Manipur : The Forgotten Valley

I did not arrive in Manipur.
I was allowed in.

There is a difference and you feel it the moment the hills begin to fold around the Imphal Valley. Manipur does not announce itself. It observes you first. It measures your pace. If you rush it stays silent. If you wait it starts speaking in layers.

This is a land that remembers.

Manipur is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cultural regions in South Asia. Long before modern India took shape the Meitei kingdom had its own written script court chronicles and diplomatic relations with Burma and Assam. The Cheitharol Kumbaba royal chronicle has recorded daily events since the first century. Not legends. Daily life. Floods harvests eclipses wars births deaths. Very few places in the world have documented time with such patience.

I stood in the valley once at dawn and understood why history here moves differently. The valley is small and perfectly cupped by blue hills. It feels intentional like a bowl designed to hold memory. The hills are not borders. They are witnesses.

What most people do not know is that Manipur gave the world modern polo. The game was called Sagol Kangjei and it was played here long before British officers learned it in the nineteenth century. What feels even more remarkable is that women have played polo here for centuries. Not as novelty. Not as exception. Just as participants. Strength here was never loudly gendered.

In Manipur strength is quiet.

Take the Ima Keithel or Mothers Market. It is the only market of its kind in the world run entirely by women. Over five thousand of them. Each stall inherited. Each voice carrying economic power and social authority. This market survived colonial disruption war and political instability because it was not a structure. It was a habit. Women trading. Women deciding. Women holding the valley together while men were often away at war or work.

I once watched a woman there negotiate with no raised voice and no wasted words. The deal closed in seconds. Efficiency here is inherited too.

Manipur also holds one of the rarest ecological balances in India. Loktak Lake is the only lake in the world with floating islands called phumdis. These are not metaphors. They are living masses of soil vegetation and roots that drift and regenerate. Entire huts sit on them. Fishermen live on water that grows beneath their feet.

Within this lake exists the only floating national park on earth. It shelters the sangai deer a species that walks lightly on phumdis as if it learned balance from the lake itself. The locals call it the dancing deer. I think it is the land teaching itself how to move.

Even conflict here has a different texture. Manipur has seen decades of unrest yet its cultural rituals remain precise and alive. Classical dance forms like Ras Leela are performed not as shows but as offerings. The hand movements are exact. The footwork restrained. Emotion is expressed through discipline rather than excess.

This discipline extends to food. Manipuri cuisine avoids heavy oil. It trusts fermentation smoke and herbs. Ngari fermented fish is not meant to impress outsiders. It exists because it always has. Taste here is memory preserved through patience.

What struck me most was the way people speak of the land. Not as property. Not as resource. But as kin. Hills are referred to as elders. Rivers are addressed with respect. Even grief here has geography.

Manipur does not ask to be discovered. It asks to be listened to.

I left knowing I had not seen everything. That was the point. Some places do not want to be consumed. They want to remain whole. Manipur remains whole because it has learned how to bend without breaking. Like its floating islands. Like its people.

And once it lets you in it never fully lets you go.