I don’t know of many people who are a hundred years old. Azuo Razoulhouü Vizol reached her 100th year in May 2019 and passed on seven months later. She was the wife of the former chief Minister Vizol. She was an educated woman which was a rarity in her day. After finishing her studies, she worked as a teacher. Azuo Razoulhouü lived her life upholding the traditional values she had learned from her parents. In her home, guests were very welcome and her kitchen was always prepared to feed more than the members of the house.
In the past decade I have met some truly wonderful people in their nineties. Sadly, they are all gone now. Three years ago, one of them said to me, ‘I am turning 98 this year. Imagine how it would be to be 100. I’d like to see how it is to be a hundred.’ That was Azuo Nikki, former Indian ambassador to Panama. She thoroughly enjoyed every birthday and praised God for letting her make it to another year. There is so much to learn from older people. Azuo Nikki’s zest for life and her abiding sense of gratitude for the smallest mercies was a lesson for life. She would greet guests with a lovely smile and take delight in their presence. Azuo Nikki went home a couple of years before reaching a hundred. Her birthday celebrations on earth were pretty awesome and I am sure her hundredth celebration in heaven outdid the earthly ones.
Rhonthungo Tungoe. (Photo Courtesy: TakeOne Nagaland)
In Kohima town, there is a one-hundred-year-old. Uncle RhonthungoTungoe, former State Bank of India employee. He lives in D-Block as one of its oldest citizens, and still enjoys good eyesight and unassisted mobility. While studying in class 5, he was summoned by the DC, Charles Pawsey. At the summons, he was so filled with dread that he considered running away to his ancestral village, Wokha. According to David Kire’s account, ‘The DC asked him to write his name, which he did. After that he was taken to the treasury and given a table and chair and put to work. He was very nervous when the DC took him out of school, but there was another Naga gentleman, working in the treasury, Pehielie Sekhose, and he assured him everything would be fine. All of this took place before the War. After the SBI branch was opened in Kohima in 1962, the treasury staff were employed by the bank. UncleRhonthungo worked as a teller.’
Another resident of D-Block who came very close to completing a century was Apuo Zhavise who was 98 when he passed away. Even at that venerable age, he was mobile, and still very clear-headed. The former soldier that he was, he would stand to his feet to greet his visitors, and escort them to the door when they were departing. In his age group was Mrs Janikhoü Savino, who passed on before her hundredth birthday. There is a secret of good health that all of them shared. I believe it is not just applicable to the natural man, but it speaks a lot about the spiritual man. What were the spiritual secrets that sustained them on their earthly journey? Was that the real secret of their long life?
I think people in their nineties and beyond, are such special people, not just by virtue of their great age, but by reason of the space they have reached in their lives. The obvious value of their lives is the history they have witnessed during their long lives. Rhonthungo served under the British, as well as the Indian government. A living book walking our streets, breathing our air. We should consider what a privilege it is to be sharing space with these citizens.
The other quality unique to them is that the veil between this world and the next is very thin for them, sort of just one more handhold away, one step remaining to climb, one exhale. I have precious memories of the ninety-year-olds I was blessed to meet. One was Dr Visakhonu Hibo’s mother. A beautiful and benevolent woman who looked angelicas she sat up in bed, ready to receive visitors. That afternoon, the light from the window above her bed fell in a wide arc and brightened her room. ‘Aze vi bamo?’ I asked, and she reached out to take my hand and pray a blessing over me. There were no preliminaries. Being a Naga, I was very surprised. We had not performed the ritual of asking after one another’s families, or enquiring what each of us had had for lunch, and how long my stay would be. She was so done with small talk. Nor was she interested in complaining that she could no longer see well, or that her limbs were not very cooperative when she tried to walk. No mention of her poor appetite or her inability to enjoy the delicious meals her children made for her. It was a very different environment: there was an aura of waiting about her, but not in a passive manner. She was actively waiting, and using the days that were granted her to bless those who came into her path. Was this how it was to be ninety? I wondered. There was an indefinable something about her – her proximity to the next world was almost palpable. At such moments, all you can do is sit quietly and receive the sacredness the hour presents, and be thankful.
The blessing from a truly senior citizen is very special. Think of the centuries-old collection of experience they bring of all that earthly life with its pain and grief, and its lot of suffering and struggle can teach us. In addition, think of the opportunities of blessing and recompense and redemption that can come in a hundred years. We need to be doing more to honour the centurions among us while we still have them.
