The Roads We Cannot Take

My grandmother dressing in her poun for Sunday service. Lamka, Mother’s Day, 2018.

What does it mean to travel? Is it as simple as going from point A to point B? For some, it’s just movement - a mundane act, a means to an end. But for others, it is a quiet, relentless struggle. A reminder that displacement is not always about exile; sometimes, it’s about the invisible lines that turn familiar paths into battlegrounds.

For the Kuki-Zo people of Manipur, movement itself has become an act of survival. Since the escalation of ethnic clashes between the Meitei and Kuki communities in May of 2023, the Imphal airport has remained inhospitable ground for the Kuki Zo population. This is not a legal order or a political mandate, but it is common knowledge for all of us from the community. For us, the Imphal airport is a risk. 

Conflict does not always announce itself with gunfire; sometimes, it is etched into the pauses we make, the roads we cannot take. Edward Said writes of exile as a fracture, as much psychological as it is physical. That is relevant here, where something as ordinary as visiting family back home becomes an exercise in endurance, a negotiation with fear.

I remember June 2023 vividly. My mother had just passed away. Though my family has lived in Delhi for years - my sisters and I were born here - Lamka was still home in many ways. It was my mother's hometown, where my grandmother remained, too frail to make the journey for the funeral. So instead, I made the trip to her. The violence had only begun a month prior, but it was already changing everything. The journey itself felt like punishment. Travel, in times of crisis, is never just about the destination. It’s about the cost - financial, emotional, and physical. It’s the gruelling 14- to 17-hour jeep ride from Aizawl, cutting through unforgiving terrain and enduring hours of rugged travel just to reach Lamka. Leaving is no easier - Rs. 3,000 to 4,000 to secure a seat in a Bolero or Sumo - pick your poison. This is a journey those from the valley rarely have to make. “A bui talu” my grandmother says when we talk about the journey. ‘Very troublesome’ would be my general estimate of a translation.

Yet, even within this chaos, there are layers of privilege. My Naga last name could get me through Imphal airport without suspicion, but my face - broad, flat-nosed, unmistakably Zo - betrays me. Identity isn't just a name on paper; it is etched into my features, turning the simple act of movement into a quiet, constant gamble. The thought of going back fills me with mind-racing anxiety.

Lamka, where the conflict first escalated, stands severed from Imphal. In quiet conversations, it becomes clear who can still pass and who can not. My grandmother once recounted how a South Indian man with a Hmar wife was advised to take the longer route through Aizawl- though nothing barred him from Imphal, the risk was understood. Even the mere thought of association carried weight, enough to alter journeys. The once-familiar route through Tipaimukh Road was no longer an option, another casualty of unseen lines redrawn overnight.

For many, these lines mean erasure - of home, of history, and of belonging. My grandmother always makes it a point to correct me when I say Churachandpur instead of Lamka, never explaining why, only insisting, as if the correction itself was a quiet act of resistance. Only later did I learn Churachandpur was a hillock 15 kilometers away, its name imposed in tribute to a Meitei king, while Lamka persisted, rooted in its own history. Even our town’s name carries the weight of erasure - one more reminder of who gets to write history and who is forced to live with it.  

Kuki-Zo people who were rooted in Imphal are now scattered, their lives upended, their past reduced to fragments. Those “lucky” enough to escape carry their memories like scraps tied to places that no longer welcome them. There’s a quiet resignation in their voices when they speak of the uprooted lives and the looted homes, tragedies that, to the world, have already become background noise. Every few months, another wave of violence turns into a fleeting headline, but when does this cycle of devastation stop being news fodder and start being recognised as systemic erasure? 

How long before Manipur ceases to exist as a home for the Kuki-Zo people?

My sister went home this Christmas, over a year after the violence began. By now, it’s well understood that Imphal airport is no longer an option for us. She, like many others, took the long route - Delhi to Aizawl, then the jeep ride to Lamka. A major inconvenience, we called it, as if this was something to be expected. As if the privilege to afford this ordeal dulled its indignity.  

Writing this feels like peeling back layers of comfort I didn’t know I had. I have lived in Delhi my whole life, distanced from the worst effects of the conflict, and so I wonder if this is really my story to tell. But silence is heavier. If nothing else, let these words serve as a record - of stolen movement, of stolen belonging. When conflict dictates not just where we can and cannot go but whether we feel safe existing at all, it isn’t just roads that are blocked - It’s the right to call a place home.