The Himalayan Arc
Page 30
M.K. Binodini Devi (1922-2011) was a Manipuri novelist, short-story writer, dramatist, screenwriter, essayist, and lyricist. She was the youngest daughter of Maharaja Churachand Singh and Maharani Dhanamanjuri Devi of Manipur. L. Somi Roy is the founder and managing trustee of IMASI: The Maharaj Kumari Binodini Devi Foundation in Imphal, Manipur. He is a film and media curator based out of New York. He has taught at New York University and Manhattan Marymount College and has written on film and culture for The Smithsonian, Wide Angle, Artforum, International Documentary, the Black Film Bulletin of British Film Institute, and The Drama Review.
Janice Pariat is the author of Boats on Land: A Collection of Short Stories, Seahorse: A Novel and The Nine-Chambered Heart. She was given the Young Writer Award by the Sahitya Akademi and the Crossword Book Award for Fiction in 2013. In 2014, she was the Charles Wallace Creative Writing Fellow at the University of Kent, Canterbury.
Jacqueline Zote is a writer and an ardent fan of folk tales from around the world. She began writing short stories at the age of seven and continues to pursue her passion as a full-time content writer. She is currently working on a documentation of Mizo myths and legends.
Aruni Kashyap is an Assamese writer and translator. He is the author of the novel The House with a Thousand Stories (Viking, 2013). He has also translated from Assamese and introduced celebrated Indian writer Indira Goswami’s last work of fiction, The Bronze Sword of Thengphakhri Tehsildar (Zubaan Books, 2013). He is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Georgia, Athens.
Sameer Tanti, who published his first collection of poems Juddhabhumir Kabita (Poems of the Battlefield) in 1985, is a major voice in the canon of modern Assamese poetry. Tanti has twelve volumes of poetry, four collections of literary essays and two translated volumes to his credit. Dibyajyoti Sarma is a poet, translator and independent publisher based in Delhi.
Nitoo Das is a birder, caricaturist, and poet. Her poetry has been published in journals like Poetry International Web, Pratilipi, Muse India, Eclectica, Seven Sisters Post, North East Review, Four Quarters Magazine, Poetry with Prakriti and Vayavya. Das teaches literature at Indraprastha College for Women, University of Delhi.
Lutfa Hanum Salima Begum is a noted Assamese poet. She has published six collections of poetry. Her poems have been translated into many other languages. She received the Munin Borkotoky Award in 1996 for her second collection of poetry. She presently teaches Assamese literature at Cotton University, Guwahati, Assam.
Uddipana Goswami is a Fulbright Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania. Her other books include Green Tin Trunk (Authors Press, 2014), No Ghosts in This City (Zubaan, 2014), Conflict and Reconciliation: The Politics of Ethnicity in Assam (Routledge, 2014), and Where We Come From, Where We Go (Westland, 2015).
Desmond L. Kharmawphlang is a poet and folklorist. He has published collections of poetry and edited books of folklore of North-east India. Born, brought up and educated in Shillong, he is Professor and Head, Department of Cultural and Creative Studies, North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong.
Robin S. Ngangom is a bilingual poet and translator who writes in English and Manipuri. He has published three volumes of poetry and his works have appeared in The New Statesman, Kunapipi, Planet: The Welsh Internationalist, Verse, and The Literary Review.
Akhu Chingangbam is a singer/songwriter and poet from Imphal, Manipur. He also leads a folk rock band called Imphal Talkies. Akhu has a PhD in physics from Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi.
Dr Mohd Asaduddin is a Professor of English at Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. He has won several awards for literature and translation, including the Sahitya Akademi award in 2004.
Sanjoy Hazarika is Honorary Research Professor at CPR and holds the Dr. Saifuddin Kitchlew Chair at Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, where he also directs the Centre for North East Studies and Policy Research. He has been a member of various academic organizations and official committees. Hazarika has also worked as a newspaper correspondent, columnist, and documentary film-maker.
Andrew Selth is an Adjunct Associate Professor at the Griffith Asia Institute, Griffith University, and the Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs, Australian National University.
Tulsi Badrinath gave up a career in banking to focus on writing and dance. Her novels Meeting Lives and Man of a Thousand Chances were longlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize. Her other books include Master of Arts: A Life in Dance and Madras and Chennai and the Self. She has also edited Unity of Life and Other Essays by Chaturvedi Badrinath.
Salil Tripathi is a writer based in London. He chairs PEN International’s Writers in Prison Committee. His books include Offence: The Hindu Case (Seagull, 2009), The Colonel Who Would Not Repent (Aleph, 2014), and Detours: Songs of the Open Road (Tranquebar, 2016). He has reported from many countries including Myanmar and is a contributing editor at Mint and Caravan.
Ma Thida is a medical doctor, writer/editor, human-rights activist and former prisoner of conscience. She has won the Reebok Human Rights Award (1996), the PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award (1996), the Freedom of Speech Award (2011), and the Courageous Writer at Risk Award (2016). She was the first elected president of PEN Myanmar (2013–16) and was also elected as a board member of PEN International since October 2016.
David M. Malone’s misbegotten career has involved diplomacy; think-tank work; an early, disastrous engagement with the private sector; and belatedly, a sideline as a scholar. Today, he serves as a UN-wallah. He is the author/editor of fourteen books, including Does the Elephant Dance: Contemporary Indian Foreign Policy (OUP, 2011) and the Oxford Handbook of Indian Foreign Policy (OUP, 2015). Three more are on the way.
COPYRIGHT ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
All chapters have been reproduced with permission from the original publishers.
‘The Making of the Gorkha Empire’ by Amish Raj Mulmi
First published on The Record as ‘The Making of the Gorkha Empire: Part I – Land’. Available at http://www.recordnepal.com/wire/features/the-making-of-the-gorkha-empire-part-i-land-nepal-unification/
‘Operation Mustang’ by Thomas Bell
First published by Random House India in 2014 as Chapter 23 of Kathmandu by Thomas Bell.
‘The Quake’ by Sushma Joshi
First published on Setopati (http://archive.setopati.net/blog/13428/The-Quake/) on 25 April 2016.
‘Dharma in a Changing Landscape’ by Kanak Mani Dixit and Sudhindhra Sharma
First published in Himal Southasian magazine in November/December 1988
‘Meals in the Mountains’ by Pushpesh Pant
Parts of this essay have been excerpted from the Introduction to Buddhist Peace Recipes by Pushpesh Pant, Roli Books 2004
‘Gangkar Punsum: The World’s Highest Unclimbed Mountain’ by Tshering Tashi
First published on eglobaltravelmedia.com.au on 19 August 2013
‘Looking to the Future, Spanning 1,000 Years in a Lifetime’ by Sanjoy Hazarika
This essay is based on two articles that have previously appeared in Himal Southasian and the Assam Tribune
‘Downhill in Darjeeling’ and ‘Sikkim: A Home Full of Hotels’ by Prajwal Parajuly
First published in Mint Lounge on 7 December 2015 and 27 April 2016, respectively
‘There’s a Carnival Today’ by Indra Bahadur Rai
Extracts taken from pp. 1-8 and pp. 223-225 of There’s a Carnival Today by Indra Bahadur Rai, Speaking Tiger Publishing Pvt. Ltd, 2017
‘My Journey into Sikkim’ by Andrew Duff
First published as ‘Introduction’ in Sikkim: Requiem for a Himalayan Kingdom by Andrew Duff, Random House India, 2015.
‘The Story of Tanik the Mythmaker’ by Mamang Dai
First published in Centrepiece: Work, New Writing and Art from Northeast India, Zubaan, 2017.
‘My Mother Tampak, Maid of Chongtham’ by Binodini, trans. L. Somi Roy
First published as Chapters 1-3 of The Maharaja�
�s Household: A Daughter’s Memories of Her Father by Binodini, translated from the Manipuri by L. Somi Roy, Zubaan, 2015.
‘The Journey’ by Indira Goswami
Introductory paragraph adapted from ‘A beloved daughter of Assam, writer, peacemaker’ by Aruni Kashyap, The Hindu, 30 November 2011
First published on The Power of Culture (www.powerofculture.nl)
‘Embassy’ by Janice Pariat
First published in Boats on Land: A Collection of Short Stories by Janice Pariat, Penguin Books, 2012.
‘The Other Side of the Looking Glass’ by Jacqueline Zote
First published in Centrepiece: Work, New Writing and Art from Northeast India, Zubaan, 2017.
‘Burma and the Kipling Mystique’ by Andrew Selth
First published in New Mandala, an online forum on South-east Asia hosted by the Australian National University.
‘A “Fierce” Fear’ by Ma Thida
First published in Himal Southasian on 13 July 2016.
About the Book
The Himalayas, the tallest and the youngest mountains in the world, spread from Afghanistan and Pakistan through India, Bhutan, Nepal and Myanmar with their northern extrusions – the Ximalaya Shanmai – across the Tibetan plateau in China. Despite border restrictions, the inhabitants of this region continue to share a trans-Himalayan identity, fragile yet enduring.
The Himalayan Arc focuses on a crucial, enthralling, politically turbulent, yet often underreported part of this Himalayan belt – the ‘East of South-east’. With over thirty contributors such as Sanjoy Hazarika, Janice Pariat, Prajwal Parajuly, Thomas Bell, Ma Thida, Salil Tripathi, Catherine Anderson, and Indira Goswami, it attempts to describe the sense of shared lives and cultural connectivity between the denizens of this area. Poetry, fiction, and mysticism are juxtaposed with essays on strategy and diplomacy, espionage and the deep state, photographs, folk tales, and fables. From the unique identity of a Himalayan citizen to the ‘geopolitical jigsaw’ that is the region; from the hidden spy network in Kathmandu to intimate portraits of Shillong, Gangtok, Darjeeling, and other cities; from the insurgency in Assam to a portrait of Myanmar under military rule – the essays, stories, and poems in this anthology highlight the similarities within the differences of the Himalayan belt.
Providing insider and outsider perspectives on this intriguing part of the world, The Himalayan Arc is a travel book with a difference.
About the Author
Namita Gokhale is a writer, publisher, and festival director. She is the author of sixteen books; her eight works of fiction include the ‘Himalayan Trilogy’ set in her native Kumaon. Gokhale has worked extensively on Indian mythology and written two books for young readers. She has edited the anthology Travelling In, Travelling Out and co-edited Himalaya: Adventures, Meditation, Life with Ruskin Bond.
Namita Gokhale is also the co-founder and director of the famed Jaipur Literature Festival, and Mountain Echoes, the annual Bhutan Literature Festival.
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First published in hardback in India by
HarperCollins Publishers in 2018
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Anthology Copyright © HarperCollins Publishers India 2018
Introduction Copyright © Namita Gokhale 2018
Copyright for the individual pieces vests with their respective authors Page 331 is an extension of the copyright page
P-ISBN: 978-93-5277-611-5
Epub Edition © January 2018 ISBN: 978-93-5277-612-2
The views and opinions expressed in this book are the authors’ own and the facts are as reported by them, and the publishers are not in any way liable for the same.
Though every effort has been made to obtain permission for quoted text, it has not been possible to do so in all cases. Any omissions brought to our notice will be rectified in future editions.
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