There are seasons when history unfolds quietly, one event at a time.
Circa 2026
There are seasons when history unfolds quietly, one event at a time. Then there are seasons when it seems to arrive all at once. This monsoon feels like one of them.
Only recently, another formation emerged on the eastern flank of Naga-inhabited areas, bearing a name similar to the NSCN (IM) and with a new chairman, adding yet another twist to an already crowded political landscape. Against this backdrop, and closer to Dimapur, the NSCN (IM) Chairman at Camp Hebron reaffirmed in a recent speech that the Framework Agreement remains the only basis for resolving the Indo-Naga political issue, while days later the NNPG Working Committee rejected the proposal for a ministerial-level interlocutor from the Government of Nagaland. On the overground, the Unified Covenant Party, led by its President, Zhoponeyi Zuo, a retired CISF officer, has entered the political field with an emphasis on purity, transparency and the fight against corruption. Distinct developments in different arenas, they are nevertheless beginning to intersect around questions of representation, legitimacy, governance and trust. Meanwhile, the Assam valley struggles with devastating floods, our own towns remain vulnerable, and climate change refuses to wait until our politics catches up.
The statements arrive with certainty. The events themselves arrive with very little regard for certainty. While the rest of us reach for theories and explanations, someone from one of our villages might simply smile and say: "Everything seems to be getting cooked at one moment. Sop ekbar te hei."
There is a kind of wisdom that notices life before it names it. I have been unable to get that simple observation out of my mind. It captures something many of us may have sensed but struggled to articulate. Everything seems to arrive together, asking for our attention before we have quite made sense of what came before.
Perhaps that is what unsettles us most. Before we have understood one event, another arrives. Before grief has settled, another controversy demands attention. Before reflection begins, we are expected to take a position. The world asks for an opinion before the mind has finished forming a thought. History may be moving quickly, but the human heart has always preferred a slower pace.
Perhaps our grandparents experienced history differently. Seasons had time to settle into memory before the next one arrived. Today, we are asked to carry many worlds at once.
Escapism has become a false luxury.
Every organisation has the right to present its convictions. Every government has the responsibility to pursue what it believes serves the public good. Those debates will continue. Yet another question keeps returning to me:
What happens inside the democratic consciousness of ordinary citizens when we are continually asked to inhabit competing narratives, each claiming legitimacy, historical authority and the right to define the future?
I find myself wondering what this does to people who are simply trying to make sense of things.
Democracy has never required agreement. It has always expected disagreement. But disagreement becomes harder to live with when truthfulness, intellectual honesty and mutual accountability begin to weaken. Politics can then move, almost without our noticing, from persuasion towards mobilisation, from dialogue towards allegiance, and from inquiry towards identity.
Reading the statements issued over these past weeks, I noticed something striking. They increasingly speak in the language of truth, history, sovereignty, legitimacy, representation, betrayal and unity. Each tells a coherent story. Each asks us to trust its interpretation of events. At times, the contest seems less about winning an argument than about deciding whose account of things the rest of us are expected to inhabit.
And yet, outside these competing accounts, ordinary life continues. People still have to work, raise children, tend farms, worry about school fees, watch the weather and wonder what the next year might bring.
Maybe that explains some of the atmosphere I have been sensing across the Naga Hills. There is a weariness that arguments alone cannot explain. There is also hesitation, as though many people instinctively know that things are more complicated than the narratives asking for their allegiance. People are not necessarily indifferent. They may simply be trying to understand before choosing.
Perhaps the trouble is that certainty usually arrives much earlier than understanding. Maybe this is what that villager sensed before the rest of us did. We are not overwhelmed simply because there are too many facts. We are overwhelmed because facts no longer seem to arrive with a shared story. Before we have reflected, another narrative asks for our allegiance. Slowly, almost unnoticed, we may stop asking, "What is true?" and begin asking, "Whom should I believe?"
If we were to continue the conversation, I imagine that same villager quietly asking another question: "With so many people speaking, who is still even listening?"
It sounds simple. Yet perhaps listening is where discernment begins.
The overflowing rivers across Assam and increasingly in our own hills have also been teaching their own lesson. The river has no opinion about our disagreements. It simply reminds us where the floodplain is. Floodwaters ignore political boundaries. Climate change has no interest in ideological divisions. Neither do unemployment, migration, ecological vulnerability nor the aspirations of our young people.
Even as the nation speaks of Viksit Bharat 2047, many young people are speaking more immediately about livelihoods, dignity and opportunity. Different time horizons already coexist within the same democracy. Perhaps village life understood this long before modern politics did: things are rarely as separate as we like to imagine.
The political conversation asks us to choose. The river asks nothing. It simply rises.
Competition belongs to democracy. But somewhere between one argument and the next, I wonder whether we are losing the habit of stepping back and asking what truth, justice and the common good might require of us.
It is easy to become attached to the side we have chosen. It is harder to remain open to what might unsettle it.
In a kinship democracy like ours, these things rarely remain confined to public meetings or political statements. They travel into our homes, our churches, our clans, our villages and our friendships. A political disagreement can become a family unease. A public narrative can become a private suspicion. Democracy may live through institutions, but much of its daily life is carried through relationships.
The rain will continue. Unlike the rest of us, it has never felt the need to issue a press statement. Political debates will continue. Negotiations will find their own course. New parties will emerge. The monsoon is in no hurry. Perhaps discernment shouldn't be either.
Maybe that is what this monsoon has been quietly teaching me: to stay present without becoming consumed, to care without becoming captive, to listen before deciding, and to accept that not every question demands an immediate answer. Some questions may first require patience. Some may need time before they can be answered honestly.
While the rest of us continue searching for explanations, I can almost hear that villager smiling and saying:
"Everything seems to be getting cooked at one moment. Sop ekbar te hei."
Maybe he is right.
Perhaps wisdom lies partly in remembering that not everything has to be carried at once. Some things simply need to be understood. Some unfold in their own time. And some, for now, can simply be left in the rain.
Perhaps, for one monsoon, that is enough.
Limhachan Kikon