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POST script
APRIL 22, 2012

SEVEN SISTERS

NELit review

FIFTH

WALL
UDDIPANA GOSWAMI
Literary Editor

Shillong: Poetics of Place

PREETIKA VENKATAKRISHNAN

Shillong: creative, cosmopolitan

EFORE the capital of Assam shifted to Guwahati and the city became the gateway to the Northeast, Shillong was the undeclared capital of the entire region in everything but name. Ever since the British ensconced themselves in this amazing hill station which reminded them so much of Scotland, Shillong has occupied a central place in the life of the region in more ways than one. During its formative years, the homegrown middle class of the Northeast not the ones whose intellects and worldviews were bred in Calcutta owed their education and refinement to Shillong with its elite institutions run by Christian missionaries. Though the city has lost much of its centrality now at least in terms of regional politics when it comes to education and intellectual pursuits, it still has much to offer. Institutions like NorthEastern Hill University (NEHU) still attract students from all over the region. NEHU also continues to breed and house writers from all over the Northeast, not just Shillong. It is, after all, the intellectual hub where Naga writers like Temsula Ao and Manipuri writers like Robin Ngangom meet Khasi writers like Kynpham Singh Nongkynrih and Desmond Kharmawphlang. But the literary and intellectual life of Shillong extends much beyond the campus of the university. There are those who once lived there and have now taken their Shillong ethos with them to various parts of the world. If Dhruba Hazarika brought it with him down to the plains of Assam, others like Siddhartha Deb carried it beyond the borders of India. This issue of NELit review aims to explore some of the writings from and about this beautiful city which has inspired so many writers. No other place in the Northeast can perhaps boast of such a rich confluence of literary voices. In our Frontispiece this week, Preetika Venkatakrishnan explores some aspects of Shillong as reflected in the works of the writers nurtured by this hilly city. We also carry poems by Ananya S Guha, another prominent poet from the city. The two books reviewed are by two writers for whom again, the city has been a muse in many ways.T

ONTEMPORARY Indian literature in English, it would appear, owes to Shillong some of its strongest voices and finest literary talent. The hill town, literary hub of Indias Northeast, has produced poetry and fiction that are keenly aware of a complex politics of location and have ushered in a place-centered poetics. In the 1980s, when Modern Indian Poetry had already been hosted as a genre by Nissim Ezekiels scrupulous efforts, in Shillong, poets Ananya Guha, Robin Ngangom and Desmond Kharmawphlang founded the now-defunct Shillong Poetry Circle and they were soon joined by Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih and Anjum Hasan. The poetry conglomeration gained visibility in literary circles as Shillong Poetry Society with the publication of its bi-annual poetry journal, Lyric, in 1992. In 1995, the first and only anthology to date devoted to select poetry and essays on music from Shillong, Gwalia in Khasia, edited by Welsh poet and dramatist Nigel Jenkins, was published by Alun Books from Wales. Over eclectic poetry readings that made them discover deeper resonances for their literary worlds in Pablo Neruda, Czeslaw Milosz, Mahmoud Darwish, Yehuda Amichai, Federico Garcia Lorca and Constantine Cavafy, and through discussions on the works of their contemporaries from the rest of India, these poets sought in regional material a new value for poetry. The pulls of geography, illuminated by the poets Third World literary bias and their distinct relationships with Shillongs hill-ethos and cosmopolitanism, intricately texture the poetry. Robin Ngangom, poet and poet-maker who has honed the writing of a couple of generations of young poets and more recently anthologised them, reveals an enduring preoccupation with the violence of parochial ethnicitybased territorial demands in Manipur: When I listen to hills I hear the voices of my faded life. Whisky and Mehdi Hasan and Billie Holiday make for strange fruit on non-descript evenings . . . Ill leave the bamboo flowering in the groves of my childhood. Let rats gnaw at the supine map of what was once my homeland. (First Rain) However, the fine-drawn tension that is at the heart of his lyrical-confessional verse derives from the exilic distance between his homeland, Imphal, and Shillong, his adopted home of the seven huts with which he shares an ironic relationship. A poet of deep feeling, Ngangom epitomises his desire to be liberated from the claustrophobia of cartography in a quest for a beloved to be maples lovers from ancient pasts. Desmond Kharmawphlangs sense of estrangement from his native Khasi culture subsequent to his education in missionary-run institutions occasions poetry of a divided self: Tyrchiang, the wind among your pines shames me with its simplicity, I whose roots draw deep from books to prop up my tribal bones. (Tyrchiang) His quest for roots, extensive travels in the deep wilderness of Khasi hills, and his stay at the Shamans ceremonial house encounters the poet finds cleansing later form the subject of a cycle of poems that appear to usher in ethno-poetics. The poet awakens ritual connections in literature and his poetic technique appears to take after shamanic-narratives. Kynpham Sing

Shillong has been the muse to many poets and writers from the Northeast. And yet, literature emerging from the city transcends narrow regional preoccupations

Graphics: Sanjoy Seal

FRONTISPIECE
Nongkynrih superimposes mythic and urban realities: for instance, the poem Weiking, wryly contrasts the symbolism of Khasi spring dance of virgins with a crass urban culture. Laced through with poetic repartees between Sohra, his birthplace, and Shillong, some of his poems bemoan the change in the latters landscape: Nobody cares that this limpid water, these bashful maidens, the tuneful pines are rolling down to the city where life itself wallows in the filth. (An Evening by the Source of the Umkhrah River) Other contributors to the creative richness of the poetry scene in Shillong are Esther Syiem, Tarun Bhartiya, Shimanta Bhattacharyya and Ibohal Kshetrimayum. In Syiems poems, literary reclamation of mythic and folk worlds begin a journey into the Self my sacred groves were given me by my father and they now live/ within me; compelled beyond enchantment (My Sacred Groves) and throws into sharp relief ways in which the State severed the natives connection to their own land, to the steamy scent of their swamps, to the crumbling dirt in their fists. . . and translucent streams that churn up the wetness for fields of greening paddy (Whose is it Anyway?) Vivid descriptions of commonplace experiences in the hill town resound in Kshetrimayums poems and the fact that the poet lives in Shillong gives to poems of ache and nostalgia for his home state, Manipur an ironic edge:

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THE pulls of geography, illuminated by the poets Third World literary bias and their distinct relationships with Shillongs hill-ethos and cosmopolitanism, intricately texture the poetry
For my grandchildren: a bedtime story of poisoned love, of a vanishing tribe whose people no longer live on rice but on bullets carved with names of their unborn children. (History of our Rice) Among the younger poets like Janice Pariat, Nabanita Kanungo, Amanda Tongper and Jobeth Warjri, Kanungo writes a verse that is heavily marked by politics of geography: I was born in this need to refigure everything one has on geographys leathery skin, historys long tongue (I Was Born) Kanungos poems draw from her grandparents memories of the Partition of 1947 and are deeply tinged with her sense of marginalisation on being a Sylheti refugee descendant and an outsider or dkhar in Shillong. Through tight images, the poems arrive at forceful cathartic moments where the hill town gets personified as the poets lover:

Native man, lull me with wounds if not sons, ... Wet grass on wandering feet, your hands of the caves milk, give your rain upon the path of my thirst (Native Man) The cosmopolitan culture of the town has left its imprints on its novelists too and lulled them with wounds and words. The four writers who have generated a discourse on the town as character and not as mere setting for novels are Siddhartha Deb, Dhruba Hazarika, Anjum Hasan and Daisy Hasan. None of them live in Shillong any more. Debs The Point of Return (2002), through the poignant story of a father-son relationship, evokes a view of Shillong that comes from nontribal neighbourhoods of Garikhana, Jail Road and Rilbong where the protagonist had lived. It recounts the tragic realisation of a Bengali veterinary officer, who had offered his services to the town, that he could be treated as an outsider dur-

ing the ethnic tension that prevailed in early 1990s while also objectively tossing in hints of a time when the hill people were remarkably unprejudiced unlike the migrants. Deb stages the classic fictional moment of self-referentiality in narrativising place: And I return in words traced on a page, playing resident and guide as well as curious tourist, pointing and gazing at the upturned stone tablet set up to commemorate the poet, the geometric pattern of park and lake, the black texture of berries ripening in the vendors basket, until between these modes of being and seeing, I truly become the place. I am my own hometown. Between Dhruba Hazarika and Anjum Hasan, both master storytellers, Shillong emerges as fascinating antithetical images. Hazarikas A Bowstring Winter (2006) unfolds in the three winter months of U Naiwieng, U Nohprah and U Kyllalyngkot, in its sensuous smells of pinewood, Kakyiad and pork burning over coals and tells the story of John Dkhars friendships with teer bookies and his fierce desire for a friends lover. The novel depicts the drama of passion and jealousy that violates the code of friendship that Johns archerfriend believes is like a bowstring: tight and like an arrow: straight. Earthy in outlook, subtle in its craft, the staple of Hazarikas novel is the appeal of a story that steers clear of mainland-Northeast politics it is a rare example of fiction that confidently writes out marginalisation, not forcing identity in, to win readership. Hasans discernibly intertextual novels, Lunatic in My Head (2007) and to a large extent, Neti, Neti (2009), dramatise Shillongs cosmopolitanism against a wide syncretic fictional canvas peopled by convent mothers who sing Sarojini Naidu to the tune of Auld Lang Syne, rock-band enthusiasts at a happening and roadside vendors like the Bhojpuri alu muriwallah. Protagonists of Lunatic seek tropes in Jane Austen, Pink Floyd and a make-believe home to escape the paralysis of small-town existence while in Neti, Neti, Sophie, a character from the earlier novel, relocates to Bangalore where heady urban realities become antipode to a compulsive nostalgia for Shillong and propels a journey back home. In the backdrop of ethnic tensions in the hill town, Hasan astutely builds into her narrative the constructedness of identities: I dont know whats in my blood. Its not what the maulvi said in the mosque when I was a child. Its not Hemingway. Its not the language my grandfather speaks. Its not the books my father left behind. Its not the thing they sing in the college assembly. So what is it then? Daisy Hasans The To-let House (2010), in telling the growing-up stories of four children, also narrates the story of the town [that] has lost all sleep in the wake of the unease that prevailed between Khasis and the migrant-settlers or dkhars in early 1990s. In a style that is refreshingly experimental, and a narrative-voice that shifts between first-person of the child-narrator and the omniscient, Hasan creates childscapes which bring back memories on waves of colour and detail and exposes the violence of closed identities. Another recently published novel set in Shillong, Shadow Men (2010), by Bijoya Sawian comments on a variety of issues, including the relationship between Khasis and dkhars and materialism of the leaders of the Khasi Movement, though largely at the expense of story and narrative. While publishing houses in New Delhi may have found its latest mecca in the Northeast and some conferences may promote literature from the region merely for identity-politics, some of Shillongs significant poets and novelists appear to have transcended the Northeast tag breathing new life into the larger Indian Literature in English canon. T

BOOK

ABLE
CFA: Bellagio Center Residency Program Sponsor: Rockefeller Foundation Time: The residency period is one month between February and August 2013 What is it: The Residency Program offers academic writers, artists, thought leaders, policymakers, and practitioners a serene setting conducive to goal-oriented work as well as opportunities for establishing new connections with fellow residents and other professionals from around the world. The Center's mission is to promote innovation and identify impact-oriented solutions to critical global problems. Application deadline: 01 May 2012 Link for more information: http://www.rockefellerfoundation.org/bellagiocenter/residency-program Brochure: http://www.rockefellerfoundation.org/news/pub lications/rockefellerfoundation-bellagio-center

When hills hold no more

RABINDRA K SWAIN

YNPHAM Sing Nongkynrihs latest collection of poems is the yearning of seeds. In it one comes across nuggets of cultural material from his native place and fine shreds of the troubled psyche of its people. The rootedness of the poet is evident from the title itself. References to its myths and legends abound, which have called for numerous footnotes. But just being ethnic one could not be poetic. Nongkyrihs constant preoccupation with his native place marks him as a poet of the locale; even his poems dealing with his personal matters present him as someone from the Northeast only. He could be talking of his land (rains lend gentleness to the sky) or of its people (insurgents have grown incredibly urbane, these days), be it sympathetically or caustically, yet he is always above the board of any polarisation: I no longer wish to serve my kinsmen. And this wish is from the heart. Call it ungrateful, call it strange,

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READING
the smell of gunpowder, when the poet would declare: I want to be a militant. And that is at least for one enviable reason: to know the terrains (nooks and crannies,) of his land intimately as if they were the lines in (his) palm (Tura Discovery). This truthfulness lends authenticity to Nongkynrihs poetry. The question of his Northeast identity vis--vis the mainland is best spelt out when he admits: A recalcitrant Indian since I am buried / too deep in my tribal roots. In the face of continuing logjam between the two, or rather multiple forces, with no prospect of any solution in the near future, the divided self in the poet resigns itself to an uncertain reality: Wishing as you might, I doubt of poetry could ever flourish in peace, or that I could ever turn from lament to praise.

Nongkynrih should not give up. He should take inspiration from Bertolt Brechts verse to strengthen his spirit. Brecht has resolved this eternal dilemma in a dialogic way: In the dark times will there also be singing? Yes, there will also be singing About the dark times. While the scale of poetry will always be see-sawing in the time of darkness, from Audens pessimism poetry makes nothing happen to Brechts optimism there will also be singing, Nongkynrih seems to take the Buddhas middle path. When he is an escapist, he would resort to the act of limning of the hills. But what is significant about this poet is that while describing his picturesque land he would glide to the political, thats juxtaposing the hills with the plains, mostly painting the plains people as polluters of his land: the cunning dealers from the plains or Like pears, only strangers and strange ways have come to bloom in this land.

THE YEARNING OF SEEDS

Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih Harper Collins, 2011 `199, 168 pages Paperback/Poetry
This heart of mine. Nonetheless, there are moments, the kind of the one described above, in which one gets

Nongkynrih is good at short poems and is at ease with political themes, which is often covert. Look at how lovingly he engages himself with his milieu in When the Prime Minister Visits Shillong the Bamboos Watch in Silence. The sensitive issue of mainland politics versus that of the Northeast is delicately balanced. Heavyweights are rendered light as flowers. When the Prime Minister visited Shillong bamboo poles sprang up from pavements / like a welcoming committee, and he himself was/only the strident, sounds of sirens/like warning in wartime bombings. When the poet dubs the onlookers as children who sought answers we know the poet has dodged the issues: too used to the antics of the politicians the bamboos watched in silence the PM come and go, and the entire purpose remained clouded like the tops of Khanchan-Dzonga. One can very well equate the face of Khanchan-Dzonga and with the PMs, for very rarelydoes one see them. They are best left revered. But the best poem in the yearning of seeds, to my mind, is Blasphemous Lines for My Mother. Its beginning is elegiac, seemingly, with the declaration R.K. Narayan is dead. The poets perception of his mother is unlike that of Narayans ideal mother.

Nongkynrihs description of his mother is Ezekielian: My mother is retired, toothless, diabetic, and bedevilled by headaches and a blinding cataract. In short, she is a cantankerous old woman. The resemblance ends there. The poets mother is plaindealing and more truthtelling than Narayans. In her afternoon naps, when disturbed by her children, the mother in Nongkynrihs poem could be vile, swearing, tigerish: you sons of a vagina. But the children had the skill at dodging her unconventional weapons, the utensils that she threw at them. What shocks most is her nastiness: she would make her sons wash her blood-stained rags. The way the job is done evokes pity for the son and anger at the mother. Fact or fiction, the poem appeals. My quibble about the yearning of seeds is that, divided into three sections titled The Season of the Wind, The Fungus and The Sweetness of Plums and running into 150 pages, thereby making it into a tome, it could well have been split into two considerable volumes, while very well dispensing with the third section with its Haiku look-alike poems. T