The Himalayan Arc

by Namita Gokhale

  ‘To pass her time, she decided to start weaving again – something she excelled at as a human being. So she set off to collect the tools that she would need – a loom and a seat. She would also need threads to weave. Once she was done collecting these items, she began looking for the perfect place to set up her loom.

  ‘Her search ended in a valley between the mountains of Lurh and Tan. She set up her loom here, surrounded by the trees and animals she created. But there was one problem – the loom was too tall so she had some trouble stringing the thread to it. Seeing their queen’s struggle, the swallows and martins offered their help.

  ‘They took the threads in their beaks and flew around the loom to string the weave as Chawngtinleri sat down to weave. Every day when she begins setting up her loom, the birds would fly over from their trees and help her out. They say that even today, Chawngtinleri still weaves at the same spot between the twin peaks with her loyal birds by her side.’

  ‘That will be such a breathtaking sight,’ Pari remarked, ‘I think I’ll try to do a painting of that scene later.’

  ‘That’s a great idea, Pari. I’d love to see it once you’re finished,’ her aunt responded.

  ‘Nu, do you think people really saw Chawngtinleri weaving between those mountains?’

  ‘Maybe they did… Maybe that’s why we have the story today.’

  By now, Mawii’s eyelids were growing heavier. She was trying to suppress a yawn, which her mother caught sight of.

  ‘Sleepy?’

  ‘A bit but can we just have one more story? I promise I’ll go to sleep right after.’

  Sangi paused and thought for a while.

  ‘When you were small, I had to make up all these stories about Mualzavata‘s wife Ramfangzauvi? Do you remember her?’

  ‘Not so much any more. Who was she?’

  ‘Ramfangzauvi was a giantess. Her husband was a giant named Mualzavata.

  ‘She could clear 90 ranges of land in a single day. There’s a cave called Pukzing Cave, which was believed to have been created by Mualzavata using only his hairpin.

  ‘The stories normally only describe the couple as humans of supernatural strength but I think you’d have to be a giant to cover all those hill ranges in a day. Even if you had the strength and energy to clear them, you’d still have to reach them fast enough to finish the job in one day.’ She was about to go on, when she noticed Mawii in deep sleep. She could finally stop.

  Sangi looked at her daughter sleeping peacefully. She treasured nights like these when she could go back to the nights when her own mother narrated stories of their ancestors. Where had all the time gone? Soon she was asleep too.

  The house was quiet except for the occasional snore and the chirping of crickets in the garden. The only one who was still awake was Pari. She was still thinking of the stories – what would she do if she had been in Sichangneii’s place?

  What if the spirits lived in a different realm and humans couldn’t see them?

  All these questions made her breathless. So she sat up and opened the window for some fresh air. As she laid her head against the window frame watching the ink black sky, something caught her eye near the banyan tree opposite their house.

  She could only make out its shadowy outline but it looked like a woman with a huge pair of wings. The figure was bent down as if it was picking up something off the ground. Pari observed it for a few minutes and finally decided that it must have been a tree or a twisted bamboo pole because it seemed to be inanimate.

  Just then, the figure rose and spread its wings. In one swift and graceful move, it headed for the skies with what looked to be a bundle of vegetables swinging from her arms.

  Pari squinted to get a closer look and gasped in disbelief. Could it be…?

  POETRY FROM INDIA’S NORTH-EAST

  INTRODUCTION

  Aruni Kashyap

  No cluster of poems can be said to be representative of a region with literary cultures as diverse as India’s north-east. These are mostly poems I have returned to many times because I love them, and that has been the basis of my selection. However, in these seven poems, there are some common themes – we see a strong awareness of community, of the land and its culture and history. This is a feature that sets apart primarily the English poetry of this region from the rest of India.

  Nitoo Das’s poem ‘Jokhini’ depicts one of the most common folk ghosts in Assam : the female ghost, who lives in trees and laughs. There are other lores associated with the jokhini: she cooks her head on a human skull at the end of the day and before evenings begin, she preys on young handsome men. But this tendency to tap into the collective knowledge of a community and excavate its memory and beliefs is characteristic of most poems from the North-east.

  Lutfa Hanum Selima Begum is one of the most widely read poets in Assam. Her work is full of dense symbols and images that are deeply connected to the Assamese cultural universe she often draws from. Her poem ‘No One Is Able to Look at Anyone’ is a penetrating look at the aftermath of long-term violence that the Assamese society and the generation that was born in the 1980s have faced since insurgency changed lives forever – to the extent that it impossible to not read the consequences of violence in the poetry written since then. The pervading sense of sorrow in the poem where even ‘The empty / Creels dig into the chests of fishermen and weep’ and ‘The hens and ducks have abandoned the eggs they were sitting’, reflects the stasis, the loss of innocence as a result of mindless violence.

  Uddipana Goswami, who belongs to the next generation of poets after Begum, has a much more ambivalent response to the violence in the state. While Begum responds with sorrow, regret, loss and lament, Goswami responds with humour. The narrator of the poem recollects in a matter-of-fact manner that ‘they’ have their favourite bombing spots, but mentions in parenthesis that one shouldn’t ask who these people are – it seems no one is sure who is perpetuating the violence. At a certain point in the poem, the narrator makes fun of the bomb blast by comparing it to a fart and also mocks the low-intensity bomb blast. For people who have not lived in the North-east, this seemingly tongue-in-cheek response to violence is confusing but for anyone living in these states, this poem represents a slice of everyday conversation. In fact, when fewer people die during a bomb blast, the survivors often make fun of the insurgent organization. This is not because the people are used to the violence but because it is the only way one can cope with it. In many ways, the poem is the textual equivalent of the veneer on the helpless situation in the state.

  The strongest and angriest critique of the culture of violence in the North-east, however, comes from two Manipuri poets: Akhu Chingangbam and Robin Ngangom. Chingangbam’s ‘Your Constitution Has Nothing for Me’ is a strong rejection of the Indian rule of law that has failed to protect the rights of its citizens in these areas – the main reason behind the numerous insurgencies in the region. It is a lyric, put to music by Imphal Talkies, a popular music band from the North-east. The lyrics continue to haunt you long after the song stops playing. It talks about lost fathers and blood-soaked playgrounds, about lullabies replaced by the sound of gunshots, and serves as a strong indictment of the violence in the region.

  On the other hand, Ngangom’s ‘Native Land’ reminds us of a different kind of helplessness than Goswami’s poem. Ngangom’s poem is introspective and is more about the inability to find a solution to the terror in his homeland. Through a series of powerful visceral images of ‘abandoned children inside blazing huts’ and ‘women heavy with seed, /their soft bodies mown down/ like grain stalk during their lyric harvests’, it surgically tears open the public narrative. The poet is stoic. He doesn’t ‘care any more’ and ‘continue[s] to live as if nothing happened’, but the reader is no more able to live as if nothing happened, driven towards a calm intellectual protest.

  The lyricism in the poems of Desmond Kharmawphlang and Sameer Tanti may belie the contemporary realities of the North-east, but I love them because they remind us
of a time when violence didn’t dominate society. They also suggest the diversity of themes that poets from this region explore and the multiple literary traditions that make up what is erroneously called ‘literature from India’s north-east’. Due to this categorization, writers are often pressured by publishing cultures and readers to write ‘the North-east poem’. The poems by Kharmawphlang and Tanti resist as well as meet these expectations and this ambivalence makes them richer and fuller. After all, why should poets from the North-east write only the kind of poems expected of them?

  ON A MOONLIT NIGHT, I’VE SEEN YOU WALK

  Sameer Tanti

  Translated from the Assamese by Dibyajyoti Sarma

  On a moonlit night, I’ve seen you walk

  Towards the olive grove.

  Ah, my heart hurts!

  Explosives destroy your golden country.

  In the fountain’s water-mirror, like the old days,

  You no longer can see your face;

  The charm of your face, the face of your earth.

  Is there blood on your face?

  Oh, Federico, Federico, they have murdered you.

  I have heard how the women of Andalucía wailed in sorrow.

  The stars gazed at your face all night.

  You did not open your eyes to see how

  God had covered His face in shame.

  Federico, Federico, who will today play that tune in piano?

  The sun too reads your poems. While walking by the factory

  The morning said.

  The workers too had heard your voice.

  My artist friends will draw a picture with your words;

  You had said – we’ll have to defeat the eternal silence of death.

  Federico, Federico, they have murdered you.

  Civil guard, civil guard.

  Even here is that ice-cold fear.

  They will sever the tongue if you speak about water, soil and men.

  Oh, my landscape painting, my fruit orchard, the magic of my ballads with women and children.

  Federico, Federico, ah, my heart hurts!

  JOKHINI

  Nitoo Das

  I love this tree.

  Do you know the tree outside Dutta da’s house,

  the one just across the garden?

  It’s a nice tree, a flowering tree.

  Throughout the year, tiny white flowers bloom all over the body of the tree.

  It’s a shame I can’t remember

  the name of the tree.

  I might have known it once, but not any longer.

  I love sitting on this particular branch. It curves so beautifully and fits me so well. When I sit here with my legs swinging in the air, one-two-one-two, I can see right into Dutta da’s bedroom. I watch him sleep every night. I can follow his dreams as he tosses and turns on the bed that belonged to his grandmother. Sometimes he wakes up, gets out of bed and looks out of the window. I almost feel his eyes on me. Does he know that I am here? Does he know that I watch him night after night, waiting for him to come out, waiting for him to touch my tree, waiting for him to touch me? But no, he doesn’t see me.

  He only sees me in his dreams: sees

  my eyes as sharp as curses, sees my hair that burns

  in the wind, sees me naked.

  Sometimes, I get bored. I sing, I talk to myself, I play with my hair. The day irritates me and I try to escape between the leaves and the white flowers. When the night arrives with its harsh whisper of consent, I feel better. I have taken to laughing a lot. Everything amuses me: the insects that I catch and tear apart, the children on their way home after play, Mrinal mauling his little cousin’s fresh breasts. Everything amuses me. With his inked fingers, his pyjamas and his sad-dog eyes, even Dutta da seems funny.

  And I can’t stop laughing.

  I laugh because I have nothing else to do.

  My laugh becomes one

  with the wind

  and the pollen

  and the cries of the children.

  I know I can wait forever, but it’s tiring. When will the pig come out and piss on my tree? When, when? I want to go and pull him out of the window. I want to scratch him in anger. But I can’t. It’s not allowed to me. My feet will always walk away from me. Away. In the other direction.

  My feet, my feet.

  My poor, poor feet.

  I seem to remember a time when I had feet. Real feet and not the ones that I have now. Always turned away from me, annoyed with me. However, I cannot be very sure. I am never very sure of most things. So, I moan and scream and shake the tree until the white flowers fall like dust to the ground.

  The white flowers fall

  like dust to the ground.

  NO ONE IS ABLE TO LOOK AT ANYONE

  Lutfa Hanum Selima Begum

  Translated from the Assamese by Aruni Kashyap

  No one is able to glance at anyone’s face, eyes.

  Everyone is weeping from inside. No one can hear that

  And the people walk through me in a silent procession.

  I haven’t latched the doors at night. In every courtyard

  The gates are left open. The women are milking cows.

  Their tumblers overflow with sorrows. My heart isn’t overflowing

  With love.

  The fallen leaves don’t want to travel with the wind.

  The raw fruits fall down on the ground from the trees.

  Petals fall from unbloomed flowers. The

  Bees forget to build their combs.

  Even I have forgotten myself.

  The women rinse their hearts at the ghat. The empty

  Creels dig into the chests of fishermen and weep.

  The fish aren’t here to swallow the baits on the hooks.

  The cows and bulls haven’t returned to the sheds. The calves

  Haven’t returned to the udders of the milch cows.

  No one has returned for anyone.

  Even the spiders haven’t preyed on the insects caught on their webs.

  The hens and ducks have abandoned the eggs they were sitting.

  The winds have blown away the roofs of the houses. The houses

  Tremble. My heart trembles too.

  The postman has delivered letters inside envelopes that have no addresses.

  No one has been able to get anyone’s news.

  Even I haven’t heard from him.

  The men are threshing the paddy on courtyards.

  No tears from the straw.

  The oil lamps under the tulsi plants extinguish. It is not dark.

  There is

  No darkness. Maybe he would return today.

  LAUGHING, BOMBING

  Uddipana Goswami

  They have their favourite bombing spots

  (Now don’t ask me who they are –

  Some say the insurgents

  Some say anti-insurgents

  Doesn’t matter who does it

  Bombs are bombs

  They make a lot of noise when they explode.)

  There’s that spot under the Ganeshguri flyover

  Where grenades are thrown

  By motorcycle-borne ‘militants’

  Almost every other day.

  One policeman, and two civilians die:

  Low-intensity bombing, not too many casualties.

  Then there is AT Road

  Nice spot to kill and maim

  A few businessmen, some labourers

  And a handful of livelihoods.

  ‘Economy is the backbone of a nation.’

  (Don’t confuse me by asking which nation!

  My nation is not yours.)

  And finally there is Bamunimaidam

  Guwahati–21, where my parents live

  And every time a bomb goes off there

  A joke follows.

  The first time a blast occurred

  I called home after prime-time news on TV

  (Note: A Guwahati blast making it to prime time

  On national television – mus
t have been big!

  AT Road is not usually overlooked –

  ‘Mainstream’ people die here.

  But Ganeshguri and Bamunimaidam

  Are on news tickers at the bottom of the screen)

  My mother said, ‘What?! That was a bomb?

  We thought somebody’s tyre burst.’

  My father was home and brother out of town

  So we all had a good laugh, ha ha!

  When my brother came back he called me

  To say: ‘Five-and-a-half people died’

  – Meaning five killed, one injured.

  I was home the second time it happened

  And saw the nostalgia in Ma when she said,

  ‘We used to cry in the ’80s when we heard about

  People being killed, or our boys being tortured.’

  So were those not violent times, Ma?

  Why then did we black out our houses every evening

  And had stones pelted on our windows

  When you lit a lamp to read the thermometer

  When I was ill?

  Why were we huddled in a corner

  Of our classroom, and there was so much shouting outside?

  If that was non-violence, why did we fear?

  And if violence made us cry then, why do we laugh now?

  Did they laugh when we died, and we learnt from them?

  Is laughing the only way to live with bombs?

  Talukdar da from the corner shop sure laughed

  When the second bomb went off.

  ‘They are losing their touch,’ he said.

  ‘Too little damage’: only one and a half –

  That is to say, three injured.

  ‘You call that a bomb? Dhop! Bas!’

  Mantu the black-ticket seller at Anuradha cinema

  Had passed by the spot barely five minutes before the explosion

  And yet he laughed, and we all laughed.

  When the first bomb exploded in Guwahati