Revolution in the Naga psyche

These Hills Called Home: Stories from a war zone by Temsula Ao; Delhi: Penguin Books India in association with Zubaan Books; 2006; 147 pp.; Rs. 175

It is a book of ten short stories by Temsula Ao, who teaches in the department of English at North Eastern Hill University, Shillong, and has published four collections of poetry and a book titled Ao-Naga Oral Tradition. She has also written on the oral traditon, folk songs, myths and cultural traditions of the Ao Nagas in various journals.

In her introduction titled 'Lest We Forget' the author says that two objectives impelled her to write and publish these stories. One is specific and historical: a depiction of how the brutal repression that was visited upon the Nagas by the Indian army during the abortive Naga war of independence that started "in the early fifties of the last century...re-structured or even 'revolutionized' the Naga psyche." The second objective is far more general and amorphous, and one which many a culture faces in this globalized age: An attempt to preserve on paper a now vanishing, "traditional Naga way of life, which, even for our own youngsters today, is increasingly becoming irrelevant in the face of 'progress' and 'development.'"

Therefore it comes as no surprise that the stories, unlike the current output from Bangladesh, depict rural life and are set in villages. With perhaps one major difference, these villages have a far more pronounced jungle setting. Unlike in vastly deforested Bangladesh, in these stories villages are always at the edge of forests, and the jungle shown in many ways to have a profound influence on the lives of the Naga folk. No doubt this age-old influence will die out over time, as the author laments, something which is increasingly evident in the changing ways of our own 'tribal' people in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, with whom there are many parallels in these stories.

All of the stories in this volume are successful in conveying the above dual aspects, and have been written with an enviable economy of expression. Also, despite the unremitting character of the violence portrayed in the stories, all of them have warmth and some of them, like the one reprinted above, even a goodly slice of humour. The village life, the Nagas, the violence visited upon them, the forest, the Indian army, all have been evoked vividly in a language whose simple tonalities--chosen deliberately and wisely--reflect the contents and themes of such an existence. To Bangladeshis, a society whose traditional village way of life is also disappearing under the onslaught of 'modernity,' who live across the border from the Nagas, who have fought their own war of independence and have had had to undergo brutalities of their own, and who then have also become silent witnesses to excesses in their own 'tribal' areas, these stories should have complex echoes.

There are proofing mistakes, but none too obtrusive to deter from a good read. The reviewer was surprised to note that none of the stories here are translations, but in fact were written originally in English. This fact alone goes a long way in dispelling the myth of 'tribal' backwardness and 'underdeveloped consciousness' that one finds in the subcontinent's metropoles. One wishes the author well, and certainly hopes that she continues to write.

Farhad Ahmed is a free-lance editor/translator.