I am John S. Shilshi. I was born in the midst of nature in a remote village of Manipur in India’s Northeast. By ethnicity, I am a Lamkang Naga —a community with a rich culture and strong community bonding, a people who love to sing, joke, laugh, feast, and make merry. My childhood was deeply connected to nature, with green forests all around me —forests that were sources for every need: food, materials for building houses, space for agricultural activities, hunting, fishing, and even faith.
I was not born a Christian but a native, with no structured system of worship. Gods and goddesses of a hill, a river, or nature as a whole were the assumed Almighty to whom we bowed. My late father, therefore, was a pagan priest —a 'Thiimpu' in my Lamkang language —before my family embraced Christianity.
I am one of those fortunate persons who studied in a missionary-run school, St Joseph's School in Sugnu, which was tragically consumed by violence in 2023 and now remains only in ashes. Destiny led me to serve the government as a public servant —a police officer —whose job entailed handling the violent conflict my birthplace was experiencing, apart from routine police duties. In the process, I witnessed how people —the poor and those at the lowest rungs of the social strata —suffered at the hands of those opposed to government policies, as well as due to systemic faults and unfriendly legislation. Nothing moves me more deeply than the suffering I witnessed at close quarters as security personnel. My books reflect these sentiments.
