Khonoma Can Do More . . . .

It’s now a half–year since BCIL began the task of making this ancient village a window to the world, of sustainability and eco–balance. A project team member was so moved by a meeting with the villagers that he penned this doggerel...

As the pale morning sun lights the western sky
The ragged edge of the mountains, in serenity lie
You step out into the freezing air
Of a village that has a face timeless, and free of care.
Travel to Khonoma could take a day to three
From bustling Calcutta into the bleak beyond of the North East.
Tis not the days you take to ride and reach that count.
You travel over 500 years into a world unchanged, unknown.
A land of the brave, and a land of the insecure
The Nagas dig deep into their souls, more than a little unsure.
Here is where life is one long continuum of farm and food
Where life is moments between prayer and fear
Where life is sifting, in charming innocence, the bad from the good
Where life is the happiness of being here and now.
Where you never ask the bigger questions of why, when and how.
And the numberless chores that keep your waking day alive
While generations pass and time rolls, and the old worlds thrive.
Here’s a people who live by their own rules,
No TV, no gamble, aye, we won’t suffer fools.
They won’t let their shops stock tobacco or paan
Ah! Is this a village or a Shangri La long gone?
This is a culture that has little to do with all that we know
From back home in India — oh, that world of anarchic flow.
Tis a village that knows how to keep its life simple and on a basic premise
Where youngsters listen to the old, the sage and the wise.
A gnarled face peers at you with eyes wizened.
The stained teeth break into a heartening grin
He pours generously the not–so–fiery Zu–tho
Waving a work–worn hand of dismissal at your weak protests of ‘No–No’.
The embers of the hearth burn in the dark inside
The cold bites into your bones, while the winds howl outside.
Across wafts a carol from a lusty voice
This is no noise, here’s no noise.
And as you step out again, into the dewy outside
The bejewelled sky invites with the Orion and the Pleiade
The host insists on escorting you down the ancient path
His legs, nay pistons, pump the ground, echoing against the tarmac.
As you pant up the steep well–paved trail
You ponder over a life that can’t look beyond the day’s pale
Oh, what bliss! Here’s a life that knows not how to consume
They eat what they produce, as Toffler said they ‘prosume’.
All this glib talk of conservation and biodiversity
Sounds so hollow in the face of such utter simplicity.
Against the mighty elements and the vastness of the cosmos
Little Khonoma stands to show the world what it has lost.
As we trudge back out of the quiet valley
We reflect on how these people’s simple destiny
Prompts them to admit in their hearts that they have learnt from us urbans
When, in truth, there’s so much they have taught us of sustenance.
And as old Sethou said gently in his ways
“We know not what you do, but what we need,
We are poor, we are not learned.
We believe you can help us,
We want you to give us of your best.”
And all the others stand, strong and yet supplicant
From Neisothuo to Tehesie, to Tevino to Khozo.
From Nino to Riano, to Nikho to Khotso.
And we go with the ignorance of the city–bred.
Not knowing who is the leader and who the led.
We’re pained by our preconceived notions
That persist despite their gentle protestations
‘Go to them,’ urge the wise mountains
‘And nudge the little change that refines their countenance’.
The timeless stones rebuke: ‘Go not with the silt in your metro mind
Abuse not a people so unblemished and as kind.’