Thoiba’s Home: The story of a five-year-old who knows a relief camp better than his own home

In 'Sunday Stories', Santosh Nair tells the fictionalised story of Thoiba, a five-year-old boy growing up in a relief camp after his family fled ethnic violence in Manipur. Grounded in documented events, the piece looks at home, fear, poverty and displacement through the questions and drawings of a child. Pasted markdown

Thoiba asked his mother, “Mama, if we have a home, why don’t we live there?” His mother was cleaning rice for dinner. Her hands stopped moving. It was a question from a five-year-old boy, and she wanted to give him an answer a five-year-old would understand. But how was she supposed to explain something that even the grown-ups had been unable to resolve for more than three years? She picked a tiny stone out of the rice and said, “We cannot go there yet, sweetheart.” Thoiba thought for a moment. “Then why don’t we bring our home here?” His mother looked at him. She wanted to smile at the innocence of his question, but tears reached her eyes first. Thoiba thought he had said something wrong. He quietly walked outside. That afternoon, he learned something no child should have to learn so early. Some questions made his mother sad.

Thoiba was born in 2021 in a small town in Manipur, a state in northeastern India. His father owned a little shop selling rice, cooking oil, salt, soap, biscuits and colourful sweets. It was not a big shop, but it earned enough to keep the family going. His mother cooked in the morning. His father opened the shop. His grandmother sat on the veranda and talked to neighbours passing by. Their house had pale blue walls and a guava tree in the courtyard. Birds often ate the fruit before anyone in the family got to it. His father joked that the birds owned the tree. Grandmother would pretend to be angry and promise to pick every guava herself next time. They had ordinary troubles. Some days the shop made little money. Customers sometimes delayed paying their bills. Rainwater sometimes leaked through the roof. But everyone slept under the same roof at night. Thoiba was too young to understand money, debt or the work of running a household. He knew only that whenever he cried, someone picked him up.

Read more from the Author: Your INDIA | Know it. Question it. Improve it.

The day home became somewhere else

Then came May 2023. Ethnic violence broke out in Manipur. Families from different communities fled their homes in search of safety. Thoiba’s family also left one day, carrying clothes and a few important belongings. He was only about eighteen months old, too young to remember much. Later, his mother told him how grandmother had searched for her medicines, how his father had hurried to close the shop, and how tightly she had held him. Before leaving, they locked the front door. His mother believed they would return in a few days. She left the cooking pots in the kitchen and the bedding where it was. Grandmother’s slippers remained beside the door. Nobody imagined that the door they had closed for a few days would remain outside their everyday lives more than three years later.

For some time, they moved........

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