Apuo Zhavise: The inheritance of living history

I have been so fortunate to spend time with Apuo Zhavise who turns 94 this year. His clear mind and perfect memory power never fail to amaze me at every meeting. Apuo is Zhavise Vihienuo, elder brother of the late Rev Deo Vihienuo and father to Thejao Vihienuo, former Registrar of Nagaland University.

Apuo has recently brought out a book entitled A runa dze, The story of my village. It is a valuable record of village settling and the rich lore of the village which he had received from several oral narrators. Although he has been a resident of Kohima for more than seventy years, Apuo's heart is in the village of Chiechama and he never misses any opportunity to visit for a few days. Apuo's house in the village sits at a central point, a warm old wooden structure where he and his wife used to welcome visitors with good food and open hearts. His wife has since then gone ahead of him.

The house is still there, as welcoming as ever, a legacy they have passed on to the next generation. In my mind's eye I can still see the porch with the white paint peeling off the banisters, the swampy ground to the right where a blue weed was blooming in abundant clusters while a puppy chased a neighbour's young pig into a fenced garden. We were there to film the legendary stone of Chiecha village from which the village had gotten its name.

Apuo was presently joined by three more of his clansmen, regally dressed in their black lohe and red gaonbura blanket carrying walking sticks that gladdened my heart because they looked like spears on camera. Apuo led us to the house of his ancestor Rio, with the stump of the stone sticking out of an abandoned kitchen. There he began his story with his friends looking on and making additions where they felt necessary. This was the gist of the story:

Once upon a time, our ancestor and his wife dwelt here in this very spot. This was their bedroom and this was their kitchen. The man and his wife had a rooster, and a hen with her brood of young chickens. The stump of the stone that you see was a magic stone that grew every day and our ancestor's wife beat it down with a big stone. However, one night the man had a dream and the stone spoke to him saying, 'Tonight before your rooster can crow I am going to grow until I touch the sky.' The man woke up with a start.

He narrated his dream to his wife and when evening came, they sat around the stone and waited. To their surprise the stone began to grow and grow, and it did not stop until it was ab out to touch the sky. Suddenly a weak crowing was heard. It was not the rooster but it was one of the young chickens. At the crowing, the stone ab ruptly stopped growing and began to crack until finally it fell to the ground in many fragments. The top of the stone landed in Lazami village and the middle portion fell into the village of Gariphe. The stump of the stone can still be found in the ruins of our ancestor's house, and this is how our village came to be named. It has ever since been called, Chiechama, the village of the long stone.

Apuo's storytelling went into a documentary called Stone Stories. It was late afternoon when we finished shooting and drove back home. But Apuo's story stayed with me a long time and cast a hue over the village which I had never known before. The ruins of the abandoned kitchen harkened back to times when the spiritual was at the heart of the village. I hoped to return to listen to more stories and cultural nuggets that we are always too busy to relish and gather from. Most of all there was the realisation that Apuo and his clansmen were repositories of living history. They were carrying the history of the village, and several other histories in addition. Elsewhere in other developed nations, men like Apuo would have been considered as national treasures and their knowledge and lore of the land properly documented. I hope it won't be too late for us to start such a project too. There are still a considerable number of storytellers with us from whom we can glean native wisdom as well as let them know how valuable their existence is to the community.

From Apuo I learned the tale of another of his ancestors named Vihienuo, the great warrior whose fame had made his village impenetrable to enemy attacks for many years. It was not a tale of blood and gore, it was a tale of a noble hearted ancestor who took on the task of defending his village against enemy warriors so that his villagers could cultivate their fields free from harassment.

This Christmas Apuo and his 'co-brother in law' Rükhier Rio hosted the village. Apuo Rükhier is Apuo Zhavise’s cousin. They were born in the same year and married two girls from their village who were sisters. This made them co-brothers-in-law, a term used only in Indian English but works to explain kinship and the exact relationship of two people. Together they feasted the village to celebrate the fact that all members of their village had become Christians in their lifetime.

While he was working under Deputy Commissioner Pawsey, Apuo took an additional story to different parts of Nagaland where he was sent to inspect the possibility of opening schools as part of the Post War Development Scheme. He inspected very many villages in Angami, Chokri, Zeliang, Sumi, Kuki and Lotha areas. His travels took him by foot to far flung areas where there were few or no churches. With the perseverance and gentle strength that is characteristic of him, he taught the gospel of peace in all these areas. His reward was seeing these people come to Christ in the course of ten years, abandoning age old conflicts to embrace a more peaceful way of life. Spears and daos were laid down by feuding groups who then joined hands to build up the church. Not all of these stories have gone into his book, because Apuo is modest by nature and many of his adventures and achievements are not recorded. It needs the patience of a long evening to draw out these stories from him. It is at such times they are narrated and received in mutual trust.

At one point of his adult life, Apuo served in the Assam Regiment and trained as a motorcyclist, an event hard to imagine now when I see his shock of white hair and careful steps aided by his cane. But he still carries himself like a former soldier, shoulders straightened to lend dignity to his posture. I can't ever recollect seeing Apuo looking shabby. In the early years I always found him seated in his study, neatly dressed in immaculately ironed shirt and trousers matched by shining shoes, reflecting the best qualities of the soldier.

Apuo belongs to that species of the old world Naga, men with gracious good manners who did their part in life and felt it below their dignity to stoop to corrupt ways. After meeting him again, I felt that Nagaland should consider itself a blessed place when we still have men of his ilk with us. And learn from him. Learn how to love our fellow men and serve them unselfishly, simply so we can have a better world to live in. Learn to appreciate the inheritance of living history that he carries with him as carefully guarded treasure to share with the rest of us. In this day when we are so bereft of heroes, he is one of my heroes and I stop to let myself be inspired by his life and the principles he lives by. I perceive that like his ancestor, the warrior Vihienuo, Apuo has chosen to forget the times he has been treated ill. In our long exchanges, I cannot remember him ever naming a litany of foes.

Apuo's hearing is perfect and his sight the envy of much younger men. The health he is enjoying in the autumn of his life is evidence of a spirit that has not harboured grievances and injustices. Long may he live reminding us of the blessing of a gracious life.



Originally published at www.easternmirrornagaland.com

Shortlisted for The Hindu Literary Prize

"The second nominee, Easterine Kire for Bitter Wormwood, published by Zubaan Books, has written about “a neglected part of Indian history.” “As the introduction of the book says, it is about ‘ordinary people whose lives were completely overturned by the Naga struggle’”"

Five books shortlisted for The Hindu Literary Prize - thehindu.com
Read the interview at thehindu.com

See also:
Easterine’s ‘Bitter Wormwood’ shortlisted for The Hindu Lit Prize - easternmirrornagaland.com
Five books shortlisted for The Hindu Literary Prize - morungexpress.com

Update 17/2: The Hindu Literary Prize goes to Jerry Pinto

A killer called self-pity

I knew a woman widowed from her youth. She would always stop me and recount her woes. It was a constant litany of how her in-laws had mistreated her after her husband's death, how she struggled alone to feed her children and how workmates made her job a living hell. When her name came up in conversations, I visualised a visage drawn backward by pain and self pity both real and imagined.

Did I ever see her smile or laugh at a joke? I really can't recall. I'm sure she did, I mean one can't go through life without ever laughing even against one's will, can one? Sooner or later one has to laugh at some Naga joke or other. As the years went on, people began to studiously avoid the company of this woman. They went out of their way to get out of her way. Can one put it like that? I mean that if they saw her coming one way, they went another way. And it wasn't funny. She grew lonelier and lonelier until she shrivelled up and died. Not in the natural. But she died spiritually. The last I heard of her she had become inundated in debts and lost the few friends she had made along the way.

Self-pity is a killer. It is an ongoing quarrel with the world. It operates as an addiction. If you are addicted to self-pity, you will find occasion every day to feed your addiction. People will cut you off on the highway, shopkeepers and salesmen will be rude to you and restaurants will serve you last. It is not hard to predict. If you expect others to treat you badly they will pick up those vibes and behave accordingly. When all his misfortunes came upon him, Job declared, “What I feared has come to pass.” If you expect to receive favour, you will get what you hope for but if you expect abusive treatment, the same will come to you.

There are some self-pitying beings who see an offence in every action, word or deed of others. Such an attitude is even worse than that of the first lot. No matter what you do or say they will be offended. So you can never get away without hurting their feelings.

Self-pity is rooted in extreme self absorption. It is constantly putting self interest first that creates the perfect environment for self-pity. There is only one antidote for self pity. That is turning one's attention from oneself to something or someone else. Becoming God-absorbed instead of continuing to be self-absorbed puts God at the centre of our focus, and not ourselves. We become finer beings and are able to lift ourselves above the crass pettiness that sometimes is a part of life on earth. Hopefully becoming God-absorbed would help us realise that life is not really about us but about something much bigger than us.


Originally published at www.easternmirrornagaland.com.

Support for Nepali community in Nagaland

Are we failing our Nepali brothers and sisters?

The bed was too big for her. Lying in her hospital bed at Oking, the four year old looked smaller and frightened. She shied away from my touch. There was fear in her eyes as we stood around her bed. So this was the little girl who had been raped by a labourer who hailed from Jharkhand. My heart lurched within me and I fought back tears. Her father sat by her side. Her mother came in with her other child on her back. The family looked listless and without hope.

I have never felt so helpless before. I'm sure I was not the only one feeling like that in the room. The others were members of NorthEast Region Services Nepali Association (NERSNS) and Dimapur Gorkha Union (DGU) and Gorkha Public Panchayat (GPP), all men. The doctors said she would be discharged the next day but that she would need to be under observation for one month. She had not completely healed from her injuries and it was obvious that she had been deeply affected psychologically.

What are words when they cannot heal and comfort? Our words sounded like empty sounds, and I stood silently at her bed. The little girl and her parents were from the Nepali community. Her father had been working as a labourer at Senapati where he had taken his whole family. The rapist Raju Sorin, came from Jharkhand, and had worked alongside her father. On the pretext of taking her to see the Christmas carolers, he raped her in an empty shed.

This rape of an innocent child which happened in our neighbouring state, and was brought to our state for treatment, and was featured widely in our newspapers, has not received any condemnation from the Government of Nagaland and Manipur although the media had splashed it on the front page. In fact, the news was hard to miss on the 28th December when most readers were eagerly awaiting their morning newspaper after the Christmas holidays. The DGU had immediately sent information to NGOs and to the government. It followed on the heels of the death of the gang rape victim in Delhi. While the condolences for the Delhi rape victim were quickly forthcoming, there was silence on the Nepali child's case in the days following the report in the newspapers. A Facebook support group garnered one hundred and forty-one names in the space of one night. The supporters were both Naga and non Naga. This article is not written to accuse the government, rather to appeal to it to show that it cares for all its citizens, irrespective of religion or nationality.

The lack of support for the Nepali community is a blot on Nagaland. This is a community that has lived with us for longer than any of us can remember. In the years before the war, their forefathers peacefully existed in Kohima and other towns, contributing to the Naga agrinomy with their milk and vegetable production. They were an accepted part of the Naga community. They fought our wars with us, ousting the Japanese invaders with their Gorkha fighting skills and protecting this land thus. For many of them, the word home evokes Nagaland and not Nepal. Why then has there been no outcry from the social bodies against the atrocities committed on the Nepali womenfolk in the Naga Hills?

The post morten report on the brutally murdered Meena Rai is still not forthcoming. The Nepali community is waiting for justice. Why is this report taking so long? Mother of two Meena Rai was raped by a Bangladeshi national and horribly mutilated. The rape and murder happened two months ago on the 2nd of November 2012.Where is the post morten report? Why has it not been prepared till now? Her children and her community are still waiting for the report.

All that the members of the Nepali community are asking from the government is justice and protection. And from the Naga public, meaning churches, tribal groups, and individuals who care, support and voices that can join their lone cry for justice. The leaders expressly told me that they are not asking for money but emotional support.

The culprits in both cases have been apprehended and are in judicial custody. But for a people who have been greatly wronged, the long wait for a verdict is a violence against justice to the victims' families.

The same rape laws that are put in effect in Delhi should apply in Nagaland and the Northeast. It should not matter that the victim is a Naga or not. To anyone who opposes violence against women the differentiation should be seen as a continuing violence against the female sex.

If we fail to make our land safe for women and children of any caste or religion, how can we ever hope to make it safe for any citizen? The longer we dally in giving justice to the wronged, the more we encourage by our actions those crimes to continue. This is what happened in Delhi. Rapists were not punished harshly. As a result they continued to violate women without any fear of reprisal until it culminated in the indescribable murder of the medical student.

This is an appeal that goes out to all Nagas especially to those who have the authority to make a change. Please care about the worth of the sojourner in your land. They are no longer just sojourners now. They are peaceful inhabitants who are one of us. Our Christianity is to be lived in these situations, by showing love and support for the suffering within your borders, not by remaining deaf and blind to evil around us, and certainly not by allowing love to grow cold by failing to respond to situations that challenge the Christ in you. If you are not a believer, you are still a human being and this is a challenge to your humanity. Come forth, join hands, fight evil. That is the sign that you are a human being. Your tears are important, come and shed them. Come and pray and cry and work so that no girl child will suffer this fate again and that no woman will ever have to go through what Meena Rai did.

Originally published at www.easternmirrornagaland.com here and here.

Background: A four-year-old Nepali girl was raped by a 24-year-old youth at Tongpanj Village, under Senapati district Manipur, on Christmas night. Read more about it here

The wood apple tree

On a warm summer day in 2010, I was reading out a poem about blue lions and gypsy kings and freedom rainbows to a gathering of 300 people. Afterwards a young man walked up to me. He had unruly brown hair and a stylish black jacket. And he had tears in his eyes. "That poem...that's my poem!" he burst out, his tears uninhibitedly running down his cheeks. "I sat and listened to every word.

How did you know we have blue lions in our culture? You spoke of gypsy kings and rainbows and freedom. I am a gypsy and I am looking for my freedom rainbow!"

I don't remember his name and I may never recollect his face again. But I shall always remember his tears. Tears of gratefulness. It may be too much to call it tears of joy. We smiled at each other in a room full of strangers. And then we parted without saying anything more but with the mutual feeling of having connected, however brief. I have seen a similar sort of connection happening between two of my oral narrators some years ago. They were explaining a folk poem to me when they stopped at a verse and picked it apart completely, both of them rushing in with their own version of the meaning of the poem. They were in agreement on what the poem meant but the archaic language of folk poetry had so many layers to it that they were immersed in peeling off the layers and making sure that I could understand it all. But in that process, how they savoured uncovering the essential meanings of those words and tracing their etymological roots! Ah the magnetic magic of words.

Sometimes they would have different versions of the same poem and that would put me into a quandary as to which version to use officially. In the end I solved that dilemma by having version one and version two of the one poem. Though they gave me different interpretations, the conclusions of the poem always converged into one idea. That is the beauty of words, the beauty of poetry and of story. The coming together of thought and dream and wisdom. And every poem has a story to it. In the olden days, every folk tale was a poem and therefore the term poem-story could most aptly describe it. And all those stories perhaps came from a mother tree way back in time. Think of that. Imagine a wood apple tree in the middle of a winter forest in our hills. The yellow and red of ripened fruits covering the tree and weighing its branches down. A wood apple tree abundantly fruiting in season. The villagers say that the wood apple bears fruit only every second year. Picture that tree as a mother tree of stories, birthing our stories, bringing them to fruition so anyone who wants may come and pluck them from the tree. Picture all the wood apple trees in the forest as mother trees. And all the wood apples as stories. Billions of trillions of stories.

I believe in the unity of stories. A Sami singer once said she knew all my stories and for every story that I could tell, she had one that could match mine. And she did. She had a bear story for my bear story, and she had more stone stories than I could recall. The same thing happened with a Berber woman who throat-sang her stories to my stories. Story is the nicest of connectors. Story has been there from the beginning of time and every human being can find shared elements in Story. Like a strand running through all human lives. Like the wood apple tree from which every generation plucks and eats. Without that connection we wither, we slowly become lesser.


Originally published at www.easternmirrornagaland.com

My Kohima

Mornings over Kohima town begin shrouded in mist. Most mornings I am awake at 5.00 am and awed by the sight of the mist veiling the houses and hills, giving my beloved town an aura of peace and serenity. I know that the mist as a literary metaphor is over used in our day. I am nigglingly aware of that, yet I need to use it again to convey an image that is familiar to all of us.

Every morning in the past week, as I stood facing southward, I have seen dark hill silhouettes before me with pinpoints of light on its slopes. In moments the scene would be overtaken by a murky morning light that made some of the house-lights disappear. In their place, smoke would begin to ascend from early morning fires.

While it was still dark, I saw a sliver of moon and wondered if that was the last glimpse for some time to come. I made a mental note to check when the lady in the sky would grace us with her return. Hopefully it would coincide with the Christmas week. The dark township reminded me of a phrase from a favorite poem, “Nocturne” written by my guru in the English language, Nini Lungalang. She spoke of her “dream-drenched” child deep in sleep as she drew the curtains of night. I too have seen my Kohima before early dawn, fast asleep and dream-drenched. And I sent a prayer out over its roofs and crowing roosters, the oft repeated prayer on the lips of all who love her as I do. Peace, God's peace over my hometown. Dreams of God's love over her sleeping denizens.

This is the town that Senti Toy calls home and sings of from faraway New York. This is the young-old township that will touch my heart like no other can. There are many others for whom Kohima is not this present sprawling semiurban, hardened cityscape which makes outsiders wonder what we see in her.

I miss you Kohima of my youth and childhood.

One Sunday afternoon in 1973 we borrowed a friend's father's car and pooled in our meager resources to buy five litres of petrol. I gave up my worldly savings which amounted to two rupees and fifty paise, and the neighbour boys and my older siblings chipped in each with five rupees until we reached the grand sum of twenty five rupees. That was enough to buy five litres of petrol.

We drove some distance out of town and parked near a dried river bed and ate some katta biscuits and shared a bottle of banana juice which was slightly fermented. Our outing didn't last long enough because one of the boys suddenly got stung by a bee and his left eye swelled to alarming proportions. So we hurried back into the car and headed toward Kohima. Near the BSF camp, the car sputtered to a standstill. The seventeen year old driver opened the hood and examined every car part he was familiar with. He then tried to start the car. After a few tries, he checked the fuel tank. His face crumpled. We were out of petrol. Five litres didn't really go very far. What would we do now? All of us discussed the matter desperately. The urgency of needing to get medical aid for our stung friend almost overrode the unenviable prospect of a long walk home. But a passing jeep owner recognised our borrowed car, stopped and gave us enough petrol to get home. Thus, all ended well and we were very grateful to our rescuer. It became a wonderful memory of what one could do to have fun if you were young teens and had time on your hands. Simply going for a drive could be so glorious because you were in the company of friends and allowed out for an outing.

The good old days in Kohima were truly good. I feel so privileged to have had the childhood and youth that I have had here. In later days, my friends and I have fondly recollected that Sunday escapade. We don't live in the past: we are grateful that we had a good place to grow up in. I wish I could recapture a bit of that old Kohima spirit and pass it on to today's generation so they could understand why people of my generation feel as we do about this little town. It is in many ways, our private Bethlehem. At Christmas, I pictured the baby Jesus born under a Kohima sky and waking up to church bells ringing as families scurried to church in their Sunday best. I grew up thinking the message of peace on earth, goodwill toward men was heralded to cowherds out in a khuti (cowshed) in a Naga field. And our Lord's Bethlehem was surely ablaze with red poinsettia at every turn in the road at his birth, else why call it Christmas flower?

Memories make a place what it is. Vivid memories of a childhood place where growing up was safe and in its own way, innocent. Now all that is left is to try and recapture it in words and stories because the black and white photographs of that era are not very good at representing how beautiful this town used to be. Still, I rejoice when I wake early enough while my hometown sleeps. I bless you uninhibitedly and love you for what you once were. Perhaps if I get enough people to bless you, my dear Kohima, you will be restored again, not just to what you were, but to a place truly worth loving.


Originally published at www.easternmirrornagaland.com

Please write in English when you are writing in English

The bane of the English language in our times has been youth and the language of the SMS. I was horrified to get an email from a student who wanted information on certain rituals for her PhD work. No it was not the ritual she was enquiring about that horrified me, but the way she wrote her email in SMS lingo made my entrails squirm in repulsion.

It was incredible that a student could conceive of writing a letter of an academic nature and use abbreviated English to pose her questions. I know for a fact that my old English teacher would refuse to answer her question. And she would never leave the case at that either. My old English teacher was a stickler for grammatical correctness. She would definitely have considered that email blasphemous and highly detrimental for young children with their impressionable minds. She would have taken it upon herself to protect future generations by personally executing the offender and burying her in an anonymous mass grave.

Luckily for the PhD student, I am more mercifully inclined. I answered her mail and made it a point to spell each word out in full and not use their abbreviated forms. I hoped I was setting an example which she would catch on (I mean if she was a PhD student, then surely she would have the required intelligence to do as I did, wouldn't she?). No such luck. She replied me after a month with a curt note similar to the following monstrosity:

Thnx xo muj, opin 2 hv a gd tym n opin u r fyn thea.

Yea sure, I'm also opin you will learn to write in English as your research progresses. I didn't press send after I typed that. I deleted it and wrote something more polite. But I wish I had had the guts to tell her to pull up her socks and blooming get her k's and h's together. It looked like she had migrated from the nearest suburb in a great hurry and left them behind her. Each time I open my email I breathe a sigh of relief and send up thanks if I don't see her name in my inbox.

But surely life cannot go on like this. I mean there must be some way of penalising students and members of the public who torture others with short message service emails and messages. I want to know if educational institutions are accepting answer scripts written in SMS. I wonder if nightmares have come true for many teachers as they find assignments submitted like this:

AlXNDR d Grt Nvded Ndya N muj of Urop. Hi ws opin 2 hv a gd tym thea.
Bt hs kapten dyd n mani of hs hrses dyd on d way so hi cud nt achiv wat hi wntd.
In oder wrds hi cud nt hv a gud tym thea.

I truthfully want to resuscitate/resurrect my old English teacher and more of her ilk. I am thoroughly convinced that the English language has to be taught with an iron hand again. And it is not just grammatical abuse; the grammatical failings are the tell tale signs of something much darker in our society. It is a whole way of life and shows how slip shod we have become in our habits. We put in the minimum of effort and if we find short cuts, we use them unashamedly.

Language is a reflection of society. The highest periods in any society have also been the times when its language was at its most prolific. Greece in the 5th century. Elizabethan England and Marlow, Spencer and Shakespeare though the bard was a latecomer. Our oral narratives had some of the most beautiful metaphors but their time is past. We have ingested too much of the written word now to find any room for orature. And we sit by our computers and mobile phones and type out sms trash? Does that mean we are spiralling toward the end of our civilisation?

It is probably linguistically deductable that we are very close to Armageddon now. Our communication abilities show every indication of that. Two letters of the alphabet or even one have come to represent whole words. I infer from that that if we start seeing SMSes sent as punctuation marks, that is definitely our cue to evacuate planet earth or risk total decimation.


Originally published at www.easternmirrornagaland.com