Al Ngullie
Dimapur, May 24
The day started early for Suresh Das, a weary-looking shopkeeper in his 40s, in Dimapur. The swarthy man from Bihar lugged his rusty-red Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) container to fall in line with 50-60 other baggy-eyed early birds. It was 6:00 AM. The queue already looked like it had half of the city’s population.
Numbering in about a hundred, each of the citizens in the queue had an empty red LPG cylinder. The place of interest was Zinyu Gas Agency, an outlet for LPG located along Circular Road of the city. On the pleasant summer morning of Saturday, May 24, the monthly rush for the precious cooking fuel had yet again begun.
Cooking gas is gold in Dimapur. Often in the news for the wrong reasons – black marketers, illegal prices, and syndication by armed cartels, adulteration, and artificial shortages – the essential domestic product continues to give migraine to district administrators and stakeholders alike. Domestic consumers can have an LPG cylinder for Rs. 400-Rs.500. But in the shady corners run by the numerous, unchecked black marketers, citizens must pay anything from Rs. 1, 200 to Rs. 1, 800 for a refill. Thanks to the high demand but low supply from legal outlets, the black market for LPG thrives. The malady continues for the ordinary citizen. That is one reason why monthly refills are a battle worth fighting for. ‘If I don’t arrive early, I won’t get LPG,’ Das explained in rounded Hindi as he fell in line. He dragged into the line with the skilled ease of a man sharpened by hundreds of “LPG brawls” for which Dimapur is (in)famous.
Ahead of him were at 30-40 early birds. Scores were swarming in every passing minute. The big fight would be commencing soon.
It began by 8 AM. A head mix of early morning bad breath, sweat, body odor, and temperatures began churning. There were the customary tings, tongs, clangs, and bangs as the consumers lugged, pulled, pushed, and squeezed their metal companions in front of Zinyu gas Agency’s counter. The narrow stretch of sidewalk running parallel along Circular Road was no match for the hundreds of empty LPGs and legs that swarmed the area.
“Side! Side! Side!” shouted a woman as she pulled in a red cylinder. The child on her back looked incredulously at the crowd. The multitude was too busy getting impatient rather than notice the cute, chubby baby. They were too busy fighting off those trying to squeeze into the semi-circular-horizontal-queue well ahead of others. “Laura! Line break nakori bhi tey,” a nameless face from somewhere deep in the crowd shouted. The clangs got louder, as the shoving began taking on a rough look. The fight was about to begin.
It began around 9 AM. The counter opened. As soon as it did, a veritable tsunami of the already-heated-up consumers rushed in – it was one of those human moments when civilization forgot the integrity of what a queue was. Suresh Das, just barely squeezed in his LPG container. The noise, stench, temper, and a healthy dose of impatience could not rival the sheer violence of the rush to grab their share of LPGs.
“Moi first ase! Laura! Moi first ase!” shouted a wiry young Naga man as he tried – and miserably failed – to pull in his empty cylinder. Several others beat him to the counter. The hundreds of utterances that rose from out of the pandemonium was a noisy cacophony of both urgent politeness and desperate obscenity as Nagamese expletives flew everywhere.
Bendang, a stoutly-built caretaker of the agency’s counter, rushed in promptly to stem off the tsunami as he tried to knock the riot-like rush into a presentable line. There was little he could do. When the pandemonium continued, they had to call in the services of the dreaded Indian Reserve Battalion (IR), the armed wing of the central police administration.
A patrol of the Naga women IR arrived to rein in the, well, gaseous wildlife. One of the security personnel promptly slugged a young man in the face for being too hyperactive with his ambition to hijack the counter.
The masculine pride in him could not digest the prospect of being kneed to the ground by a “maiki” (woman). Screaming and shouting vociferous F-word laced Nagamese, he began challenging the IR policewoman to a fight. He would find out in the eventual few seconds that he’d bitten off more than his loud mouth could chew. He got a plumb fist – and a second, and a third and a fourth, and a fifth, and a sixth – in the face from the unsympathetic IR policewoman. She added a summer bonus to her free offer – she landed several kicks to the man’s lower body.
IRB personnel – including the women wing – are trained in anti-insurgency warfare and close hand-to-hand combat. Obviously, nobody had yet informed him of that fact, and he had had to go home with two artificial sun glasses, healthy red cheeks, bloody split lips, swollen thighs, and a bruised ego to remember for the rest of his life.
The frenzied rush for LPG soon transformed into a frenzied rush for safety as the IR policewomen began going about their task of educating the unruly citizens. The same unfortunate fate that came down heavily on the belligerent man who foolishly challenged one of the IR ‘jawans’ earlier, also came down on the other tumblers. Some received a slap or two; a few more received warning kicks in their southern behinds, while many suffered acidic shout-downs from the no-nonsense IRB patrol.
In two minutes flat, civilized behavior and beautiful politeness was restored at Zinyu Gas Agency. The IRB had saved the day.
Khyobeni Ngullie, a mother of two school going children is a veteran of LPG brawls. Not a pansy herself, she proudly shows large dark red bruises on her left arms to this reporter. “What is there to do? If we don’t ‘fight,’ there will be no food at home. Black LPGs are unaffordable. These situations are nothing compared to some people out there,” she explained, looking in the direction of the now-disciplined queue. The queue of dirty, unshaven, bad-breathed, unkempt, and dusty citizens, who’d just been taught a lesson in public decorum by the IR personnel, looked back blankly.
Certainly, there is nothing compared to Dimapur’s LPG days out here.
