We live in a small state, called Mizoram in the north eastern corner of India. It was the British missionaries who came here, stayed with us and gave us the message of Jesus Christ in the later part of the 19th century. Today we are mostly Christians. We live upon the hills which used be to be called the Lushai hills with beautiful nature. The British missionaries had left us a very long time ago. But I have a wonderful story to tell about my grandmother and how she came to fill my childhood days. My grandmother, Pi Thanhliri was blind for many years. As far as I can remember, she could not see, though I know she once did. She saw my face when I was very small. But most of my childhood memories of her are memories of guiding her down the walking path.
She spent most of her time in the house, and I spent a lot of my childhood close to her. I would sit on her lap and she used to tell me stories. I used to guide her around our colony and sometimes take her to church. What is interesting about her was that even though she could not see the world any more, she carried a whole world within her, she had a wonderful experience. She told me stories — Mizo folk stories and stories from her own life. I listened to them without knowing that many years later, one of those stories would return to us in a very real way.
One of the stories she often told me was from her teenage years. This would have been some time in the 1940s and 50’s. Like many young Mizo girls of that time, she worked as a caretaker in the house of British missionaries. Missionaries lived among the people and they needed local help in their homes. My grandmother was one of those young girls.
She used to tell me about the family she worked for. The missionary couple were Reverend Basil Jones and his wife Margaret Jones. Among the Mizo people, Basil Jones was known as Pu Zawna, and Margaret Jones was called Pi Zawni. In keeping with Mizo custom, their children were also given Mizo names. Gareth was called Zoduha, meaning “Beloved of Mizoram.” Peter was known as Zochhuana, “Pride of Mizoram,” and their youngest daughter, Elaine, was called Lalpari, “Flower of the Lord.”
What makes this detail especially meaningful is that these names are not preserved only in my grandmother’s memory. They have been
written down by Margaret Jones herself in her autobiography, It Came to Pass. The very names my grandmother repeated to me as a child appear in print in that book. Mrs. Jones also mentioned my grandmother by name and how well she used to take care of her Elaine.
My grandmother helped look after the children during the day. She remembered them clearly, even decades later. One incident she often repeated was about a bull fight that took place nearby. One of the children, Zoduha, was dangerously close to the bull. Without thinking twice, she ran and pulled him away just in time. She would tell this story and I would listen to her with amazement. It sounded heroic.
At that time, these stories felt very distant, like belonging to another world, a world of British India, missionaries and a teenage girl who lived a life completely different from the person I know today as my grandmother.
Our locality is called Mission Vengthlang which used to be part of Mission Veng. The name itself comes from the missionaries. Welsh missionaries from Great Britain lived there, built their homes and quarters and became part of everyday life. Mission Veng exists because of that history.
What made this connection even more special was grandmother’s marriage. The same missionary in whose house she had worked later solemnized her marriage in 1953 to my grandfather, Pu RL Kawnga, who was a soldier in the Assam Rifles Regiment of the Indian army. For our family, this is still a meaningful fact, that my grandparents’ marriage was solemnized by the very missionary who had come to Mizoram to preach the Gospel. It tied faith, family, and our history together in a very personal way.
All these stories stayed with me as stories — until 2006.
In 2006, something remarkable happened. After nearly fifty years, Pi Zawni and her three children returned to Mizoram to visit the church and the people they had once lived among. Pu Zawna had already passed away, but the rest of the family came back.
They were warmly received by the church elders and by the people of our locality. Our family had the privilege of welcoming them into our home. By then, my grandmother was completely blind, but she was happy to hear their voices and receive their gifts. She was deeply happy, happier than I had seen her for a long time.
I was in Class 10 at the time, still a teenager. Our entire family gathered to meet them. We called them Sap, as was customary. In that moment, I became the translator, translating their English into Mizo for my grandmother, and my grandmother’s Mizo words back into English for them.
What amazed me most was that they remembered her. The children, now grown adults, remembered the young girl who had once cared for them. They brought gifts for her. They spoke her name. In that moment, the stories I had heard on her lap as a child came alive. What I had thought were distant memories suddenly became true and so real.
It was not just a reunion of people. It was a reunion of memory and history. A story that began in the 1940s returned in 2006, inside our home.
My grandmother’s life was not recorded in books, but it lives in stories — stories of care, faith, courage and connections. Through her, I learned that history is not found in dates and documents only. Sometimes, history sits quietly in a room, a child sitting on his grandmother’s lap waiting for her to remember.
Beyond her stories and memories, my grandmother herself became a source of inspiration for me. Even after she lost her sight completely, she never lost her spirit. She was a deeply devout woman. Prayer shaped her days and sustained her life. She prayed for her family constantly, and even in her blindness, she never complained. Instead, she always thanked God. Gratitude came naturally to her. Whatever happened in her life, she received it with thanksgiving.
Being with her was never heavy or sad. In fact, she was full of energy. She would tell me story after story, moving easily from folk tales to memories, from laughter to reflection. I often read for her from books about World Wars, history, and many other things. I read the Bible to her as well. In doing so, I slowly grew up to appreciate my own language and understanding of it. In a way, I became her eyes — and she became my teacher. She passed away in 2011 always to live in our memories.
Today, when I look back, I realise that her stories were not only about the past. They were lessons in how to live. Through her life — her faith, her gratitude, her endurance and her joy, she handed something down to me that no book could have taught. And in carrying her stories forward, I feel that I am still walking beside her, just as I did when I guided her down the hill steps so many years ago.
