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Chapter one. The Beginning |
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When, ten days later, we returned to Imphal, life had changed. There is no describing the fascination of the hills. Neither heat, sweat, dirt nor discomfort could break their hold. It was as though I had re-discovered a world to which I had belonged the whole time; from which, by some accident, I had been estranged. Seen again, Imphal and the life of its small community had indefinably altered. I saw them, rather, at a new angle; the perspective was subtly different. They had become a little hostile, a little foreign. Not yet of the hills, but already divorced a fraction from my own race, I wanted nothing now but the lovely, wild reality of mountain and jungle. I had to go back. |
