Nagaland is on my heart and mind daily. We’ve just come back from two years in a place I learned to love – to a depth I’m still coming to grips with. But I also hated it more than any place I’ve ever been in my life. Both emotions were equally strong while we lived there – the love and hate. But now the love is surfacing even more, now that I’m free to breathe. Free to live. Free to drive. To eat whatever I want. To go wherever I want. To look however I want. To feed my kids whatever I want. 

But now, I’m realizing, I’ve returned with a broken heart. Nagaland got a grip on my heart, and then squeezed. I keep breathing the cold misty air wafting down from the Puliebadze mountain peak above through the gully that runs between Alder Retreat and the dirt road continuing on to Science College / Jotsoma area. The moon was beginning to rise and the chill cut through my jacket. And then while I watched our boys play on the meager, but much appreciated, climber and slide just below the retreat building, I heard the cry of a newborn baby. It came through the window opening (with no window) from a metal shed perched on the vertical mountainside across the stream. Homes like these are common, especially for the very poor migrant workers that come to Nagaland from other Indian States to make a living, toting their entire families along. They live practically anywhere. Corrugated metal sheds are the most common. This one was actually quite new and still shiny. But the stilt legs holding the backside of the home from plummeting down the mountain into the stream always seemed like toothpicks about to snap under the weight, or like they would just slide out of the loose soil, down down down.

One time in church, the prayer leader prayed for all the families across Kohima and Nagaland who were not able to sleep at night during a heavy week of monsoon season, since their homes were on the verge of collapsing down the mountain. They would spend the night checking the house supports. It was not uncommon to see walls, trees, dirt, and small buildings/sheds that had fallen into the highway. Landslides are a normal every-monsoon-occcurence. Even the main highway has landslides that have plagued portions of the road for years, and are still not fixed. They are called “sinking areas”. They just keep sliding. 

One night, I lay awake for some time trying to think how I would retrieve Laju from the bottom of the mountainside near our home if our road decided to give way completely. It was loose and I took progressive photos of the side of it continually dropping lower and lower. Rocks and dirt fell from above quite often. Anyhow, I couldn’t figure out how I’d contact the police or emergency services since there is no 911 or commonly known number. Once I saw a sign posted somewhere in town with the long Indian phone numbers for police services. But I didn’t get a chance to take a photo of it. So I determined that I’d find some rope in the piles of trash/construction materials leftover in the garages below our apartment and take whatever supplies from our apartment I could find in case he was hurt. I’d walk down the road past the landslide area, down the steep trail to the Adivasi family’s wood hut that had the goats. I’d go through their lower jungle area to reach Laju and the Bolero, and I’d rescue him, somehow. All of this with the boys in tow?? Otherwise I’d call my brother-in-law who would somehow arrange someone. But I know I wouldn’t have the patience to wait. I’d try it myself. 

Well, back to the baby’s cry. All I could imagine was a  young Indian girl in her colorful, thin sari bouncing her newborn in her arms while trying to cook dinner over an open fire, a lone lightbulb wired to the tin roof, with the chill blowing through her shed. I wanted to unload a truck of blankets and baby clothes into that shed right then and there. But I couldn’t.