"Hey chinky, why are you wandering around?” Regina, a 24-year-old from Manipur, has been living in Bangalore for the past five years, but this was the first time she had been accosted in this manner near her house. The one-room apartment she shares with her brother is in Austin Town near Neelasandra, identified as a trouble spot by the police. Three people from the Northeast had been attacked by two locals in the area last Friday. A nervous Regina, who works at an automobile showroom in the city, has been on leave since Sunday, not stepping out of her house even for groceries. “My family has been asking me to come home. If the situation worsens this week, I will go back,” she says. A few of her friends living nearby have already vacated their house and gone back.

Regina’s friends were among the thousands from the Northeast who fled Bangalore last week in an exodus the likes of which the city had never seen before. The rush began on Independence Day, a Wednesday, with close to 7,000 men, women and children squeezing into trains to Guwahati. The panic was supposedly caused by SMSes that the community would be attacked by Muslims in retaliation for the clashes in Kokrajhar in Assam between Bodos and non-Bodos, as well as by the stabbing of a Tibetan student in Mysore. Crowds continued to throng Bangalore Central Station for the next couple of days, with 7,500 boarding trains for Guwahati on Thursday, and 12,600 on Friday. The railways had to run eight special trains over three days to accommodate the rush.

The flood has since ebbed to a trickle but the departure of 30,000-odd from a city in a span of three days raises several questions, perhaps the most important being whether rumours alone could be responsible for it. Yes, says the administration. “Spreading of rumours via SMS was the main reason,” says Deputy-commissioner of Police Victor D’Souza who was appointed as the nodal officer for the safety of Northeasterners by the state. Karnataka DGP Lalrokhuma Pachuau, incidentally also from Mizoram as Chief Minister Jagadish Shettar was quick to point out, says a kind of fear psychosis was spread by word of mouth. Last Saturday, the police arrested three men, Anees Pasha, Thaseen Nawaz and Shahid Salman Khan, and charged them with sending inflammatory messages and emails.

Enterprises employing people from the Northeast are also of the same opinion. “All this fear was fuelled by SMSes. Three of our female staff members from Manipur quit and went home, because their family was pressuring them to,” says Yogesh, senior stylist at salon and spa Jean-Claude Biguine.

Analysts and commentators point out that the close-knit nature of communities from the seven states would also have been conducive to the swift spreading of rumours. “We are a small community and it’s a part of our culture to stick together,” says Vanlalrema Vantawl, editor and publisher of Mizo weekly Zalen. “There are just 2,000 Mizos in Bangalore; so even if four or five people get such SMSes, it will spread fast. It’s a kind of psychological warfare.” Some of the messages being circulated were warnings to stay at home, and some were mischievous claims such as, “Just now three girls from Mizoram were raped” and that people should leave before Ramzan, failing which they would be “slaughtered”.

But those from the Northeast who have chosen to stay on in Bangalore are keen to emphasise that the fear and panic happened not just because of SMSes and posts on social networking sites but because of concrete instances, whether it be the heckling Regina was subject to near her house or graver incidents. Rebek and Sylvia, two 17-year-olds, were travelling with three other friends in an autorickshaw on the evening of August 15, when two men on a scooter started threatening them. “They said, ‘We will kill you Burmese people’. We told them we were not Burmese but that did not help.” The girls, on the advice of their parents, shifted to Mizoram House, the first floor of which is strewn with the sleeping bags and luggage of others who have similarly sought refuge. So far, 17 cases have been filed and 22 people have been arrested, including eight for assault.

“I would say that 98 per cent of the rumours were false but there were other factors that fuelled the panic as well. For example, our Muslim friends also advised caution and suggested we shift to other places temporarily. If they had emphasised that nothing would happen and we should just stay where we were, it might have been more helpful,” says Pastor Aguimei Pamei who heads a 400-strong congregation of Manipuris in Bangalore.

Pamei is alone in his house, having shifted his family to a temporary shelter organised by members of his community in another part of the city. “A friend’s colleague told him directly that he should leave, as he would otherwise be killed. Clearly, there are also people out to take advantage of the situation,” he adds. “If someone wanted to kill us, they could go ahead and do it — what’s the point of spreading rumours warning of attacks?” asks Jenny Vanlalpari from Mizoram.

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Among the people who left the city, those employed as security guards, housekeeping staff or at beauty parlours vacated their flats, taking all their belongings with them, while students and those working at call centres have left their things behind, indicating that they will return, says Lalrinpuii, president of the Bangalore Mizo Society. Lalrinpuii, who also runs a hostel for college students, says of the 45 students in her hostel, only 13 chose to stay back. Pamei says in some cases, landlords refused to return the deposits of those who vacated their flats in the initial days. Landlords in Bangalore typically demand a security deposit equal to 10 months’ rent, a hefty sum.

Narendar Pani, professor at the School of Social Sciences, National Institute of Advanced Studies, feels the slowdown and the subsequent shrinking of the job market could also have had an impact. “If their employers really wanted the staff to stay back, they might not have let them go so easily.” But many companies say they did what they could to reassure employees and persuade them to stay on. “We offered to-and-fro transport, ensured that nobody travelled alone and had members of the management constantly talking to staff. We realised it was a kind of campaign, so what was needed was psychological intervention,” says Indraneil Palit, COO of Speciality Restaurants which operates five outlets of its Mainland China chain of restaurants in the city. Around 15 people have left the restaurant chain, some taking leave and a few of the women staff quitting in the immediate aftermath, but some of them are already on their way back, says Palit.

Rice Bowl, another popular Chinese eatery in the city, saw around 25 staff leaving. “They will be coming back and we will be reopening very shortly,” says a restaurant manager, though a notice inside the restaurant inviting applications for jobs suggests that when they do, they might no longer have jobs. Suvarna, a manager at Bodycraft salon and spa, another sector that employed many from the Northeast, says 15 of the staff from the region took leave to go home. “But the management is in constant touch with them, and since there have been no major incidents, they now say they will come back,” she says.

With those working as security guards, the situation seems to be different. “Most of them simply abandoned their posts to go home — there was no question of leave. If they had asked for leave, it would probably not have been granted either,” says M A Ramprasad, secretary of the Karnataka Security Services Association, a representative body of agencies providing security services. The association estimates that 10,000 security guards have left the state. Disciplinary action against those who left might not be forthcoming simply because of the strong demand for trained staff. “Around Rs 3,000 is spent per guard on training; so if one agency does not recruit them, another will,” says Ramprasad.

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More than the employers, many feel the bigger failure has been on the part of the state machinery. “In the initial days of the crisis, there was not a single policeman patrolling this area,” says Somipei L K, a 27-year-old from Manipur, living in Neelasandra. While returning home at night from the restaurant where he worked, he saw vehicles ahead of his being stopped and checked by a group of men. A cautious Somipei told his cab driver to turn back and take another route. On the main road near his house there are now two patrol cars with policemen, but Somipei feels they should have been there from the beginning. “It would really have made a difference.”

On Wednesday night, Deputy Chief Minister R Ashok, who also holds the home portfolio, had visited Bangalore City Station and made an unsuccessful attempt to persuade people not to leave. Police presence in the city was subsequently beefed up, with 25 vans of state reserve police, 13,000 members of the Bangalore police and 600 Home Guards, as well as 1,500 recruits undergoing training being deployed, according to D’Souza. A 24-hour helpline for people from the Northeast was launched, and inter-faith meetings with leaders of different communities organised, apart from the usual appeals and reassurances by ministers. A cap on sending SMSes was imposed, with only five messages allowed a day till August 31, later eased to 20. Yet there is a sense of too little, too late — after all, the most number of people (12,600) left the city on Friday night, two days after the first rush.

Things are slowly returning to normal in Bangalore, with fewer people from the Northeast leaving. Employers expect staff to return in a couple of weeks, or a month at the latest; the government has said culprits will not go unpunished, and Ashoka has announced that he will visit the northeastern states to persuade those who left the city to return. The CRPF bandobast in the city, says Pachuau, will remain till Sunday, when the police will reexamine the issue. “There have been no new complaints,” he says.

But the sense of unease among those from the Northeast has not dissipated entirely. “We are still advising our people not to go out alone, not to step out at night and to avoid taking autorickshaws,” says Lalrinpuii. “When I am outside, I feel like I am constantly being watched — if I had not been a leader of my community, I might have left the city, too.” Two days ago, Lalrinpuii and a few others had gone to the station in the hope that they would be able to welcome those arriving in the city from Guwahati. “But when the train pulled into the station, it was empty... it was very sad.”