less than an A4 sheet in times new roman font size 12…

is how long a bibliography of books on arunachal by natives would be. and this is including suspect works of research by suspect academics.

works of fiction? i know of only two that date before 2006. both were in assamese – konya’r mulyo (the price of a girl) and prithibir hanhi (the laughter of the earth) - both by lummer dai. in case you are wondering, assamese used to be the language of instruction in the NEFA days. i haven’t read either.

so, as a native with literary aspirations and pretenses, i simultaneously smiled with pride and seethed with envy when i found out that penguin has brought out ‘the legends of pensam’ by mamang dai. i had hoped to be the one to put our stories to paper. but mamang has a headstart of at least 25 years. still, my book is coming too.(maybe a collection of my blogposts).

but for now, here's my review of the book -

the author is a poet first. even if you didn’t know that she has already published a collection called ‘river poems’, the lyricism of the opening pages of 'the legends’ would reveal her as a poet. she sees the world in songs. she deftly molds english, this foreign tongue, to evoke the cadence of the native voices.

i was carried through more than half of the book on the rise and fall of these voices. it was like visiting my childhood among the pinewood smoke swirling up into the settling dusk, half-listening to stories being swapped by my grandmother and her friends, their shared reminiscences of interesting times - when dr. williamson was killed in komsing, when the great earthquake had moved mountains, when my grandmother had to flee with my infant mother to dibrugarh as a ‘repji’ in a helicopter. (someday i'll take you to my childhood. my childhood was also about the persistent mosquitoes, and the noisy muddy pigs, and the anemic light of the little bulb that lit about an hour of our evenings daily. But memory makes magic.)

mamang builds moods intimately. she draws the landscapes with an expert eye. and she peoples these landscapes with believable characters and their stories. a friend of mine reflected that the book is very south-american in its flavour. i disagree. i do not think the author consciously or otherwise borrows from garcia or anyone else. they simply happen to share similar contexts.

however, through the enchantment of this competent retelling of such stories, one slowly wakes up to the weakness of the structure. the half-hearted use of a sutradhar and her friend mona begins to jar. mona and her husband pierre are firangs. their presence in the stories adds nothing, except maybe as expendable counterpoints and parallels.

the book in essence is a collection of short stories. and she should have let it be one instead of an uncomfortable imposition of an overarching narrative. And while at that, some of the rawer stories could have been culled out and allowed to ripen in the author’s mind for another time and another collection.

oh, and there’s a very cringeworthy lovemaking scene.

it’s definitely not going to be shortlisted for a booker. however, to anyone who wants to know arunachal – about its past and its present, i would say 'the legends' is a pleasant place to begin. it’s a bonafide arunachali effort by a bonafide arunachali. if you are looking for an addition to your collection that you want to will to your grandchild, you may look for something else.

actually, make someone else buy it, read it and tell me what you think.