Shillong authors
So I missed the brunt of what the Western media calls the “cyclone” in Kolkata because I’m in Shillong, Meghalaya (and the Bengalis call “the beginning of the monsoon”), and am now feeling the afteraffects in the form of rain that won’t stop the whole time I’m here. I’d like to enjoy the hills and everything, but the whether isn’t really ideal…I didn’t expect the monsoon to start so early!
Yesterday, I met three poets who teach at the English department in the university outside of town, North East Hill University. I don’t have my notes or their books in front of me, but I thought I’d waste some time sharing some initial impressions.
My writing mind is NOT on right now…my language sort of sucks, my fingers feel awkward on the keyboard. The situation in this cybercafe is very strange–it’s mobbed by students trying to find out the results of their examinations. I’m cold and wet. I don’t have my notes. Yet, some of the things that I talked about yesterday were SO interesting to me, and I want to share. I’ll totally rewrite for my project. (which is still posted below. Thank you to those of you who have been reading it! I’ve gotten some hugely good feedback. I will forever be grateful)Howver, my only other choice is to go back to my hotel room and huddle below my blanket and drink too much tea, and I get bored.
First, I met Esther Syiem, who is a Khasi (a tribe here in the Northeastern hills) poet. In 2005 she published a book called “Oral Scriptings” that was her re-tellings of Khasi mythologies. We had a great conversation, she was really eager and engaged…it became clear that the theme of the section for my project that will include her and Prof. Ao will be orality and oral culture. Neither the Khasis nor the Nagas have a written script–after the British missionaries, they started using the roman script. The Khasi myth is that at one point the gods called each of the tribes to send a messenger to come pick up their script from the divine source. The Khasi messenger went and got it, but on the way back, there was a huge flood (like today!) and so to preserve the language, he swallowed the script. The messenger from the plains hid his script in his pony-tail, so it got preserved. So, Prof. Syiem’s point is that the myth shows that the Khasi language got internalized, oralized, not lost–it was swallowed. The other major interesting point was that the Khasi culture is matriliniel, (sp?) meaning that the daughter inherits the mother’s name, husbands take their wives names, and the eldest daughter inherits the family property and responsibility. I just visited the market here in Shillong, and almost all the vendors, all the shopkeepers, everyone, were women. This makes the Khasis my favorite tribe ever.
Then I met Robin Ngangom, who is from Manipur. Manipur is one of those forgotten tragedies of the world–not on the international radar at all. Along with some other places in the Northeast, it’s been wracked by insurgency, revolution, and state oppression, almost since just after Independence in 1947. Neither side is even remotely justifiable. The Indian government is responsible for brutality, genocide, and complete disregard for human rights. The insurgency is holding the people hostage, they’ve lost any real ideology–Robin says that it’s ‘Impossible to know what they want, what they’re fighting for.’ It’s sort of directionless rage, a directionless war. So Robin lives in exile here in shillong, dutifully going back to Manipur every year to renew his “manipuri roots.” Not only does he write poetry in English, he also translates some Manipuri poets into English. He says that his poetry, and the poetry that he translates, is the poetry of survival, the poetry of witness. Actually, I do have his book with me. It’s called “The Desire of Roots,” really the work of exile:
“WRITER
A writer can survive without a car
but a window with his palm
testing the breath of a street
or a garden, a few weeping pens
and clean sheets are indepsensables.
He can live with the moon
as his eastern neighbour or with pines,
cantakerous mynahs or even factories.
As of now freedom of expression
would mean for him
expression of freedom.
For example, the word ‘clitoris’
would be as exhilarating as uttering,
“the revolution is a farce.”
He would have continued:
“The opthalmic optician
shut down his clinic
after far-sighted revolutionaries
came for a free check-up.”
But that wouldn’t sound aesthetic
even though it’s the truth.
He hates himself for having to mouth
the ugly things and even his
bold words would seem proudish
in free worlds.
This is what clings to him
even in exile,
the reality about freedom
which led to his exile,
the reality about freedom
which lead to his exile
He would have pursued
the more beautiful words,
skies, dances, images, discourse,
trees, nudes, illumination,
if he posessed the gift
of being free.”
The last writer I met was the one that I came to meet, Prof. T. Ao, who is a Naga. The Nagas are another tribe, really an umbrella for many smaller clans, of which the Ao is one of them. Our conversation was a little slower, but still really interesting. 90% of the Nagas, and 100% of the Aos, are Christian. (Most of the Khasis are, too). The Nagas also have a myth about why they have no script–but they also don’t even have a single language–the languages of each clan is incomprehensible to the language of the next. They may very well have each come from radically different descendants–Chinese, Cambodian, anything. Again, the theme of Orality has to be paramount-Prof. Ao’s project, like Prof. Syiem, is to capture the feeling of Naga mythology through written, English language poetry.
More lata.