sOME tributes are harder to write for it cannot be contained by putting words together and that is how impossible it is, to compose one for the indelible Tapan!
He was more than a friend to the Nagas.
He was more than a solidarity.
He was a solace. He took our story and struggle like his own.
And when we were awed by his incredible capacity to bond and share our indignation against injustice, we realized his zeal and love for the forgotten and the persecuted was the same.
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He showed no partiality in pursuing a just cause. He pursued relentlessly.
He followed up with the Naga leaders and people in the Naga Hills, in Bangkok, in Delhi- both in health and in sickness.
He stood with the people uninterrupted by changing political weather.
His love was unpretentious-just like his words, his works, and his politics.
Tapan was not only a conduit for human sufferings to human stories. He was more. He was love of a kind! He traveled with an oxygen concentrator a few times to the Naga hills. His health was at risk. His love took the risk.
He was brave in life and a rebel in death. Few times, he defied possible death situation and grim medical prognosis. We were made to think that he would never come out of the ICU again during Covid, given his already damaged lung condition. He came out like a betrayal to death which was looming over him like he was pining away.
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Every time we met him his body was slowly waning but his vision, expanding.
He longed to travel to the Naga Hills again. He longed for a Naga meal again.
He remembered the Naga elders and even in the distance he still had his way of holding them in his life.
In his living he weaved relationships across nationalities.
In his leaving he left a map for us all to follow and reimagine South Asia- through our shared stories, struggles and vision.
That is where he will meet us time and again.
Tungshang Ningreichon is a mother of three. She is based in Delhi and writes occasionally on issues close to her heart.
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