Zomi Fellowship Calcutta 1988

My Calcutta Diary (1987-88) or ‘The year my son had his first Michael Jackson shoes’

After a stint of 2 years in what then was termed as a remote area posting place in Tujang Waichong Primary Health Centre under Senapati District in Manipur, I came to Calcutta for a course of Post Graduate Diploma in Public Health at All India Institute of Hygiene and Public Health (AIIH&PH). The last two years had been perhaps the most remarkable years in my government service as I had gone there with an attitude of ‘being sent there by God’. When my transfer order to go there came up a second term - the first one was canceled with interventions some good friends who had made a plea to concerned authorities that I be sent to another place – Parbung CHC – another difficult area but still within the district I resided. I knew forces beyond my power to resist were at work – from both the state and up above. My choice is to take it as yet another ’punishment posting’ or I could take it as from the Lord Himself and resigned to the fact that ‘God wants me there for some reason’ and like Jonah of the Old Testament, I had better obeyed it. So we prayed as a family and then I went off leaving behind my wife and my children in Lamka. ‘Saying that God was so real to me and was with me there in all circumstances’ could best sum up my experiences there for the whole period of my posting there.   At the end of 2 years I had asked God for one of any 3 options to be allowed by those in authority: (1) an opening in a mission field for me and my family to join, (2) a post graduate diploma course in Public health and (3) a posting near to my home. With God answering my prayer with the second option, I landed in Kolkata or what was then Calcutta and Chittaranjan Avenue became my abode for the next one year. 

The first thing I looked for was a Church I could go to on Sundays. Carey Baptist Church in BB Ganguli Street was nearby and so I became a regular churchgoer there making new friends as well as taking my friends to join the 8 o’clock Sunday morning service. These friends were people like PKD Lee, Joyce Angami, John Koh, Priyokumar, etc.

Second thing I tried to do was to maintain my regular morning quiet time and my Saturday evening fasting prayers in a room that I shared with two other senior doctors from CHS who were doing the same course with me. It was not difficult to maintain the morning devotions but the Saturday evening fasting prayer – even though – silent and quiet from my side needed the unasked for cooperation from my room mates. Thank God they were so condescending in accommodating the ‘queer’ me!

As I said I met many friends in the Church and one of them was Mr. PKD Lee, General Manager of Calcutta Mint. He offered me 2 things – one to join an extension theological course he is a part of and the other is to be a member of Gideon International of the Calcutta chapter. I joined the second and had wonderful experiences of placing and distributing Gideon Bibles in many hotels and schools and being part of its Friday Bible Study and Fellowship at a hotel in Park Street. I learnt much from my fellow Gideons. We also found out that we both were alumni of Haggai Institute (HI), Singapore. Later he resigned from a very senior position in the Government of India (he was then in the rank of Joint Secretary) and became a full time National and Regional Leader for HI International and me as Secretary of HI Alumni Manipur, together we conducted a number of HI Leadership Seminars in Manipur.

     

Another persons who became good friends in the Church were the family of John Koh (I hope I have his second name right). They were Chinese Calcuttan family who went to Africa as volunteers of a ‘missions’ agency but had to come back as John had a slip disk. They resettled in the city joining the family in the shoe manufacturing industry and were working in their small outlet in New Market. I became a frequent visitor to the New Market outlet and there we spent many happy evenings sharing our journey of faith in trying circumstances and encouraging each other and some times sharing delicious dishes of ‘beef guts’ prepared in the Chinese style! Could you believe my son Mung had his tiny pair of  ‘Michael Jackson Shoes’ during Christmas specially ‘made’ for him by Uncle John’s factory in Calcutta!

I came upon another most endearing and enduring friend in a strange sort of unexpected ways. One day my brother in law (Momoi) and his friends landed up in my hostel. They were supposed to go to Madras to be part of YWAM but they could not proceed further as their friends who were supposed to meet them and take them to Madras had already left and so they were stuck in the city. I made frantic phone calls and finally got the telephone number of Rev. Vijayan Pavamani of Calcutta Samaritans. He was running several projects one of which was Arunoday Midway Home in Narendrapur.  We admitted Momoi and his friend David there with me as their local guardian and later becoming an honorary counselor there for those who come from my state. Since then Rev Pavamani and I became comrade in arms in working among drug addicts and on issues of HIV/AIDS.  Since then 44 Ripon Street has become a place where I can go anytime with a sense of belongingness.

I must also make a passing mention of Rev Buntain of the AG Church in the city whom I came to know through mutual friends in the Gideons. We had some brief meetings only but I was enriched by his life and his love for the people of Calcutta. He death was one of the most peaceful departures – it was said he refused life supports and bid farewell to his family and friends by saying ‘I am going home’ and the next moment, off he went to glory, just like that! I attended his funeral and gave my respects to a great friend of the Calcuttans. Let me drop another name here – Mother Teresa whom I never had the opportunity to meet personally. I had made plans to see her works and visit her headquarter in Lower Circular Road but to my bitter regrets to this day, I never made it there or saw her in person!

There are folks from home working in the city. Mr. Khaikhanthang (Thangpi) Hangzo, Mr. Thiauzakhup Hangzo, Doupi Thomte, Thangzamuan Hauzel and some others to whose homes I was a regular visitor especially on Sunday afternoons sharing delicious homely foods cooked by their wives.  Two of them were my old school classmates in Mission Compound, Old Churachandpur in Manipur. We talked of home and also of starting a regular worship/fellowship someday in the city. In God’s timing and with their initiative, it finally saw the light of the day and the 25^th year or Silver Jubilee Zomi Christian Fellowship, Kolkata will be celebrated tomorrow, the 2st December, 2012.

Another event I will always fondly remember was the day I decided to distribute Gideons Bible to all my fellow hostellers in AIIH&PH. I had spent a great deal of prayers for this occasion and when the day came I went from room to room and to each person I presented a Gideons Bible.  It might have looked a little odd to many – but everyone received it graciously and thankfully. The last person to whom I gave a set of choice selection was the Warden who happened to be a Professor of Occupational Medicine. Till I completed the course, I remained scared that I might not do well in my exams in the subject and that he might mock me by attributing my poor performance to my co-curricular activities! With God’s help, I did well in my exams eventually!

One clarity I got was about whether I should leave my ‘secular’ job and join missions full time and if so when.  I asked some more mature Christian leaders I met there in the city why in spite of desire to join missions, there seemed to be no opening for me in missions while my wife and I made several enquiries to agencies like IEM, BMMF. The advice I got was – keep on giving to God as much as time you have (outside your office working hours) and when He wants more from you then He will call you out to where your office working hours will then be in ‘missions’. That settled my mind and I continued in my government job till the day I was literally invited, in 1994, to join a mission agency full time by the then Executive Secretary of Emmanuel Hospital Association (EHA), Mr. Lalchuangliana (an IAS Officer who left his government job to lead the organization) and Dr Peter Deutschmann, a Surgeon turned Public Health specialist missionary from Australia.               

In the later part of 1988 when I returned home, my wife met me at the airport with a surprise – an appointment order as District Immunization Officer in Churachandpur district – in my own hometown – a position to which I am not quite entitled in my seniority but I had the chance to chosen with my new DPH degree. (How true are the verses  ‘seek ye first the kingdom of God and all these things will be added unto you’). In the next few years, I was given an additional responsibility to look after HIV/AIDS in the district under the Epidemiological Unit of State Medical Directorate. Some years later, HIV/AIDS provided an entry point for me to be missions and it became a part of my life since then till this day!

I would not write here about my years in Tujang Waichong PHC prior to coming for my DPH course. Nor would I also write some memorable events during this time itself such as the crowded buses where I was robbed of my purse while I was on my way to do small shopping or times when I got robbed while helping out a drug user to safely return to his home in Lamka! Life always had its challenges!

Langkham 30/12/2012 at 7:35 AM (written on the eve of 25^th Anniversary ZCF Kolkata and of course the Eve of World AIDS Day)