These stories about political and ethnic conflicts in Assam leave a strong impact despite the spotty translations

This book brings together 15 short stories from Assam, originally written in Assamese, Bodo or English, and edited by one of the foremost names in Assamese literature, Aruni Kashyap. As the title indicates, all the narratives address the realities of political agitation and ethnic conflict that has been Assam’s share since colonial times.

Shadow of the gun

Curiously, however, the editor seems to assume that all readers will have an understanding of how and why the stories represent “what it means to live under the shadow of the gun”. Apart from invoking the universality of human suffering, this book purportedly also wants to present such experiences through the lens of very specific cultures and communities of a particular region.

Strange, then, that not a single line of context is offered in the preface, none of the individual texts have headnotes, and no author biography possesses publication dates and sources. This does leave one to flounder a bit. Since the colours of oppression and insurgency have shifted and coalesced in Assam in complex ways over time, some contextual information would have not only been helpful, it would have intensified the impact of these tales.

And the tales do leave a strong impact, in spite of the spottiness of the translations. Of the 15 stories, four were originally written in English, two in Bodo and the rest in Assamese. The most notable of the English narratives is ‘Vigil’ by Jahnavi Barua, exploring with understated intensity the mind of a mother torn in love for her sons, one of whom is a police officer, the other an insurgent.

The Assamese stories almost uniformly choose straightforward narrative over stylistic experimentation and all the contributions use simple, even stock, situations to convey an affective message. These are strong stories, dealing with love, loss, politics (personal and organisational), idealism and suffering seen almost exclusively through the eyes of women, children, and other outliers of a community.

Stuti Goswami’s assured translation of Sanjib Pol Deka’s ‘What Lies over Here?’ uses the motif of folk theatre to tie in the themes of communities in conflict, others explore political indoctrination meetings (Ratnottama Das Bikrom’s ‘Crimsom’ sic) or village burnings (Arup Kumar Nath’s ‘Koli-Puran’).

‘Crimsom’ (sic) is easily the most accomplished in the collection, supported by Mitali Goswami’s luminous translation. A teenage boy and his “pekpeki” (chatterbox) sister come of age in the aftermath of unexpected violence. Teenage rivalry, idealism, menstruation and bloodshed are masterfully woven into the titular refrain: “[c]rimson sun, crimson blood, crimson western sky.” Wordplay and world-play come together to produce a tale that’s sensitively handled, insightful and moving.

A stylistically different piece is Juri Baruah’s ‘A Political Tale’. It is a meditation on the road as metaphor for life, spinning the conceit out into symbolic spaces of memory and experience. But the emotional force of a female political activist’s interior monologue is hobbled by an awkward translation and inadequate footnotes.

Heat of outrage

What ties all the stories together is the white heat of outrage. These are deeply angry voices, one and all, not yet ready for laughter as resistance. The Assamese tales are all marked by earnestness; it is only in the two Bodo tales that we see sparks of satire. In time, perhaps, anger will be able to perfectly turn the knife of sarcasm, and more stories like Nandeswar Daimari’s superb Bodo non-fable ‘A Hen that Doesn’t know how to Hatch its own Eggs’ will emerge.

Both Bodo tales use some black humour in offerings that are stark and pitiless in their refusal to comment. The careless translations (especially in the rendering of Katindra Swargiary’s ‘Hongla Pandit’) cannot detract from the power of these deceptively simple tales.

At the end of the day, this is a book so important that one is tempted to overlook its uneven quality and shoddy presentation.

The reviewer is Assistant Professor, English, at IIT Guwahati.

How the Tell the Story of an Insurgency; Edited by Aruni Kashyap, HarperCollins, ₹399