ABSTRACT
The Lai Haraoba, the ‘pleasing of the gods', is a pre-Hindu festival said to be at the ‘heart’ of Meitei culture and worldview (Parratt and Parratt, 1997: xiv). The festival involves dance, music, oral poetry, flowers and other offerings, and spirit mediums that channel lai – female and male deities that are sacred and numinous. The Lai Haraoba is performed to honour these deities at the village and neighbourhood level, a rich cosmological and transcendental experience that I won’t even attempt to describe (See Parratt, 1980; Parratt and Parratt, 1997). In May 2014, the month of Kalen in the Meitei calendar, I was invited to attend a neighbourhood Lai Haraoba with my friend Anya and her family at Ima Khunthokhanbi Shanglen, a laishang (temple) on the edge of the DM College campus close to the centre of the city. It was the final day of the festival, Lairoi. A large crowd thronged on the road inside the campus where stalls had been set up adjacent to the temple. It was night when we arrived but the area was lit up beautifully. The state security forces were present, guarding the entrance to the college campus. I had been leant appropriate clothing for the festival and settled down on the ground to watch the Ougri, a part of the sequence of performance on Lairoi.
