Tales Behind the Curtains
I recently began reading a book called 'Sky is my Father- A Naga Village Remembered', by an author of the name Easterine Kire from the Indian state of Nagaland. It turns out the author is a prominent Hindu Literary Prize winner and the book is the first Naga novel written in the English language. I bumped into this book when skimming through the numerous titles sitting on the shelves of the Crossword bookstore in the Nexus Mall close to my home in Hyderabad, and it was a title that piqued my interest. I usually find myself torn between three or more books and deciding which one to get, but for some reason, this book tugged at my heartstrings from the very beginning.
Most of the time, we see books with the '6 million copies sold' or 'The Sunday Times Bestseller' or the '#1 New York Times Bestseller' placed at the very front in many bookstores, and naturally a lot of people would gravitate towards these books- at least that is what I feel.
However, this book, wrapped in deep green and black shades, with an illustration of a Naga tribal man in front of what seemed to be the front of a brick and stone house in the hills, with his spear in hand, sat snugly between the Agatha Christie murder mysteries and Sudha Murthy's Grandma's Bag of Stories- a lone copy. I picked it up, intrigued by this book, bringing us a tale from the northeast nooks of India that till today, seem to be almost absent from the mainstream. It was a story laden with Naga tradition and history, one that is unique to that land and people and nowhere else, and I took it home that day- 4 days before my flight back to Chicago before the fall semester began.
I had to read the book in little snippets, cramming in lost time into reading, and the story shone light and new, enriched understanding of our past as we know it, and the essence of the freedom struggle from the British in the other distant, yet as much important regions of our country. Through the pages of this tale, I entered the Naga hills of India in the 1800s, quietly taking in the lives and ordeals of the Angami warriors of Khonoma in Nagaland, serving as the lodestar of the Naga resistance to British invasion. Their rituals, beliefs, times of celebration, word of mouth and community spirit unraveled in these pages along with their moments of happiness, grief and despair. The stories passed down by their ancestors through generations orally, and their valiance, indomitable courage and respect to their cultures and traditions was one that surprised me as a reader not belonging to the same cultural context. It gave me a picture of life in these far and tall mountains, towering above the clouds, where breadwinning falls in the hands of hard labor and the whim of the seasons.
Reading the book helped me gain a new perspective on what we think about representation and recognition of different cultural communities and ethnicities. We tend to stick to reading and exploring titles that are widely distributed and promoted in a popular fashion, and though such books are no less, regional literature like Sky is My Father- A Naga Village Remembered is also one that deserves more numbers of readers and enthusiasts that understand the breadth and depth that such stories bring to modern literature and knowledge of history today. It is important that we remember that in our journeys from the past to the present, there may still be many similar lesser-known historical accounts out there waiting to be studied, learnt and understood by its people. There may be countless memories, both hidden and out and about, that have also contributed significantly to our past and give us an insight into the lives that passed before us to bring us, the current generation, to where we are today.
The stories of such culturally rich, yet direly underrated and underrepresented, no matter which part of the world they are from, matter and deserve to be heard with equal undivided curiosity and attention.
It was by reading this book that I began to feel curious about other regional stories with similar backgrounds and wanted to know about them too. It was as though I had wanted to step out of the box and open myself to stories of other genres and lesser-known themes that are different from my usual tastes in books. It was a book that has encouraged me to remain curious and work on being more open-minded and aware of the multitudes of stories from the many corners of my country, sitting quietly on bookshelves to share their memoirs.
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