内容摘要：Looking back, Ms Zhang can't help but recall a joke her friend made at a farewell dinner before she left for the US.

Looking back, Ms Zhang can't help but recall a joke her friend made at a farewell dinner before she left for the US.

The initiative, titled 'I would be here if I could', has seen the Mirrorbox travel all over the country and it will be in Bristol and Glastonbury in the coming weeks.ME causes extreme tiredness and can be so severe that patients are left bed-bound and unable to complete even simple tasks.

Other symptoms include problems with memory and concentration, muscle and joint pain, dizziness and sensitivity to light and sound.When her illness is at its worst, Ms Larkman can only stay awake for three-hour windows."Your imagination is huge and you can lay in bed and travel to all sorts of places and think about things whereas you can't do them," she said.

"That's one of the questions I would think - 'where would I be if I could?'"For Ms Larkman, the answer is always watching the hustle and bustle of London's Victoria Station from the top of the escalators on the way to visit her sister, but for others it was as simple as being able to see their children on the swings at the park.

"During this project I have met so many other people trying to manage what is essentially a fluctuating condition and also the shock of realising how bad ME is," she said.

"You just don't see people who are bed-bound, or who are on oxygen, and because you don't see them, even though I'd had it for years, it's been a real revelation."The armed struggle for Communist rule has claimed nearly 12,000 lives since 2000, according to the

. The rebels say they fight for the rights of indigenous tribes and the rural poor, citing decades of state neglect and land dispossession.The Maoist movement - officially known as Left-Wing Extremism (LWE) - took formal shape in 2004 with the merger of key Marxist-Leninist groups into the CPI (Maoist). This party traces its ideological roots to a 1946 peasant uprising in the southern state of Telangana.

Now, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government pledging to end Maoism by March 2026, the battle-hardened rebellion stands at a crossroads: could this truly be the end - or just another pause in its long, bloody arc?"There will be a lull. But Marxist-Leninist movements have transcended such challenges when the top leadership of the Naxalites were killed in the 70s and yet we are talking about Naxalism," said N Venugopal, a journalist, social scientist and long-time observer of the movement, who is both a critic and sympathiser of the Maoists.