“One dark rainy night” is every grandparent’s first line delivery while narrating the tale of Tapta. In fact, this line is deployed first to keep the children’s eyes open. When the same tale is told by a grandmother, it is even more exciting. The matriarch would continue, “A stubborn child born to a woman living in an isolated hut near a dense jungle began crying. The child’s cry became louder than the sound of the rain drops falling. The mother woke up from her slumber”. All the children listened with rapt attention and began asking “What next? Grandmother!”. With the excitement writ large on their faces, the grandmother continued with the story. “The mother tried her best to calm down the crying child beginning with mild persuasive gestures. Alas! The child would continue crying even louder. Frustrated, the mother started shouting and scolding. She even tried mentioning all fearsome monsters, the most ferocious wild animals and whatever figures that crossed her mind hoping that the child would stop crying and go to sleep. The mother was helpless. In the meantime, outside the hut, a thief was hiding in a corner near the fence. A tiger from the nearby jungle too took shelter from the rain inside the stable. Both of them heard the child crying and the mother trying her best to stop the child from dispelling the silence of the night. The thief came to steal a healthy pony from the mother’s stable. And the tiger too thought he would pounce upon a healthy prey tonight.”

“The rain stopped. But the child kept on crying. The mother feebly watched through the window from where the sound of falling rain drops came.. tap-tap, tap-tap, tap-tap. All of a sudden, she developed an idea to stop her crying son. She ruptured loudly to her crying child “Look! Tapta laak-e! Immediately, the child stopped crying. “Eek!” said both the tiger and the thief, startled. Both of them simultaneously asked themselves, ‘Who the hell is this Tapta?’ After the woman and the child dozed off in a while, the thief entered the stable but did not see the tiger. He wore a yempak¹ that produced tap-tap sound when sliding droplets from the thatch fell on it. On hearing the sound, the tiger gasped and thought for a moment that Tapta has entered the stable to catch him. So the tiger remained silent. Meanwhile, the thief began to crawl searching for a healthy pony by griping the hind limbs of each one tied to the posts in the stable. The tiger shivered in fear and stood still. The thief grabbed the tiger’s hind limp instead of a pony’s. As the tiger’s limb was bigger than any ordinary pony, the thief thought he found a healthy horse. ‘Alright!’ he thought and pulled out the tiger from the stable. The tiger thought he was finally caught by Tapta. The thief rode on the tiger’s back and galloped away towards the jungle. Neither the tiger nor the thief could see each other as the night was dark. The whole night through, the tiger thought the rider was the dreaded Tapta and he was held captive by him. So the tiger continued galloping like a horse. With the breaking of dawn and the early morning sky opening up with twinkling stars over the horizon, the thief began seeing nearby mountains, rivers, road, and closer to him the stripes of the tiger gradually becoming visible. As soon as the thief realized that he was riding a big tiger, he screamed and jumped off the tiger and ran like an antelope into the bush. And the tiger, who never had the courage to look up continued sprinting faster thinking that the fearsome Tapta has finally released him and disappeared into the faraway woods. Both the thief and the tiger thanked the heavens for sparing their lives, each without knowing what actually happened. The two never found out who or what Tapta was”

Now, the grandmother’s story is over. But the question continues to linger on: Who is Tapta? Even after hearing the stories, the children still ask “Who is Tapta?” No one had any answer except the line that says Tapta was “a mysterious fearsome character in grandma’s phunga wari”. Call it fear, reverence or terror, in modern times, Tapta is no more a fearsome and ferocious character as the power and influence of phunga wari declined. But the mystery and awe associated with the folktale revived when in 1996 Tapta hit Manipur valley with his new fusion music. His songs shook the entire conventional music parameters of the state. And no one knew who this modern day Tapta was until the day he appeared on Live concert. Children now do not shiver with fear when anyone announces “Tapta laak-e!” The fearsome Tapta has now reincarnated into one of the most sought after musician in Manipur known for revolutionizing both the form and content of contemporary music.