Colonel Paishola Keishing was born in March, 1936 in Bungpa Khunou village of Manipur’s Ukhrul district. She is the youngest among ten children born to K Singuleng, a farmer and Ringaila, a housewife.

Six of her elder brothers died of cholera during the turmoil that hit the hills of Manipur in the time of the First World War and the Kuki operations that followed soon after. Paishola’s siblings who were born after the war were the illustrious Shiningla, a social worker and educationist who founded the Tiny Tots Unique School, her brother Prongo and sister Khanangla.

As her parents were comparatively well-off, though not in the conventional terms of money and riches but in terms of enough paddy to bring them food and clothes for the year, Paishola and her siblings had a relatively comfortable childhood.

Paishola had her early schooling at the Ukhrul High School, where “Dada Rishang” (veteran politician Rishang Keishing) taught. She studied there till Class VIII. After that she shifted to Mokokchung in Nagaland where her brother Prongo had become the principal of a school. She thus completed her high school from there.

Paishola came back to Imphal with the intention of enrolling at a college. However the rampant eve-teasing at that time proved to be a distressing factor for the shy girl from the hills. “It used to be so bad. The boys would sneak up and slap us on the back and run away. Even when we are seated in a rickshaw. And they would smile unabashed when we scold them also,” she recalls.

Unable to cope with this situation in Imphal, she opted to enrol for a nursing course instead under the advice of her sisters. Thus she was admitted for a three-year course at the Burrouis Memorial Christian Hospital at Baskandi in Assam.

There she learnt the skills of caring and healing under the able guidance of Chief Medical Officer Dr. QW Kenoyer from USA and Superintendent of Nurses, Carol R Bentz. After completing the course in 1957, she studied midwifery for a year at the same institute and came back to Imphal.

Shortly afterwards she also received training as health visitor and maternity supervisor from Lady Reading Health School, Delhi in 1961 and instructions in family planning from the DG Health Services, Delhi in 1962.

In 1963-64, Paishola along with another girl from Manipur were selected to join the Indian Military Nursing Service. “I was asked only two questions. The first was why I wanted to join. I said that these were people away from their home, and they need the same care and love as at home.

The other question was what injection I would give under a given situation. I said I will give the injection then and there according to the condition. I was immediately selected.”

Paishola’s first posting was in Kolkata where she served for three years. In the next thirty years that she served in the army, she was posted in different places such as Almora, Kashmir, Julundhur, Mumbai, Ambala, Shillong and Dehradun. “It was a good experience for me that I saw all the places, and met people from various places,” she said with a smile at the recollections of all those friends she had met and all those patients that she had cared for.

One experience that she recalls with awe and a shudder is that of a woman who was burnt by her in-laws for dowry. “She was burnt from head to toe beyond recognition. How could such inhumanity stem between human beings?” she said.

For Paishola, the love in her heart is beyond human definition, making her decide never to marry and instead put all her love and time into the care of her patients. After thirty long years of caring for thousands of people from all walks of life and across community divides, she retired from service in 1993. Since then she has been dividing her time between working for the Church and her pet dogs.

The once soft hands that cared for a thousand woes of her patients is now wrinkled and gnarled with age and the chills of winter, yet the undivided compassion in her eyes and ready smile evoke in return feelings of trust and the knowledge that you are in safe hands.

And the bony hands that stroke her pet dog and keep a tight rein on him so as not to harm her visitors is evidence of the care and love she bestows on humanity