Gourmohan Singh was sunning himself in his courtyard verandah, on a synthetic mat which has replaced the earlier woven ones. Just like everything else, the mat must have come from China via Moreh at some ridiculously low price. A couple of other mats were rolled up in case visitors dropped by. His wrinkles were visible and his age apparent. At first glance, his face bore no stories, but Gourmohan could be a great storyteller.



The village is Maibam Lotpaching.



He couldn’t remember the exact date but he recalled the time. It was a little past midnight. Hundreds of Japanese soldiers were arriving on foot. Gourmohan had gone into hiding when all the families were being evacuated and trenches were dug along his courtyard. The same courtyard where we were now sitting. The seventy-four-year-old Taoram Gourmohan Singh was a young boy, all of eleven, when the Japanese army fell upon the main Allied advance base in Imphal. That was April 1944.



The war was right at his doorstep. On the Red Hill.



His memory was betraying him and his story was sketchy: ‘I was twelve then when the war began … there were 300 Japanese soldiers on this hill … they reached at midnight on 20 May … they first fought in Moreh but couldn’t come to Imphal … so they took this route.’ Suddenly Gourmohan rose from his mat and led us to a machang in the backyard of his house, or what was the original thatched home.



He was suddenly energetic, pulling a bamboo ladder and climbed up to an attic. From a secret chamber which he had designed in his childhood, he pulled out a couple of ammunition boxes full of souvenirs which he tucked away so carefully for years. Rusted, but very close to his heart. ‘I love these articles. Japan had come for India’s independence, fighting against the British, so I keep them with me. I treasure them.’



He laid them out in the courtyard. Bullet shells, helmets and water flasks. The helmets had chinks on them and were probably the only remnants of the battle of the Red Hill: theatre of World War II where the British forces clashed with the advancing Japanese army. It’s believed that Imphal was as bad for the Japanese as Flanders was for the Germans in WWI, for here on the bloody plain, 50,000 of the best of the Japanese army were killed.



And it was from the Red Hill, its supply lines cut off by a heavy monsoon, the Indian National Army began its retreat just ten kilometres short of Imphal, whose capture could have altered the course of Indian history.



But the defeat of Red Hill didn’t send back the Japanese. They came as close to the railhead in Assam when they took over Kohima. Without the bases in Assam they wouldn’t have been able to access a northern Burma supply route. In the north they had already progressed, sweeping over Ukhrul but Sangshak was taken over by the 50th Indian Parachute Brigade and that delayed the Japanese advance.



Kuosa Kere could speak a smattering of Japanese. It was at Kigwema village where General Saito, the famed Japanese commander had stationed himself during the decisive siege of Kohima in World War II. From here, the Japanese 31st Division opened attack and timed the assault at exactly four pm on ‘4.04.44.’ It lasted for two months.



‘It was a long war, we were warned by the Brits and were very apprehensive about the Japanese, but they were friendly. They lived with the families, paid for everything and unlike the British, they had no relationships with local women. They never misbehaved. General Saito was a very nice man. For us teenagers, the war was an adventure.’



It was in June when the dangerous Japanese advance into the plains of India was finally halted by the British and Indian forces.



Sixty-four years after the famous Kohima seige of World War II, I stumbled upon some rare photographs and calligraphic notes documenting the most decisive war against Japan. What I found in those huge album notebooks were daily accounts maintained by the British 2nd Division.



There were several photographs but the ones in my acquisition were aerial views of the supply points in Kohima, Japanese posts, Kohima a day after the Japanese retreated, and British artillery positions. These pictures gave me an assumed status of a collector and I prided myself immensely on possessing war memorabilia, even if it was only three photographs.



During the war, China, Burma and India were considered an insignificant theatre but the stakes were enormous. Had the Japanese managed to break through the Indian defence lines they would have been able to link up with allies Germany and Italy to control the all important oil fields in the Middle East.



In a telegram to Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill wrote, ‘The stakes are pretty high in this battle, and victory would have far reaching consequences [as would defeat].’



It was 22 June, 1944 when the Japanese forces finally withdrew.



But what went down in history as one of the fiercest battles of World War II was fought on a tennis court adjoining the Deputy Commissioner’s bungalow in Kohima.



Kohima’s new landmark, The Dream Café overlooks the ‘tennis court.’ This café is actually a time-zone as far as Nagaland’s contemporary history goes. It was the first shop in Kohima to stay open till eight in the evening. Theja’s Dream Café is a busy coffee house in the middle of the city, a place which symbolizes the new Nagaland – moving away from the stereotype of a Naga tribal dancer that graces the covers of travel books. Dream Café is the other young haunt marking a changed attitude for a beleaguered state fighting one of the world’s oldest insurgencies.



Across the Dream Café is the Kohima War Cemetery, where 1200 Indian and British soldiers who died fighting the Japanese have been laid to rest. This is where the tennis court battle was fought and where the famous line is found engraved: When you go home tell them of us and say, “For your tomorrow, we gave our today.”



The tennis court battle was also called the ‘Battle under the Cherry Tree.’ The cherry tree was a Japanese sniper post. The tree is no more but a branch of the famed tree has taken its place outdoors, next to the tennis court, which can still be seen. Young Nagaland finds refuge in this tennis court now. It’s a romantic getaway right in the middle of the town.



A British war veteran whose name I cannot recall stood in the middle of the cemetery and reminisced: ‘After several months, it was virtually over. We were repatriated home; we were on our way to Bombay when the atom bomb was dropped. It was all over. We don’t want it but we do need it sometimes … hmmm look at this. It’s the sad part, but anyway we came out victorious.’ Tears rolled down his wrinkled cheeks.



But sitting at a tombstone, Lily broke down: ‘Sixty years ago, I was a nurse at the army-combined hospitals. So many young people had died, too many lives wasted, they died in my arms. And we still have wars.’



Excerpted with permission from Che in Paona Bazaar: Tales of Exile and Belonging from India’s North-East, Kishalay Bhattacharjee, Pan Macmillan India.



Kishalay Bhattacharjee is a senior journalist. His book Blood on My Hands: Eyewitness Accounts of Staged Encounters will be published by HarperCollins Publishers India in August.



