NYUKUNG SINGS A LULLABY
KEEPU T.LEPCHA, 79 Social activist, LEPCHA COTTAGE
“I AM RAISING MY FAMILY AND I WILL NOT BOW DOWN TO OTHERS TO RUN IT. IF YOU WANT TO HELP, GOOD...BUT DO IT BECAUSE YOU ARE REALLY CONCERNED”
Lepcha Cottage was started in 1989 with 20 children at Keepu Tshering Lepcha’s six-room house in Chanmari, a few kilometres away from Gangtok in Sikkim. Over the years, the number grew. Now the cottage houses 55 children from the Lepcha tribe. Even though a majority are orphans, Keepu is particular about not using the term for her children. “How can you call them orphans when we are here for them?” she asks. And true to her words, Keepu is their “nyukung (grandma)”. Two-year-old Lee Nor is sleepy and she can’t go to sleep unless nyukung tells her a bed-time story. If it is snack time, the children will settle down with their bowls of savoury and tumblers of tea with nyukung reminding them to say their prayers and thank god for everything. The children and the other inmates of the cottage speak the local Lepcha dialect, even though they also learn Hindi and English. Learning their language is a must, says Keepu, for it essential to save the vanishing tribes of the Lepcha and their culture and traditions.
Initially, when she started, Keepu, an ex-bureaucrat, would spend her entire salary on the children. “Now
I draw a pension of Rs
40,000 and there are well-wishers, which is of big help,” she says. Keepu is finicky about taking assistance, from the state or from private sources.
“We don’t want assistance with strings attached. Our freedom is too precious to us,” she says. But the Union ministry for tribal affairs has pitched in because the cottage is part of an outreach for bringing up children of impoverished tribes. The cottage also has a provision now where people can adopt a child by paying a monthly sum of Rs 2,000. The Padma Shri awardee has built a school-cum-hostel with the help of a Swiss company to help educate the children of Lepcha Cottage and the neighbourhood. The Human Development Foundation of Sikkim was started in 1997. Today, it has 370 day scholars and 125 boarders, mostly from poor families. Education and lodging are free and unconditional love is in abundance as bonus. ■