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 Just like different seasons mark the timeline of the year, “the war” became an important historical reference point for the Nagas.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/ 

A Resilient Spirit: Remains of Spring - A Naga Village in the No Man’s Land

Author: Jibon Krishna Goswami

Translator: Manjeet Baruah (from Assamese)

Publisher: Oxford University PressPages: 238Price: 695/-

The Book Review, Vol. XLI, No. 3, March 2017, p. 74.

The idea of a novel based on a no man's land, a stretch of land between two nation states, can quickly draw the attention of the reader for it instantly hints at a possible political conflict situation. But Remains of Spring: A Naga Village in the No Man’s Land (2016) by Jibon Krishna Goswami is more than the story of a village caught in a war-like situation that prevails everyday. It powerfully portrays the hope of a people to rebuild their homes and their lives again despite several attempts by adversaries to destroy them. Translated from its Assamese title Aoleangar Jui (2007) to Remains of Spring by Manjeet Baruah, the novel questions the politics of space-making or cartography at large. Most of the action of the story is set in the village of Hoyat, the no man's land that lie between India and Burma (Myanmar).

The plot centers around Atanu, an Assamese “Teacher”, who was brought to the village by Anyam, a “spirited young man full of hope”, to start a school with the hope that someday their world would change “through the gift of education” (41). But while Atanu was looked upon as a harbinger of change by the villagers, it was also for him an escape from his dark past and the “burden of failure”. When offered to become a teacher in a village nestled in the hills, he “accepted the beckoning of life” and became “a traveller into the future” (39). The long journey through the rough terrains became a test for him and the in the end it was him who learned more about life, love and sacrifice from the people whom he had hoped to educate. Even the hope of setting a school was dashed as the Burmese army invaded the village and sets it on fire.The interesting narrative strategy is supplemented by some forceful stories of other characters that run parallel to the main plot. For instance, the pure love between the Laipa and Amung is symbolic of a sacrificial relationship and not so much a romantic one. Though they could not see the fruition of their love into marriage because of the brutal reality that Laipa had to undergo despite his innocence and which also eventually led his death, in their relationship the novelist projects the enduring love of Amung and pain that the people had to endure only because they belong in no man's land. In essence, the novel is the story of the people, their resilient spirit to rise again like the phoenix rising from the ashes. It was the fourth time, Anyam told Atanu, that the village had been burnt down completely, but the people do not give up: “Rebuilding their houses and their village was like a cycle” (93). 

The Assamese title Aoleangar Jui, derived from the Konyak Naga Spring festival, is more symbolic to the hope that people look forward to, just like spring rejuvenates nature and signals another cycle of life.However, one may wonder what is in the village that the people would go back to when everything is burnt down. It sounds even irrational. But therein lies a central theme of the novel: land as a symbol of identity. And this is pertinent to every Naga imagination. The attachment to land is time and again brought to the fore by Jibon Krishna Goswami. In fact, the theme that powerfully pulls people's attachment to the village is also woven together with the story of Naga national movement, the undercurrent motif. And Naga nationalism is largely hinged on their desire to free their land from foreign control. The novel finely connects the two themes through a man named Imli Apa. Except for the information that he was a retired intelligence officer in the Naga army, everything else about him is shrouded in mystery. Perhaps, that mystery is also important in the narrative because his story is also the story of the Naga movement. 

Each of the characters in the novel stood out powerfully on their own but the image of Imli Apa is an enduring one. The enigma that surrounds Imli Apa is phenomenal. He is like the backbone of the village, the one that unites the people. His farsightedness and wisdom weaves the story of the village together. Atanu could never fully understand the man that he had to conclude at the end in amazement: “when alive or even after death, Imli Apa was truly extraordinary, someone who was always capable of controlling the minds of other people” (229).When Atanu first met him, Imli Apa confronted him with a riddle: “Have you come here to be cut into two pieces?” What rattled Atanu's heart all the more was that the aged man “swung his dao cutting through the air” (77). The imagery of violence in that question was deeply disturbing to the young protagonist. While it took sometime for Atanu to realize that Imli Apa's question was rather a hint that living in no man's land was like being torn between two countries, he also understood the fact that life and death were nothing extraordinary to the people. Death has to be embraced as much as a birth is. Atanu learned this hard reality of life when he confronted those with severe illnesses and the desperation of a people who are denied modern medical facility. His close encounter with the sufferings of Tempu, the autistic brother of Laipa and with whom he also found some psychological semblance, utterly shocked him.Another interesting feature of the novel is the idea of freedom or independence. While it may seem contradictory that the people of Hoyat should go back to rebuild their homes and start their lives again from the scratch, the people see it otherwise: “If there's life, it is only in this No Man's Land. Beyond this, there's only death” (193). Such a projection is not just metaphoric but an assertion of their superiority over those who are under the rule of some undesired government. The reader, at this point, may also find the novelist Jibon Krishna Goswami an interesting personality. 

In the author's note, he mentions how the novel was partly his own experience of living in the No Man's Land in the 1990s “as a middle-ranking leader of an armed revolutionary organization of Assam that was fighting to free the state from India” (vii-viii). An interesting insight, perhaps, as an ex-revolutionary [of ULFA], though the story is not his story as “revolutionary” but of the people with whom he had some unforgettable experience.By telling the story of no man's land, the novelist an imaginary boundary line drawn by an external force can change the lives of people who have been living there for ages. The situation is even worsened by the factionalism in the Naga underground organization as the people are compelled to take sides without complete knowledge. Rather than liberating the people, they became suspects from all quarters. And I think this is where the novel strikes a universal theme; that often one becomes a victim of situation not created by the self. Towards that end, the translation by Manjeet Baruah was “to make it available in a language that is widely accessed by people interested in such themes” (xii-xiii). Of late, there also has emerged an interest on studying the Northeastern region of India as a borderland because of its topography. Hopefully this novel will contribute to the engagement of literatures that deal with narrative of space, borderland and frontier studies, as well as studies on resistance literature.