India, May 9 -- Manipur has just passed the grim milestone of three years since the start of the conflagration involving the majority Meitei people and the minority Zo ethnic tribes, who were simplistically lumped together as "Kuki". The trouble, the most serious the state has encountered yet in its blood-spattered history, has consumed the place since it began on May 3, 2023. Currently, the two sides are stuck in a stalemate. After a spell of President's Rule, a new government was recently installed, with Yumnam Khemchand Singh, a Meitei, as the chief minister and Nemcha Kipgen, a Kuki, and Losi Dikho, a Mao Naga, as deputy chief ministers. The killings have more or less stopped, notwithstanding recent outbursts of violence which seemingly dragged the Nagas, the third major community in the state, into the conflict. However, the geographical and demographic partition between the warring communities, marked by "buffer zones", has held. Most of the internally displaced people on both sides remain displaced, and reconciliation remains elusive. Compared with previous events, this crisis has been well-reported in the national media. Detailed reports have been published, including from independent activist groups. The authors of many of these ended up with FIRs registered against them. Given the extreme polarisation, it was daunting for individuals to speak up. Hoihnu Hauzel was acutely aware of all this. Yet, for her, it was unbearable to stay silent about this "wound that refuses to close". Stories the Fire Could Not Burn, her personal account of the conflict as an observer, victim and survivor, is an act of bearing witness. "Some may call it biased. Let them", she states. A senior journalist and author, Hauzel is from the Paite tribe, one among the many Zo tribes. Born and brought up in Imphal, where her family had lived since the 1960s, she is the daughter of a renowned chronicler of tribal history, who retired as director of the Tribal Research Institute (TRI) in the state capital. A slim book, Stories the Fire Could Not Burn can be finished in one sitting. Yet, as one reads, the weight of the prose slows one down, and you occasionally find yourself needing to pause. Those who see Hauzel on television debates will know that she is not the sort who shouts or shrieks. Still, her feelings of hurt and disillusionment drip from these pages: "What does one do when home becomes hostile?... When even your suffering is denied legitimacy by those who claim authority over your fate?" It is a cry of despair, a shout into the void. Chapter one provides a searing description of the initial hours of May 3, when Hauzel's parents' home and those of other members of the Zo community in Imphal were attacked, looted and burnt by a mob led by some of their neighbours. Hauzel was in faraway Gurgaon, on the phone with her family, as her aging parents and toddler nieces hid and watched their home burn before escaping to army camps. It is difficult to decide which is worse: to be there, or to be far away and helplessly watching the macabre spectacle play out. Other chapters contain the author's ruminations on the close-knit community life that she was part of when she lived at Paite Veng; and a retelling of some of the most egregious incidents during the conflict, including the beheading of David Thiek and the sexual assault and parading of the two Zo woman, the viral video of which shocked the nation. Chapter five, titled Shattered Sanctuaries, discusses the demolition of three churches in Imphal in April 2023, a few days before the outbreak of the violence. The churches were among hundreds of other structures deemed to have been built on government land without valid authorisation. The court order presented the government with three choices: remove the structures, relocate them, or regularise them. The government chose not to regularise these three. In the case of the Evangelical Baptist Convention (EBC) church at Tribal Colony, the oldest of the three, built in 1974, the police arrived in the wee hours with bulldozers and destroyed the building and its contents. And here is the detail the book missed, but which makes this action unconscionable. The church leaders had informed the police that they would rather demolish the church themselves on April 12. A farewell service was held on the evening of April 11. But the authorities chose to arrive around midnight and destroy it. It was a needless provocation and calculated humiliation. A few days later, the conflict erupted. This book evokes sadness more than it evokes anger or hatred. There is no sign of people introspecting, just finger-pointing. So, where does Manipur go from here? The book is short on prescriptions. For starters, why did the conflict become so intractable? This is an essential question the book does not ask. Manipur is no stranger to conflicts. The hill-plain divide is well-documented. But this is the first time that an ethnicity-based population transfer of this magnitude has happened. It is also the first time, that MLAs from a particular ethnic group openly came together to advocate "separate administration." Unlike previous conflicts, it was the most affluent Zo tribal elites in Imphal who bore the brunt, while on the Meitei side, the poorest sections in the foothills suffered the most. In previous crises, Zo tribal elites in Imphal acted as a bulwark against full-blown severance with the valley people. These retired and serving central and state officials, MLAs, businesspeople, lobbyists and journalists have been so invested in the state that they did not allow the link between the hills and plains to be snapped. Whenever trouble erupted, they came together with Meitei civil society leaders to facilitate talks. Now, they have bitterly realised, as Hauzel did, that the "spirit of coexistence was never there - I had perhaps only imagined it." By throwing out this class of people from Imphal, the self-proclaimed defenders of Manipur's integrity have deprived themselves of partners and interlocutors with whom they can negotiate and discuss peace. These people were never for separation. Now, they are at the forefront. So, here we are three long years later, still clueless and adrift. It is a sad story. But as a careful reading of the book shows, there is hardly anything surprising about it....