PURNIMA’S REFORMATION
insurgencies in Assam, Manipur, Nagaland, Chhattisgarh and Kashmir. This excerpt from She Goes to War is about Purnima, once a dreaded killer
The feel of an icy hand in a cemetery in the dead of night would make most people jump out of their skins. Not twenty year-old Purnima. Instead she leapt to her feet, her flick knife open and ready to boldly take on any threat. Through the darkness the whisper cajoled: ‘Come with me.’ She recognized the voice immediately. He had made this offer to her many times before when she was living with her brother in Imphal’s west district. Why had this man followed her to the cemetery where she had taken refuge for the night after walking out of her stepbrother’s house? Was he trying to take advantage of her ...?... This was a familiar script in the life of Purnima, born to a mother gone insane and an unknown father.
If her life has been like a kaleidoscope where the slightest twist changes the entire pattern, the night in the cemetery was one such turn. Homeless Purnima was recruited by the rebel group Kangleipak Communist Party (KCP)... Joining a rebel group meant shelter, food and... security against exploitation... Being fearless and without a care for her life made Purnima a much in demand KCP assassin and extortionist... Purnima, now known as Nalini with a KCP registration number, soon carried a reward of Rs 50,000 on her head. Will this disclosure not get you in trouble? I ask as she talks about her work for the rebel outfit. ‘There is no visual record of Nalini,’ she answers calmly. In any case it would be difficult to connect the presentday Purnima with the KCP militant, assassin and extortionist Nalini... Purnima learnt how to use AK-47 and AK-56 rifles, fire a 9 mm pistol (‘they were of Chinese and Japanese make’), put together RDX bombs and secure an area with mines. Besides arms training she was given lessons in disguise, how to melt into a crowd, how to ensure safety of civilians while taking shelter in their home, finance, organizational work and ‘Communist political ideology’... As the years went by, the assignments became tougher and tougher. In 2005 she was sent to the Assam Rifle camp near village Henglep in Manipur’s Churachandpur district as a member of an ambush party of 250 made up of the KCP and another rebel group. ‘My task was to give cover to the men who carried out the ambush. I was armed with a gun and Lethode bombs. I used them for self-defence. Between fifteen and twenty of the cadre died.’
...Even while intimidating people, extorting money and while recruiting, Purnima followed a simple rule. ‘I never raised my voice and always communicated in a direct straightforward manner. That is why they took me seriously when I told them of the consequences if they did not meet my demand.’ She speaks in the same calm manner when she tells me that ‘I have never been scared or tired or told a lie’ under any situation.
She refused to tell a lie when she went to the house of a KCP renegade on orders from her senior. ‘When I called him outside his wife asked me what I wanted. I told her I had orders to kill him because he had betrayed the organization.’ The man was frightened out of his wits. He meekly stepped outside and started to walk with Purnima to a dark field. His weeping wife followed, pleading with Purnima to spare his life. When they reached the field ‘she flung herself in front to cover him. She told me to shoot her instead. My men tried to pull her away from him so that I could shoot him. In the scuffle her phenak came undone. Her innaphi tore. She was naked but she did not care or even realize it. All she wanted was to save her husband. It struck me then how women want to save lives and here I am, a woman, killing people without a thought.’
As the woman wept and pleaded, the mobile phone in Purnima’s pocket rang. ‘My commander wanted to know if I was done with the assassination.’ Purnima had changed in that one moment. She told a lie. ‘I fired in the air and told my senior that I had shot the man.’ She then told the man she had been sent to kill to run away with his wife and never be seen again in the area. She told her own men that if they ever sneaked on her, she knew how to deal with them. ‘As I turned to leave I saw the man take off his sarong and cover his wife. She looked up at him with tearful eyes and said apologetically that she had not realized she was naked. For the first time I understood what love is and what wonders it can do.’
...From the night Purnima spared the life of the man she was assigned to assassinate she felt revulsion for the work she had been carrying out. ‘I felt that extortion, killing and even recruiting people for militant groups was not good. Violence was not the answer. Love was.’ But she also knew that leaving the organization or fleeing was not an easy option. ‘Once you are given a registration number, you cannot leave without permission of the leaders. Those who escape are hunted down and killed.’ She started to distance herself from her work. ‘I told my leaders that I now felt tired and less confident. They thought I wanted to leave and start another faction. I convinced them that was not the case.’ Her lack of interest in jobs she routinely took on earlier was soon evident. ‘They realized I was no longer the lethal disciplined killer and may slip up while on an assignment. They let me go.’ The year was 2008...
After a day of one of my long conversations with her, she asks me to return to her shack late evening. As I walk into her shack, I see her lying motionless in her bed... What has happened? I inquire... I am told that Purnima goes through this whenever she is overcome by ‘negativity’... ‘...it is the pain of her days of violence which you made her relive that has made her ill,’ her daughter tells me... She will be fine in a day or so... I turn to leave with the thought that a journey from a destitute to a dreaded militant to a faith healer leaves its scars. Purnima obviously has found a way to come to terms with it.