Alice Yhoshü
The expression “as quiet as a Sunday morning” could not have described the early hours of the 16th of February 2025 better. On this particular Sunday morning, when many people were off to attend the Sunday mass or the Sunday Church service or just preparing to have a restful day, a seemingly backwater event was unfolding gently in the serene village of Punglwa, under Nagaland’s Peren district.
A father breathed his last; a grandfather, brother, uncle, nephew, friend and an old comrade no more. There was no coverage in the local news; no condolence messages from high places published in the media. It was a quietly conducted funeral in a rural setting, with no hype or fanfare, yet mourned by a huge crowd from different sections of society with profuse outpouring of personal tributes, feelings and affection for his geniality and affable nature; for who he was.
Shürhovi Haralu died eight days after his 79th birthday on this day. So, who was he? He was mostly known as a retired Wing Commander of the Indian Air Force, one of few among Nagas. Born to educationist-turned politician Razousilie Haralu and Vitsisoü Iralu in Kigwema village in 1946, Shürhovi, as per his family members’ accounts, did his formal schooling from Kohima Middle English School (now Dr. Neilhouzhü Kire Higher Secondary School).
He was an alumnus of Sainik School Purulia (West Bengal) and the National Defence Academy (NDA). After passing out from NDA in 1970, he pursued a career in the Indian Air Force (IAF) and joined the Air Force Administrative College in Coimbatore (Tamil Nadu) in 1971. He was commissioned into the IAF’s Logistics Branch in 1972. Over the next 25 years, Shürhovi had served in various Air Force units, including the Air HQ in New Delhi and the Maintenance Command in Nagpur (Maharashtra). He retired from service in 1997 following a distinguished career.
By Sunday afternoon, his countryside residence in Punglwa was teeming with hundreds of mourners paying their last respects. His warm-heartedness, prompt and spontaneous acts of generosity, his positive courage and undaunted attitude to challenges, and great-hearted activities all around him throughout his life – as a person, and during his student, training, service and posting days were mentioned over and over by the eulogists during the two-hour-long funeral service.
His colleagues and friends from the Indian Army and the IAF, the Old Boys Association of Sainik Schools (OBASS), ex-servicemen groups, the Rajya Sainik Board Nagaland etc. remembered him as an all-round sportsman, never boasting of his achievements but someone with a heart of bonhomie and camaraderie ever effusing out of his life. The General Officer Commanding 3 Corps, Lt. Gen. Abhijit S Pendharkar who came to pay tribute on behalf of his father, a former colleague of late Shürhovi – said his father would always speak highly of ‘his gentleman friend from Nagaland (Shürhovi)’, and would tell him to look his friend up if he ever got posted to Nagaland.
It is the social convention to say good things to honour the deceased but in the case of uncle Shürhovi, the spontaneous expressions made by almost a dozen eulogists far exceed what one would normally expect. The heartfelt validity with which they spoke of how he had touched their lives, for example, how he gave away his land for a community welfare project, how he protected and guided his juniors in the academy by building their confidence to face institutional challenges and then ultimately life, how he tackled problems with a resilient track-and-field attitude, these are telling of a man who had lived with a principle.
He might have been somebody who did not like limelight, but he deserves to be in one, at least for once.
If the answer is indeed blowing in the wind, here is one such – a silent example of a modest model of life, unpretentious and unassuming.
~ Alice Yhoshü