The Naga #MeToo Moment – A Review of Love. Lust. And Loyalty

 

Author: Yuimi Vashum

Publisher: Penthrill Publication House

Year of publication: 2018

Pages/ Price: 105/ 299/-

It is quite unusual to start a book review on an apologetic note, but I want to put on record that this is a long pending one. But I write this not so much to please the author and publisher, but to bring to fore the subject child sexual abuse, or sexual exploitation in general, which the book so powerfully articulates, and it has too long been silenced in the Naga society, as also in many societies across the world. It was only at a recent launch of the book, The Marys of the Bible: The Original #MeToo Movement by Boaz Johnson cum a panel discussion on sexual exploitation, in Delhi that I got prompted to the immediacy of talking about the subject. The Marys of the Bible argues that the Bible started the #MeToo movement because it does not hide the sexual abuses in the historical/biblical times, and that in fact, Jesus came to redeem the broken people and the world we live in.

The book's title Love. Lust. And Loyalty sums up pretty much what most poets write about. Those three words are what most people juggle with in relationships. But what more appealing to me of this book of poetry is the section on “Forgiveness” that didn't find its way to the title. Divided into two parts, the first section on “Forgiveness” deals with the struggles of the poet in coming to terms with the memory of the menacing past of being sexually abused. The second section on “Love. Lust. And Loyalty” shades light on the poet's encounters of love, heartbreaks and all that most lovers sing of! However, what captivates me is not just that it upsets the usual style of poetry by having the title at the end but also the brutally honest experiences of what poet as a young girl goes through.

Telling one's life story is not an easy task, especially when that part of life is a traumatic one. Yet, narrating them can be a therapeutic experience, as psychologists/psychiatrists would say. In a “bare it all” way, Yuimi confronted the demons that haunted her since the time she was “seven years old”. “It all started with Robinhood / A tiny illustrated book he brought with him that summer” she recounted in the poem “waves of abuse”. As excited as a seven years old would be to be read bedtime stories, she fell into the bait, easily becoming his victim - “He fucked me over and over again / Until he finished the book”. She tells of how for years she would still “have my haunted dark days” and even driven to the brink of life wishing to “jump of a tall building” or “throw myself at a running train” (“childhood to adulthood”). Her pain was even made worse when the society wouldn't come to defend the defenseless - “And parents, aunties, uncles, sirs, madam, / All of them lecturing Your virginity is your virtue / Do they know? Do they think about girls like me?” (“the problem with virtues”).

But the true strength of the poet lies in the fact that she was able to “brave the demons” - “I gave my nightmares a closure fifteen years later; / For my freedom, / From the fear, the beast(s) and society” (“waves of abuse”). The sarcasm on the society's indifference is subtle here. And yet, greater still is the poet's ability to forgive the perpetrators/demons - “Because, Forgiveness, / It liberates you” (“let go and let God”). I think this is the highest virtue one can hope for from victims of abuse of any kind. This is true Christ-likeness. And the largely Christian communities like the Nagas need to take this as a way forward to find healing from the wounds of the past.

Love. Lust. And Loyalty is a daring book of poetry that is utterly honest on the part of the young poet to pour out the trauma of sexual abuse she experienced as a child. It is universally accepted that many children suffer sexual abuse but remained silent because of fear or are usually silenced by elders in the family and the society. Recognizing the need to deal with this issue, the United Nations declared 19th November as the World Day for the Prevention of Child Abuse, and 20th November as the International Day for the Rights of the Child. Yet, despite these recognitions many cases go unreported or many children still suffer abuse because they are not aware of their rights, or are silenced, and many people live in denial.

By telling her own story, Yuimi Vashum does not simply fascinates in poetic experiences, but she does set an agenda that the wave of abuses would be confronted:

Today, as I sit here and write this,

Recalling feelings I never wanted to;

I weep for the little children (like me) who suffered,

Alone.

I hope they get to read this,

and in their lowest moments,

I hope they remember-

We moved past the abuse;

We can move past anything.

(“childhood to adulthood”).

I hope Love. Lust. And Loyalty would not just be another book of poetry that is shelved in your collection and forgotten after a while, but that it would spark off the #MeToo movement in the Naga society or the society you find yourself fitted to. Silence make the victims suffer over and over again, and the demons grow bigger and fiercer. Let's stand for those who have been wronged, especially the little ones!

Published on 18 June, 2019, Morung Express

https://morungexpress.com/the-naga-metoo-moment-a-review-of-love-lust-and-loyalty/

Second Edition of Literary Cultures of India's Northeast

Of Love and Loss – A review of A Respectable Woman

Author: Easterine Kire

Publisher: Zubaan

Year/pages: 2019/184

The opening line of the new novel by Easterine Kire, A Respectable Woman, resonates with the popular passage of Ecclesiastes chapter 3 where the wise king Solomon articulates that there is a time for everything and a season for every activity under heaven. In verse 7 of the passage we read of “a time to be silent and a time to speak.”The narrator and protagonist of the novel, Kevinuo, says, “It took my mother, Khunuo, exactly forty-five years before she could bring herself to talk about the war.” The statement indicates a period of silence on the subject. And interestingly, silence is not about forgetting but a process of letting matter, the trauma or tragedy in this case, sink in until one can be strong again to talk about it. Most cultures, in a sense, share this truth.

A Respectable Woman (ARW henceforth) is woven around the story of a mother telling her experiences of growing up at a defining moment of Kohima and people who lived through the Second World War. Divided into three parts, the novel chronicles the memories of the mother and traces the family relations in Part One. Part Two begins with the birth of the protagonist-narrator and her growing up “to witness different happenings, some of them good, some much worse…” Part Three is largely a continuation of the narratives from the previous one but focused on personal battles the protagonist had to confront mainly with the tragic death of her closest friend, Beinuo, due to abuse by her husband and taking custody of the orphaned girl. While the plot of the novel is centred on the stories of Kevi and her mother, it is interwoven with the memories of the grandmother and other elders of the community about certain aspects of the past, and in this case the times around the war.

Memory of the period is important because it was a time of tremendous changes, not just for people living in and around Kohima, the centre of the action, but also for the Nagas as a whole as there was a paradigm shift in the political and social dynamics. So significant is the war in the novel that there is repeated use of the phrase “before the war” to demarcate a historical timeline. Just like different seasons mark the timeline of the year, “the war” became an important historical reference point for the Nagas. Though the war was not of their making, the Nagas were caught in the war and were forced into bear the brunt of it. In the recent times there has been few works by Nagas narrating their accounts of the war. Notable ones include The Battle of Kohima (2007) by Mekhrie Khate, Aphriilie Iralu, et al. (Eds.), The Road to Kohima: The Naga Experience of the 2nd World War (2017) by Charles Chasie and Harry Fecitt, and Easterine Kire’s bestselling semi-fictional novel titled Mari (2010). These narratives help us assess the impact of the war on the Nagas. The brutality of the battle of Kohima led the military historian Robert Lyman to remark that the war fought in the Naga Hills was “[t]he most desperate and bloody struggle in the entire war in the south Asian land mass” (Japan’s Last Bid for Victory: The Invasion of India 1944 (2011), p. 215). The centrality of the war is also depicted in the novel wherein Amo, the narrator’s maternal uncle, became a war hero after he survived the Japanese bullets, but couldn’t live long for the same reason.

ARW holds an important place in this regard as it documents a lot of what has been side-lined in the current discourses of the Nagas. In an interesting way, the book even becomes a historical source of Kohima’s past because it mentions of when and who set up the first book shop, the first pharmacy, and the famed Kohima Bakery, among others. Also, by mentioning many of the first among Nagas in various fields, Easterine Kire makes a conscious attempt to credit those who contributed to the building of the society, especially in the formative period. As one reads the novel, one gets a feeling that Kohima becomes a character in the novel with all its liveliness, be it bearing the brunt of the war destructions or the makeover it got after it or the restructuring of the township in the 50s and 60s. Certainly, there is a sense nostalgia in the author’s tone as she recounts a lot of what was a part of her growing up years in Kohima. Written in the first person narrative, the autobiographical mode of writing gives a perfect blend of facts and fiction. Though Kevi may not be Easterine in to-to, the reader can nevertheless draw the semblance in various aspects. But in the fine hand of the master-artiste-novelist, the line is nevertheless drawn clearly.

There are also other issues of the society that the author tries to address through the novel. Alcoholism, which had become a byword of the largely frustrated young Nagas, remains an issue which both the church and the state have not contained till today. While critiquing the state for treating alcoholism as a mere crime of the few misfits, the novel also unveils the fact that there is a huge contribution of the “political environment” and the harsh governmental actions on the public which contributed to the social problem. Added to the whole challenging situation is the lackadaisical approach of the church as well as the society. What should bother the reader is the silence of larger society in the issue of alcoholism and its related issue of domestic violence. The twin belong to some of those devils that the Nagas still count ignorable but has eaten into the marrows of the society. The narrator’s shock at learning about his best friend’s marital woes at a much later stage is something to be grasped.

ARW is a book that gives a critical insight into some of the challenges confronting the Naga society today. And in the hand of a commendable writer and ‘insider’ like Easterine Kire the stories she construct powerfully captivates the readers with her own style of narration which is deeply rooted to the storytelling tradition of the Nagas. Even in this novel, her effort to reconstruct the memory of the past is in true spirit of the Naga oral culture wherein there is a conscious passing down of stories of the people to the younger generation. Though the mother finds telling some of her life stories hurting at times she felt the importance of telling about the family because those are the legacies that should be passed on. Every generation’s experience is unique and telling them can be a learning experience for the next generation. As a foremost writer among Nagas there are so much that the younger generation of storytellers can find inspiration in Easterine Kire. Besides the national and international recognitions, the award just endowed on her, The Gordon Graham Prize for Naga Literature, is truly a recognition of her contribution to literary wealth of the Nagas.

Published in Morung Express on 9th April, 2019

http://morungexpress.com/of-love-and-loss-a-review-of-a-respectable-woman/