Miranda Watson
I first met Uncle during the preparations for the Naga Benefit Concert in Wellingborough Prison. People here who had met him just that once still remember him to this day. My mother always remembered his warmth. Throughout that time we were much in touch.
But in the intervening years we had had less contact so it meant so much to me that Uncle came to Yorkshire to attend my mother¹s funeral five years ago with beautiful Amongla Yabang. My mum was buried in a wicker coffin under a mature pine tree in a very beautiful Victorian cemetery. She was wrapped in a beautiful Angami shawl that she had loved and had been hanging on a wall of her house for years. Uncle helped to carry her coffin. I felt so honored. Uncle had also attended the bedside of a very dear Sri Lankan human rights campaigner, Tony Banda, days before he died.
But I had seen so little of Uncle, for which I am sorry, though we occasionally met at international solidarity events or spoke on the phone or sent Christmas cards... until this spring, when I visited Uncle in hospital. He was calm, comfortable and so incredibly well looked after in a lovely positive space... (Far too late! I had no idea he was so ill!)
At the time I wrote to a friend who has known Uncle since she was a child: “One beautiful warm and sunny Spring morning, my friend Hilary & I caught a bus past swathes of spring flowers on random patches of grass to Euston Road. And walked to the spanking glass wonder that is University College Hospital. A stunning light-filled clean modern space, with a large airy foyer like a minimalist boutique hotel. We caught a lift up to the Critical Care Unit Floor 3 and entered Uncle¹s ward. There our beautiful Uncle was, lying comfortably in a spacious clean and tranquil environment. Very peaceful and ordered. No sharp echoes, though every surface shone.
The kind nurses could only give out detailed reports to the relatives but I was so grateful that they were able to fill in a little at least of Uncle¹s condition. He was conscious and could possibly hear. It was hard to tell. His responses were quite minute. He was lying very still, with his eyes wide open, staring upwards but focused internally. Tubes from his nose were feeding him. His mouth was open, panting shallowly as the ventilator in his throat maintained his breathing. But the great news is that they were hoping to gradually wean him off this. He was thinner, of course. But looked so much (at peace? Out of pain?) Somehow you could see the child in him and at the same time his wisdom and dignity.
I don¹t know how to explain it. I was quite overwhelmed by the experience of being there. Uncle quietly holding on, the extreme gentleness and sensitivity of the staff, the state-of-the-art medical care it was such a relief. He could not possibly be in a better place.”
All I could do was to sit for a few moments beside him, kiss his face and tell him how much we loved him.
DW phoned from the hospital several days later in the early hours to say Uncle had died.
All I can write now is my own account of his funeral:
I felt so proud that whole day to have worn a beautiful Naga shawl over my shoulder, on the street, at bus stops and on the tube... on my journey from my home in North London to the Baptist church in the west of the city. On arrival finally at the church I saw Uncle¹s coffin was there in the hearse outside, attended by 5 dignified men. Unimaginable that there Uncle was with us in body but not with us in life. But there our Uncle was, in spirit. A young Naga artist was video filming on the steps outside. People were meanwhile filing into the church.
We all entered the chapel of this little modern Baptist Church, where it was obvious Uncle had been a much-loved member of the church family that he had never officially joined (the Reverend said during the ceremony that Uncle had always maintained his allegiance to his own first church in his village in Nagaland). So many members of that mixed ethnic congregation were there because they loved him; because he was their Uncle too. It was wonderful to discover this; how far Uncle’s loving spirit had extended to those around him in his immediate community. And I have never seen so many Nagas all together in one space, shawls and western dress intermingled. People had come from all over UK, Nagaland and India.
When Uncle’s ceremony began with the draping of the Nagaland flag over his coffin. I found this so unbearingly moving that my body started shaking. After this there were various speeches and short readings and then we all sang The Lord’s My Shepherd and more people spoke.
In one part of the ceremony when the congregation were invited to speak, a Brazilian woman from the congregation in front of me stood up to tell us with the most child-like purity what Uncle had meant to her and her family, newly-arrived in the UK. I sat behind her transfixed, wondering if I too (trembling) had to courage to speak next, to express my own personal love for him and what he had meant in my life. The moment passed. Others spoke. I passed in and out of it but when later someone quoted Uncle speaking of One who was a Tiger, suddenly Uncle’s recognizable spirit came right back into sharp focus again. This was Uncle when he spoke. He was there with us. The one thing Uncle had specifically said apropos his death was that his ashes should not be scattered in his homeland for as long as it was not free. This was our tiger-Uncle! He was so present amongst all of us whose lives had been influenced by his extraordinary hope and strength.
The family went next to a service at a nearby crematorium, before returning to the basement part of the church for a reception. There beautiful food was presented, various dishes of rice, vegetables, salads and meat. People were eating at the tables: Nagas and congregation.
Miranda Watson is from London, who knew Uncle Yongkong and the writer has requested The Morung Express to print her story “as this is not a political one but rather a friend’s account.
