(1) Long before Mr Radcliffe broke the lead of his pencil for the thirty seventh time while drawing the most innovative and surreally imaginative line graph through the woolly caterpillars marked as Khasi, Garo and Jaintia hills on the sheet of thickened paper that made a vast piece ofland look like a queer mix of olive green, ocean blue, pale white and tea-brown, Nongrum had crossed over to Mayong. Nongrum wasn’t his real name. It was the name of the village where he was able to see his dream transform into reality, to break the shackles of the brass ring which bound him for time unknown, to become a he from an it, to become a man of flesh and blood from a genie. It would be his liberation from giving into the vicious cycle of desires of rascals like the Sultan of Mangogul — who would never be able…