Eneingulo-U Lasuh
A baby was born in a small village which lies beautifully on the top of a scenic smooth mountain in the East. There was no trained birth attendant those days and the mother died after facing some post child-birth complications.
The father took care of the baby. He did all he could to look after the child. However, those days milk or baby food substitutes were not available. So the father would feed the baby with juice from sugarcane which he grew in his garden.
Once in a while, a young mother who lived in the neighbourhood, out of compassion, would come by to breastfeed the child.
After a few years, the father too passed away. The child was left an orphan. The child somehow managed to grow up to be a young boy. He started going to fields as everyone else in the village did. He worked day after day in the sun and rain; after all he needed to survive. Fortunately for him, he was deft and full of energy.
He was a high-spirited child with an inborn gift of good voice. He would sing folk songs even while working and thereby cheer other farmers of the nearby fields.
This young industrious boy grew up into a young man and built a house of his own. It was a matter of pride for him to aware that he became the second person in his village to have built a house with corrugated galvanised iron (GGI) sheets. For in those days houses were all thatch-roofed. That was before the “coming of the Japanese”, as folks of his generation would say (and still say) to mean the Second World War.
One fine day, after the War was done, a notice for recruitment to Security Forces was circulated in that village. Any young man having the prerequisites and interested in joining the force was welcome to do so. The young man decided to join, for he always had an adventurous instinct. He wanted to go out there and explore what lay beyond the vicinity of his village. Moreover, even if he would go, he had nothing much to leave behind except for that house which he built with his sweat and hard-earned money.
Expressing to a “Gaon Borah” (Village Elder) his willingness to join the force, he gave his name and it was written down in a register. After physical examination, he was found to be slightly short. But realising his determination to join the force, and his caliber, the recruiting personnel inducted him. Thus he joined the General Railway Police Force. There was no further formality - no test, no interview.
For the next seventeen years no news of him was heard. There was no means of communication at that time - no telephone, no postal service and hardly any road. Besides, he was unread.
After more than one and a half decade of silence, of no visit, of no news, the villagers concluded that the man was no more.
As per the custom of that village, any property owned by a person was (and still is) divided among the nearest of kin when he dies. So it came to pass that among his other properties the house built by the lone man was dismantled and divided among the relatives.
Meanwhile, beyond the blue mountains, “the smokes of which were unseen”, the man was rendering his service faithfully. He had no family responsibility to take care of back home. Thus, he lived life carefree and gave his service without holding back anything. There were times, though, when he wished he had a family to call his own, especially when he saw his superiors and comrades having family to love and to take care of. He wished he had someone dear in his life. Yet to have a family to love and be loved by was still just a distant dream.
One day he fell sick and was hospitalised. He had a few mates visiting him in the beginning. But as his treatment prolonged, he had no one visiting him any longer. He spent a long year of loneliness in the hospital. He thought he would die in the hospital in that foreign land. To go back home was too far a cry as he was too sick. Besides, there was transportation problem and there was no one to reach him home. In his solitude, he became very aware that he lived a lonely man and feared he would die as one. He thought that was what he was born to be.
However, at the end of the year, his condition started to improve. He was sitting in the courtyard of the hospital, warming himself up in the morning sun when he thought he saw a familiar face approaching him. He was astounded to see that the visitor was indeed a younger man from his village. The latter was even more amazed, for to him and the villagers, the man was already dead and gone.
Both couldn’t believe their eyes that they were seeing each other. It was totally unexpected. For a moment it was surreal.
The visitor later disclosed that he was pursuing education in that town and had come to see a friend who had also been admitted in that same hospital.
The younger man, on one of his trips to village, told the villagers of his fascinating discovery. He was, however, to be laughed at in disbelief, with statements like, “Don’t be ridiculous!” and “Alive? He can’t be!”
On the young man’s insistence that the man was still alive, people in the village began to believe. Church elders then asked him to bring the man home to serve the church.
Subsequently, the young man came to him one day to convey the desire of the church elders to him. Without much ado, he accepted the offer. He felt happy to know the church wanted his service.
He sought a voluntary retirement. To him, retiring from his job was as easy as striking off his name from the service register. He was too simple to know beyond that. He was not aware of the possibility of claiming any post-retirement benefits. Nobody informed him about such things either. Therefore, as a consequence, he got neither pension nor any other benefit.
He came back to his village with nothing but his clothes that he was wearing. He was still all bones: lean and weak.
The villagers could not believe it was him. At first they thought he was a spirit. His comeback became the talk of the village. The story of his return spread to the neighbouring villages too.
The relatives brought back what was remaining of the little property that they had divided - especially the CGI sheets. He rebuilt his house and started a home of his own again.
His life was nearing five decades when a marriage was arranged for him. Soon he got married to a God-fearing woman. A daughter was added to the couple and that brought much joy. Later, when a son was born he felt it was something more than what he could have asked for. He felt he was the happiest man ever. Thereafter, another son was born and his joy knew no bounds. After some years, a girl-child was born and he felt like a complete man. He now had family to call his own and praised his God. He decided to do anything to for them and gave his children the best education he could afford.
The man was like a dry seed blown about by the wind for about half a century. He was left in the wilderness at the mercy of nature. His peers had already bloomed and begun to bear fruit while he was still just sprouting with nothing but himself.
His life has come to create a sensation like none of his peers have ever done.
The orphan who grew up to be a young man, a happy husband and a proud father was recruited into the said security force as Thiyamo Angami (although his real name was a different one), for no fault of his. Today, the span of his life on this earth is some years short of a century. God bless his soul and may he live to see a hundred years or more, with good health and sane mind as he still is blessed with!
This man is none other than my Father, a Hero to me.
(The writer is the youngest daughter and presently is teaching in a college in Dimapur. The eldest daughter is married and is a homemaker. The first son is also a lecturer. The second son is presently working among orphans in Gangtok, Sikkim.)
