Manipur

Imphal's heart is not a palace or a mall but the Ima Keithel, the Mothers' Market, held to be the largest market in the world run entirely by women: thousands of Imas presiding over three great halls and their spillover streets, selling everything the valley makes, fish fresh and fermented, vegetables in botanical-garden variety, the shot-silk phaneks and finely striped textiles of Meitei weaving, brassware, herbs, gold. Men may shop; men may carry; men may not trade. The institution is centuries old, born, the accepted history runs, of an era when compulsory labour systems took the valley's men away and its women built the economy in their absence, and it has been the city's political nerve-centre ever since: the Imas of the Keithel led the Nupi Lan, the women's wars against colonial rice policies, and their successors, the torch-bearing Meira Paibi mothers, have patrolled Manipur's nights through every crisis since. I spent a morning being commanded through it, an Ima selling ngari corrected my pronunciation, another sold me a phanek-weave scarf 'for your mother, not for you', a third, hearing my project, delivered the market's constitutional theory over her scales without pausing the arithmetic: 'Governments change. The market does not close. Who is more permanent?' It was Lewduh's lesson from Meghalaya, restated with three thousand more stalls and total institutional confidence: in the Northeast, I noted for the final time, the commanding heights of the economy frequently wear their hair in a bun.