(Speech of Monalisa Changkija during A Kevichusa Citizenship Award and Chalie Kevichusa Essay Award on December 20)
Greetings
In all honesty, I cannot claim to have known Chalie Kevichusa well therefore it was with great trepidation I accepted Mimi’s invite to speak this evening because to say no to the occasion of his remembrance would be saying no to his life and the legacies he bequeathed to us. So, here I am with the hope that I can share the little that I knew of Chalie Kevichusa.
To explain my association with Chalie, I have to go back to 1985, when I started writing for Nagaland Times. After I was hired as a Cub Reporter, I persuaded my then Editor Late TP Bhatta to allow me a column. Soon I wrote two columns for Nagaland Times ~ on youth and on women. I then realized that neither the youth nor women live in bubbles in society and State. It is also injustice to them to deny their integral existence and struggle for survival in society and State. So, I persuaded my Editor once again to allow me to write one comprehensive column, consequently my column titled “The State of Affairs”. If I remember correctly, I also wrote another column for Nagaland Times titled “Of Roses and Thorns” but it is possible that was another column I wrote for Ura Mail. Memory fails me and I make no apologies for that.
Now, I knew that my column was (dare I say?) widely read because of the feedback I received but I didn’t know that Chalie Kevichusa also read my column. That’s how I also started writing a column for Ura Mail titled “Of Scents, Sights and Sounds”. You see, there is an unwritten norm, convention and code of ethics that no Journalist will write for two papers at the same time in the same town. Indubitably, Chalie was very well aware of this unwritten “obstacle” but he sure went for what he wanted. Legend has it that he met my then Chief Editor, Late SK Dutta, popularly and fondly called Kalu-Da, and requested, perhaps even demanded, that I be allowed to write for Ura Mail too. Evidently, Kalu-Da relented to Chalie’s request, demand or persuasion. Chalie worked his magic and made history happen when he got one Journalist to write for two papers at the same time and in the same town ~ and this against the background of the fierce rivalry between the two Weeklies ~ but a rivalry without any vindictiveness.
All this while, I had no idea of the “wheeling and dealing”, so to speak, between Chalie and Kalu-Da. One fine day, I was informed to write a column for Ura Mail and that’s how my association with Chalie began. Editors have no time to chit-chat with rookies so only once in a while I would meet Chalie when I went to submit my column for the week. When I did meet him, ever so briefly, I could feel his eyes peering into my soul and I would make a hasty retreat. You see, he was up there and I was way down below so obviously I was nervous and acted like all kinds of fools in his presence. There is no word to describe the impression he made on me as a person and a Journalist but it endured.
We lost him too early. Nagaland’s media fraternity, not least I, could and would have learnt so much from him. Our loss is irreparable, so is our society and State’s ~ and so much more his dear and near ones’. The irony is: the moment an assassin pulls the trigger, he writes the name of the assassinated in bold letters in the book of history. And so to remind ourselves Chalie lives:
Not Be Dead
If tomorrow
my body
is riddled
with bullets,
I shall not be dead.
Nor will I
be defeated and silenced.
The event
would only mean
the capitulation
of those who
cannot think
beyond the AK-47.
The event
would only mean
the recognition
of the impact
of my words
over those who elect.
Unlike them who
pull the trigger
I am not
for hire,
all my words
are for free.
So, if tomorrow
my body
is riddled
with bullets,
I shall not
be dead.
Nor defeated
or silenced.
(This poem was written and published in “Ura Mail” in July 1992. Because of various reasons, I had the Journalist community of Nagaland in mind while penning the above. On September 23, 1992, Chalie Kevichusa, Editor of “Ura Mail’ fell prey to assassins’ bullets. I dedicated this poem to his memory)
I don’t know how to convey what I feel about Chalie so however imperfect and however irrelevant, please allow me Beethovan’s 7th:
Beethovan’s 7th
These are bad times, sad times, mad times,
as they were since the birth of Time,
as is their wont.
Thrust on its path, we are pebbles,
hurtling up, down, sideways
in all directions
almost sleep-walking
landing in places unimagined, unimaginable
sometimes soft, sometimes hard,
most times unwelcome, unconquerable.
Yet, music is made.
Though incomprehensible to us
all movements have cadence, meanings, messages,
as embossed on Beethovan’s 7th Symphony.
(Written on July 15, 2022)
Chalie, and indeed a lot of us older ones, lived in a bizarre world at a bizarre time when violence was the lingua franca of those who claimed to represent and speak for us. It was a time we knew the odds were heavily staked against us but we actually lived:
Actually lived
I will regale you with stories of yore.
of battles we fought and won,
wars we waged and lost.
I will regale you with narratives of love and hate,
of guts and gallantry,
the standards we held dear.
I will regale you with legends,
of principles and philosophies,
of possibilities and promises.
I will tell you of the myths we burst,
erasing the lines between truth and lies,
but lost the war on trickeries and treacheries
But don’t ask me the reasons why,
That was a time we did and died.
That was the time we actually lived.
(February 20, 2018)