Book Review by Rashmi Narzary
Sahitya Akademi Awardee, Author, Independent Editor
…..I met a tattooed grandmother who drew me to her side and told me, ‘Take these (pointing to her tattooes), take them as far away as you can…
So recounts Anungla Zoe Longkumer in her introduction to the genre-defying book The Many That I am, edited by her. The grandmother poignantly remembers the thrill of her first tattoo as a young girl, but also speaks of how hurt she had been on the first day of her new school when the teacher points at her in front of everyone for having a ‘dirty face’. Sirawon Tulisen Khating, in her story “Retold by Grandma – Yarla’s Tattoos”, says, ‘As a visual artist, this story opens a door in understanding the vast history of how design plays such an important role in creating identity.’ She adds, ‘Everyone was allowed to have tattoos, except the alars (slaves, in Ao Naga dialect)’. Yet, Khating herself did not have any, because by then, her parents had converted to Christianity.
The Many That I Am is an alluring collage of diverse emotions and events that have flowed through the Nagas from the ancient past to the present times. Fluidly moving across generations of age, education, belief and modernity, the pulse of the book is set amid the hills, forests and mountain streams of beautiful Nagaland and the many myths and much lore, as well as the many, many untold tales of war, invasion and rebellion that lie hidden in them.
Unconventional and passionately assorted, the book wraps within its pages a blend of short stories, personal essays, artwork, sketches, performance poems and translated verses of folksongs from different sub-tribes of the Nagas (Konyak, Sumi and Chang Naga) – which is why the book may at best be referred to as genre-defying. All of these creative works are presented by Naga women, some debutantes, some established, and some award winning and acclaimed authors like Temsula Ao and Easterine Kire. Like most other tribes of India’s north-east, Naga history and heritage too fall back upon verbal narration, from time immemorial. Documenting such folklore often leads to reimagining and retelling of what had originally been handed down through generations. The stories in this collection are therefore an honest effort by Naga women to reclaim and establish their identity, searching the meanings of the original tales and their acceptance even back then, as now too. Every tale, told either through words or through visuals, is a sensitive glimpse into Naga society, past and present, and have helped build bridges and connect the displaced and uprooted Naga women with their roots and their past. Young Naga women have endeavored to assimilate the myths, traditions and faith which the older generations had preserved and held sacred, while the present generation questioned, doubted and tried to find out how relevant these are in the present.
For instance, in her story “Outbooks”, Narola Changkija remembers how, as a Naga girl growing up in the nineteen eighties and nineties, she wanted as many ‘outbooks’ as she could get her hands on. But her mother had made it clear that there were only two kinds of books; the Bible and school textbooks. All other books were ‘outbooks’ and were not really approved of. But Changkija thought her father approved. ‘How could he not’, she writes, ‘when they brought him glimpses of the world he lived in, with all its lurid and beautiful contradictions’. Because, as Vishu Rita Krocha comments in “Cutoff” ‘….by the late nineteen twenties, Christianity was gaining a stronghold in the land of the Nagas…. Along with Christianity came education’. The changes that were crawling into the Naga society are thus beautifully captured in these stories.
On the other hand, some stories fondly long to hold on to the past. In Emisenla Jamir’s “Storyteller”, old Otsula the talebearer says, ‘I want to leave behind the stories with someone who knows their value …. stories stay in your head and they also connect with your heart’.
Besides tales of head-hunting and tribe wars, the stories also touch upon insurgency and socio-political unrest in Nagaland, as in Temsula Ao’s “The Letter”, and graze past the poignancy of love and death as well. Consider Jungmayangla Longkumer’s “Old Man’s Story”, where she describes the sudden death of a master pot maker. So when her old husband bade his final goodbye to his beloved wife, he says in a few, unfrilled words in her eulogy, ‘Now you are one with the earth you so loved, so don’t look back, go, across the river, and we will meet again one day’.
Yet again, in Easterine Kire’s “Cherry Blossom in April”, on the other hand, she dwells upon the universality of love and feelings of the heart, between a Japanese soldier and a young Naga woman, without need to express these through a common spoken language.
The purpose of the moving, heartwarming stories in this collection is to look at Naga traditions and folk culture from new perspectives even as they search through the existence, trials and sacrifices that older Naga women have gone through, to give their daughters and granddaughters the rights and equality they themselves were denied.
The essence of these stories, and their need to be read, told and shared, lie in Narola Changkija’s 2018 poem “When I was a Girl”:
‘When I was a girl,
The world was mystery and locked doors,
The keys hung out of reach,
And in the quiet bedroom
The soft shadow of Abao (father, in Chanki dialect) curled around Alao (mother)
………..
So when I grew up
and unlocked the doors
to find the empty roads in myself,
the ones that you make, unbidden,
I knew that I knew nothing at all…….’
The Many That I Am is a gentle window into writings from Nagaland. Open it, the view will leave you mesmerised and yearning for more.