The Vacant Seat!

On a trip to Layshi-Naga township across the districts of Phek and Ukhrul inside Myanmar. It happened that, our transport which was a 5 seater 4x4 pick-up truck had only 3 occupants due to some last hour pull-outs by other adventurer friends. Starting-off at 7am from Kohima we reached Ngarii river in Senapati along the Tadubi-Ukhrul road in the late morning hours to take a shortcut to the Jessami-Ukhrul road. Being unfamiliar with this particular stretch of road we got confirmation from nearby residents on the pliability of the road (rural roads, especially shortcuts get damaged during the monsoons), before entering the wide boulder strewn river and got immediately confused by the multiple vehicle tracks on the wide riverbed serving as a seasonal road. With no mobile connectivity to assist us, we spent half an hour driving upstream looking out for farmers and hunters for assistance. Finally, to our relief we saw smoke in the far distance and drove towards it. There we came upon a truck offloading hunters, fishermen and farmers on the river bank. We informed them of where we were heading and got confirmation that we were on the right track. Their response made my friend Kevin turn towards me and shake my hand. He had been urging me to turn back arguing that it was not possible for the riverbed to be a road. It was at this river where our ‘vacant seat’ got it’s first occupant. As we exited the river and started the uphill climb. Two men lying by the roadside hurriedly got up and a middle -aged man approached us and started talking to us possibly in Poumai dialect. It happened that his companion a partially blind youth needed a ride to the Ukhrul side. Not wanting to make him wait for another vehicle or let him sit on the back of the pick-up truck, we rearranged our things and took him inside, while his bag joined our dusty stuff in the back. He said his goodbyes to his guide and we started off on the 2 hours journey with our partially blind passenger. It happened that he wasn’t Poumai but belonged to the Tangkhul community and our car was soon filled up with our conversations made possible since he could speak Nagamese. At one point I asked him if he was a former UG and he responded humourously saying he was visually impaired from birth and wouldn’t have been able to serve in the underground even if he had wanted. He enlightened us on the demography and statistics of the villages along the way and made the dusty and very bumpy journey informative. Enlightening us about the various village and regional student conferences we came upon. Catholic institutions and buildings are very easy to be identified for their peculiar architecture and taste of particular colours. When we came upon one, I shared my surprise finding it there and informed him that I belonged to the denomination. He responded that he too was a Catholic. Our journey with him ended at Zingchui and as we got down to stretch and have tea at a roadside shop. He walked over to us and said, ‘Bishi thanks Hoishe’, ‘Moikimandibo?’ offering us payment for the ride. We said ‘ekubinahoi, na lobo, apnarbalthakibi’. He thanked us once again and our visually impaired friend, who occupied ‘the vacant seat’ , walked away slowly and carefully! It was around 5pm and the three of us were passing through a village in Burma, when a smiling young woman by the road-side with a child on her back and a sack besides her waved at us. We came to a halt and she approached our window. She begun talking to us and though we couldn’t understand her, it was clear that she wished for a lift to a village in the direction we were headed. My friend Ache Mero decided to vacate his seat in the front for her. He alighted and put her sack (probably holding her travel belongings into the back of the Pick-up truck), directed her into the passenger seat besides me, closed her door and got into the back seat to join the “always Dozing Kevin”. Smiles, gestures and struggling to understand each other ensued. We gathered that this young mother was asking us if we were Tangkhuls. We answered ‘Nagaland, India’ and added ‘Nagamese, English’. She asked Manipuri? To which we shook our heads. She mentioned Kohima and Dimapur and we nodded our heads. She then spoke the only nagamese words she uttered.. It was “Nagamesenajane!” I pointed at myself and my friends a couple of times and repeated our names. Then at her in order to get hers. It didn’t work! Sometime into the night she pointed at the tail-lights of a vehicle in the distance and said ‘Layshi’. She must have asked for a lift from it prior to us, but the occupants probably had no more space for her, her child or her sack. She then kept us occupied by pointing at dim solar powered lights in the distance and telling the names of each village in an apparent effort to be a good host to us visitors from outside. I thought of trying to get to know what tribe she was but decided against it. For unlike Nagas of India, “tribe” is something which is not of much importance to them. Soon we had journeyed for more than an hour and her infant showed signs of agitation. Likely due to tiredness, hunger or the need to pee and poop. I spoke to my friends that if it turned out to be the last, we were in for something because it was obvious the child wouldn’t be wearing a disposable diaper. Though none of us spoke of it, our transport was already filled with the distinct smell of sparingly washed cloths from the moment they got seated in the vehicle. Ache and myself gestured that she should shift her child from her back to her frontside and she did. She seemed hesitant to breastfeed her child in the lighted confine of the car, so I reached up and put off the interior lights and it solved the problem. A few minutes later we decided to take a breather and brought our vehicle to a stop in pitch black surroundings. Putting back-on the interior lights I gestured to our passenger that we were going to answer nature’s call. I pointed at her and then at her door gesturing if she wished to exit. She shook her head! Another hour of driving brought us to a completely dark village. She tapped on the dashboard signalling for me to stop and we were finally at her village. Kids and adults curiously exited their homes. Ache Mero (who is always a gentleman, anytime, anyplace and with everyone) alighted, opened her door, guided them down, removed her sack from the back and then placed it by the roadside. She must have felt like a princess. People were talking to her and it sounded like questions! Our young mother of about 16-17 years then proceeded to say “THANK YOU” once again to each one of us in the sweetest and most perfect pronunciation. A word she had said to us even during the journey. We would all be in our own thoughts when she would turn towards us, smile and say thank you. We all agreed that her ‘thank you’ was too good for a young Naga girl inside Myanmar, where it’s citizens are not taught English by the Myanmarese government in its schools. We waved our bye-bye’s and I floored it for we had drove slowly for a little more than 2 hours on account of having her and her infant in ‘the vacant seat’ of our vehicle. Two days later, on our return journey to India, we had a missionary woman from Nagaland who serves our Lord Jesus in Myanmar on-board headed for Dimapur, along with another local Naga till the last border village on the Burmese side. Pregnant, living away from her husband and children, yet with an amazing sense of humour and energy in her! Together we created a record of sorts even after a couple of leisurely stops. The longest stops being at Challowriver to have our packed lunch and answer nature’s call. She being a frequent traveller between Myanmar and Nagaland choose for us an excellent seasonal road enabling us to reached Kohima from Layshi in under 10 hours! Along the journey, our car was filled most of the time with her laughter at the verbal exchanges between me and my friend Kevin in our stubborn ups-manship on various topics. Soon we appeared at a border crossing manned by the Indian army. The personals recognised her and said.. ‘Madam this time you are coming from different vehicle’. To which she replied lightheartedly, ‘yes special private vehicle, not taxi, this time’. Moving off from there and somewhere along the banks of the Challow river, she ended her conversation with her husband at the other end of the mobile and told us that he was astonished (probably worried too) of our pace when she informed him of our location. She shared with us of her previous journeys involving hitch-hiking (hiring a personal vehicle is a luxury and expensive affair) which sometimes took 3 days to reach Nagaland. If people who have been to Layshi do some maths, they will agree that reaching Kohima in about 10 hours from Layshi town in Myanmar in a four wheeler is notable. It was comforting to travel the last part of our fast paced journey with a servant of God occupying the ‘vacant seat’ traversing through isolated roads, where villages, vehicles and people would be encountered only after hours! A journey made possible despite the fact that authorities in the Assam Rifles refused me permission to enter through their border crossings for the third consecutive time! “Where there is a will there is a way” and I believe me and my friend Kevin Yepthomi could possibly be the only Nagas of Nagaland till date from the non-eastern Nagaland tribes to have rode our motorcycles and driven our vehicle into the ‘Naga Self-Administered Zone of Myanmar’ on separate occasions. Looking forward to peace and stability in Naga-Land so that all Nagas can travel both ways without being barred by the Assam Rifles one day, not too far from now. A journey of hundreds of kilometres through sparsely and thinly populated mountains where you could get stuck for weeks waiting for spares to arrive in case of a mechanical breakdown and held-up the whole day before a vehicle appears. A journey fit only for the Adventurous. A journey where “a vacant seat” will never go to waste!

Peter Rutsa