The man who saw yesterday

The man who saw tomorrow was anti-thesis of everything of what and how our forefathers lived to see and practiced in the past. He saw a complete anarchy, disorder, selfishness, mindless destructions and holocaust. That is what we are in today. The very substance of the Naga life yesterday principally consisted of simplicity, honesty, hard working, and the purest form of innocence.
The social structure, the economy and the belief system – were all pure and wholesome. Crime was unheard of. Suicide unknown and idea of extortion never occurred to them. People of one tribe were in awe of other tribes.
They talked fondly about the culture of their near and far tribes. Everybody cherished what others did.
They walked miles carrying basket of goods and wares beyond their immediate realm for exchange with things they did not produce at home. Every village they crossed had a new friend or father’s old welcomed the traveler for sojourn a home for sojourn. The highly talked about Naga hospitality was manifested unreservedly at those homes.
The host and the guest regaled the whole night toasting with rice wine called aji, zutho or many other Naga terms.
Evening times under the moonlight, equivalent to the modern halogen lights, brought older people together to the usual conference; one after another each one cracked jokes and others live-streamed stories and news, their latest news were commonly of months and years old.
And yet it was fun. Children who sat beside his father most often assimilated old people’s stories.
We are now living in that of Nostradamus’s tomorrow marked by a complete breakdown of normality. Yesterday’s people are in absolute perplexity.
His tomorrow is our today – the day we would not wish to see. The front-bound wheels move on irreversibly.
The man who saw yesterday does not wish to lose yesterdays values; compassion, simple living, honesty, hard working and everything that is good for the flesh and the soul.
A yesterday’s man from the north of Nagaland goes to Khonoma or Akhego or Metsale to call on the father’s yesteryears bosom friend.
The culture of family friend called Ashomi exists no more. Back in the journey he took a night’s sojourn at his father’s friend’s home at Yorubami village or Pfutsero where he was entertained to the best possible.
The daily needs of yesterday were basic and fundamental. One from Rengma land would venture out with the sole objective of gathering bristle, which small children usually extracted when their swine was killed. Few coins at his hands fetched rich amount of bristle.
The exuberant hair on the pig’s body was rendered bald for satisfaction of the merchant.
He gathered his bagful of hair and went back. Medium of communication was no problem; every village folk knew some functional vocabulary of his neighbor tribe.
The new arrival of Nagamese brought cleavage among Naga community, but good or bad it is unwanted necessity, they say.
Go back to your village, and you will find no youth to greet you or do errand. Their age is not appropriate to live in the village, they have to go because the village school failed to absorb them. School-returned adolescents on long vacations quickly formed work gangs.
Their parents were the envies for those families with no such young members.
Now, life is all about money, but without work. High-rising buildings, costly cars and all conceivable luxuries have blinded the sense of age-old values. Silent grievances are now finding their way of escaping because that is how it should be.
The time has come to tell we are no more a silent people.
Dr. K. Nishena Nekha