Dr. Vike Thonghu and his wife, Puii, invited me to tour the market in Kohima, Nagaland, one day around lunchtime. I think if I could just stroll through the Kohima market at about noon each day of my life, I would be able to save lots of money otherwise spent for lunches. Puii reminded me that the people of Nagaland were historically regarded as great hunters. That fact was underscored immediately as I spotted a variety of monkeys offered there for butchering and cooking. Just a few yards away were squirrels hanging by their hind legs, and below them were ordinary small birds for the choosing.
On the market table to my left were deer quartered but with the hair and hides still on. Then I saw what I didn’t necessarily want to see: short-haired, tan dogs split open from their nostrils to their tails, cleaned and ready for sale. But the kiosk getting the most attention was where two older women were working on a very large black bear behind their sales table. They had just severed the massive forearm from the rest of the huge body and were kneeling on the ground skinning out the bear’s body with careful precision so as to perfectly preserve the hide, which would be sold separately.
Having spent a considerable amount of time in Asia, I realized what a prized possession the women had brought to market. Bear meat was valuable and, except for being a bit greasy, was similar to pork. But the value of the bear was really in the bones and organs, as well as the paws, claws, and skull. The Asians respect the medicinal value of spare bear parts, much as they desire the horns of the deer family.
Dr. Thongu and his dignified, gracious wife, Puii, had invited me to stay in their lovely home in Kohima while I was in Nagaland, one of the seven sister states of northeast India. Snuggled up against old Burma (present-day Myanmar) on the lower slopes of rugged, towering mountains, Nagaland, along with Mizoram and Manipur, is separated from the main body of India by Bangladesh to the west. Nagaland is a place of spectacular beauty and mystique.
At dinner the previous night, an intriguing discussion had precipitated the invitation to the market so that I could view the diversity of items offered there. The exotic dinner entrées had included pig and goat (I think) for meat dishes and lovely presentations of squash, rice, potatoes, and vegetables. But there was one side dish that in the ambiance of lantern light, I presumed was ivory-colored pasta mixed with young bamboo sprouts.
“Puii,” I inquired, “please tell me about this delicious pasta dish. I can’t seem to identify the unusual taste.”
Dr. Thongu answered, “You are here in Kohima at exactly the right time, Dr. Jackson. Only once a year do we have this opportunity, and it’s very expensive. We honor you as our guest, for this is the most desired dish of our culture. This is black wasp larva in varying stages of development.”
With a closer look, I could see that indeed the whole bowl was full of nice, big, plump worms nesting in the tender bamboo sprouts.
For the remainder of that memorable evening, I could hear this admonition ringing in my ears: “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
I wasn’t the only person around that table who was exploring, dreaming, and discovering. I found the doctor and his wife to be two of the most dedicated and creative people I had ever met. Mother Teresa was thought to have said, “If you can’t do great things, do small things with great love. If you can’t do them with great love do them with little love. If you can’t do them with little love, do them anyway.”
Dr. Vike Thongu and Puii were doing great things . . . with great love!
Dr. Thongu’s hospital was located on a steep, narrow street in the heart of the busy city of Kohima. Painted across the front of the building were the following signs: CT Scan Service, Ultrasound Machine Diagnosis, Pharmacy, and Endoscope Surgery. Puii and Dr. Thongu were running the most technologically advanced hospital in the whole northeast section of India. Their story of insight, discipline, hard work, and entrepreneurial risk taking was unparalleled. Dr. Thongu was a gifted surgeon who performed every kind of surgery imaginable, from orthopedics to skin grafting to delicate brain surgery.
The couple had begun with only a dream and a small clinic and pharmacy. They set aside 10 percent of all their pharmaceutical products for charity and performed at least 10 percent of all medical procedures free of charge for those who couldn’t pay. They also saved another 10 percent and purchased a piece of property so they could build a forty-bed hospital that would operate on a cash basis. Their discipline and hard work paid off handsomely.
They knew that if they could offer technologically advanced medical services, they could capture the medical market. They wouldn’t even take needed medicine for their own children out of the pharmacy unless they paid full price. They had no money to buy beds or other furniture for the hospital, so they constructed their own beds and sewed their own mattresses and sheets. When the hospital opened, they needed divider partitions between the beds, so Puii took the drapes out of their own house and sewed them into usable panels.
Soon they outgrew their hospital, and with discipline and the money they had saved, they were able to purchase the adjacent property to build another forty-bed facility. To help pay for the new facility, they began to rent out rooms in their own house.
As an economist and businessman, I was in awe of the entrepreneurial example of this wonderfully dedicated Christian couple. Their eyes sparkled as they unfolded the story to me. They embodied the kind of people that iconic Apple commercial in the 1990s was talking about: “The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.”
Dr. Thongu and Puii had never acquired MBA degrees from Harvard or Yale, but they were outperforming classic business planners by leaps and bounds and making sure all the time that their charity work was never cut short. They told me that Project C.U.R.E. was the first organization from the outside to ever come and help them. I left with unbounded admiration and respect for the two of them. Their hard work, discipline, frugality, and absolute confidence and obedience certainly must make God smile everyday!
So “throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”