Milhite Kenye of Chumukedima
Rup J Pater
Dimapur | December 15
“God wanted to feed not only me but the world … through me!”
Meet Milhite Kenye of Chumukedima, a simple Pastor in the service of God. In the prime of his life, Pastor Kenye is the man who gave the world a treasure source of life - rice. To be precise, he gave the world its tallest rice-crop yielding more than a kg of grains from a single plant.
Unbelieving?! Flip open pages of the Guinness Book of World Records and you would. Meet Kenye personally at the ongoing Nagaland Rice Festival 2007 at Dimapur, dwarfed by his own plants, and there would be no second thoughts. No wonder, the giant rice crop is named Milhite Rice, after him.
Scientists and researchers may have many logical versions on the evolution of this variety of rice but for Kenye, its God’s wish. Sheer faith on the Almighty of the elderly pastor is beyond comprehension. Talk about his kid-crop and Kenye’s old eyes light up and goes on to give the details in accented Nagamese as excited as a kid on first day to school.
During mid 1998, tired of village life and poverty, Kenye was planning to shift bases to Dimapur, the commercial hub of the state when he has this amusing dream. He saw that mannas (Biblical free food) raining in the courtyard of the village church. On his call, people rushed into the courtyard but saw nothing!
“Lack of faith,” his simple reason. For about a month Kenye pondered over the dream and tried to make out what God wanted him to know. A devout Christian, Kenye knew God wanted to convey something important to him.
On October 1 he ventured into the jungle, which was a regular routine for a simple villager like him. All of a sudden he stumbled upon a paddy crop. A single crop standing at 3 feet with 150 tillers (strands). It was a young crop which he recognized as a rice plant but grains were yet to sprout. Perplexed he returns to the village and almost forgets about the plant. About a month later he suddenly remembers the dream.
“All of a sudden I realized my dream and knew what God wanted me to do. He wanted me to introduce the manna sent by him to the starving world,” Kenye’s eyes almost close in prayer. He takes his wife to the plant but lo! She doesn’t see any plant while for Kenye it was right before them, now standing tall at about 8 feet. Lack of faith!
Kenye visits the plant regularly until it ripens with grains laden heavy. He then cuts it from the bottom and brings it home. At first family members were skeptic about his move and threatened to throw the plant away, which was now just a husk. However, the old man preserved it with dignity as for him it was a gift of God to mankind. Words about this tall rice crop spreads far and wide bringing visitors in the form of scientists, botanists, researchers and agriculturists.
By now Kenye had started to cultivate the crop from the grains he had got from the wild rice plant in the small backyard of the village church. In 2003, one of his cultivated crops shoots to the height of 8.5 feet with 240 tillers and 340 grains in each ear. The total grain produced by the crop weighed at 1 kg and 182 grams!
Enter the officials of Guinness Book of World Records and the subsequent declaration of the tallest rice crop in the world discovered in a remote village in Nagaland. With a world record and several awards like the Governor’s Gold Medal (2002) and Certificate of Appreciation from the Govt of Nagaland (2004), Kenye is still the devout and simple village pastor that he always was. Today, his only dream is to see the God-sent crop growing everywhere in the world providing surplus food to mankind.
When he comes to know that I am from Arunachal Pradesh, he suggests, “The lowlands of Arunachal which I guess are quite warm would be suitable for cultivation of this rice, why not try there?” and he offers two packs of seed grains, for which I gladly pay Rs 50 per pack.
As for his plans of shifting bases to Dimapur, he has decided otherwise.
