for curling smoke at the plains,

just a nakum to return- a nomad he became.

No rustling of gale around the hearth,

no squealing faces eager for embrace,

no clucking fowls,

no grunting swines,

just an occasional hobv’s moo, the only invisible tether to his home.

Thick with green the virgin land received the pioneer’s prayers to providence and home he built along the river teeming with ngopi– its eponym.

He a gaam in red of twenty-three homes,

his marked ownership in lush green and yellow at parleys for truce with hostile golden silk for the brown earth conjured men to clash.

His stolen bull in nyipak’s land, 

a bait to kill him with daos and arrows till he struck the schemer with his shimmering roksa and drenched his tongue with his blood.

Many moons since he became earth,

the territorial spirit of the forest guarding with vengeance the home he made – but as seasons passed,

he faded imperceptibly into obscurity.

A descendant of Tanl now an apparition,

sees his hapless home entangled in conflict losing land and lives here and there,

Was it worth the sacrifice he made?

The spectre of the unsung warrior,

whose song the whoosing wind carried:

“Tani, Nichi, Chide, Demen, Menra, Raba, Bamv, Mvkar, Karme, Mechi, Chibo, Boru, Ruti, Tipo, Pocho, Chopak, Pakyi, Yima, Madik, Dikta, Tamen, Menlar” 

Menlar, a name in oblivion now.

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This ballad is written as a tribute to my husband’s grandfather, Menlar Ruti. Currently, the young people in the Galo community of Arunachal Pradesh are not familiar with his name. But many from my parents’ generation still remember him as the man who was incarcerated for fighting for his community land. He was put behind the bars for beheading a man from the neighboring state that still shares a a porous boundary with the foothill-village. This ballad attempts to document his ordeal as the defender of the Ngopi village. Through this ballad the perspective of people who look up to him is narrated. He is here being held reverently as someone who is a hero because he has defended his homeland.