As a reader, it feels rewarding to be transported to a world that remains unfamiliar in our popular imagination. Jim Wungramyao Kasom does so effortlessly in his new collection of short stories, The Last Free Naga. It brings alive the world of Tangkhul Nagas, a tribal group that forms the dominant population in Ukhrul district of Manipur.
He has authored two books earlier, Homecoming & Other Stories (2020) and an anthology of poems titled Cradling Memories of My Land (2023), the themes reflecting the position of a writer living away from home. The dozen stories in his new compilation have characters who have flown the nest as well as those who have stayed put. This evenness helps avoid a limiting perspective and broadens the canvas. Considering that he has spent the better part of his life away from Manipur —Kasom lives in New Delhi—the vivid descriptions reveal a rootedness and intimate understanding of life in the hills.
Myth, Modernity, and Conflict
The first story, Season of Cicadas, gives a sense of the literary texture with an account of an old peasant’s encounter with a mythical spirit-like creature called ‘Khangayei’, which is described as “the third entity, the unspoken one”. The man is obliged to his buffalo after he realises the animal saved him from possible harm by walking over him, intent to charge at the eerie spirit. After getting back home, the man proceeds to tie the buffalo in a safer spot than usual. The next morning, he finds that only food and clothes kept outside had disappeared after a rainy night.
There is no twist at the end. In fact, this is a feature of the collection overall. The stories do not end dramatically and, therefore, do not lead to any stark revelation or ironical situations. For instance, Season of Cicadas ends thus: “He looked for spoors around the house, but the incessant downpour that night had washed the ground clean, leaving nothing of that night.” It may leave the reader feeling unsatiated or even underwhelmed. As evident, there is an economy of words in Kasom’s writing style which isn’t lacking in description but is without any embellishments.
In another story, The Mountain Man, the protagonist, a hunter, has a showdown with a bear, and ruminates as he recovers. “He caught a glimpse of his reflection on the windowpane and couldn’t help but think that he had been the bear-man from the folklore all along.”
These stories typify hill lives; however, the book is not about man versus wild themes nor does it attempt to exoticise. It is just the way things are, a contrast from city life and in close contact with the natural world.
The Tangkhul Nagas are no strangers to conflicts between communities or between the state and its people. This is captured in the book. As is the impact of modernity on tribal culture. Even as Manipur grapples with an ethnic feud between Meiteis and Kukis since the past two years, when the author recounts the ’90s, we are reminded of the recurring pattern of such tensions.
In the titular story, a young boy finds himself in the middle of a Naga-Kuki feud as well as the Naga national movement: “There was no slacking in our home or anyone else’s that I knew of. We had to be home before sundown.” His grandma indulges him despite faring poorly in school even as his father wants to send him away to a place where there is no war.
The Price of Comfort
In a story titled Salt, a fake encounter and death in anonymity is a mundane reality. The narrator has a close shave with “commandos” training guns on him as they suspect him of being a separatist group’s aide. He is let off after giving away a wad of cash earned from selling potatoes. He was once a civil services aspirant who studied in Delhi University and prepared for the UPSC exam for nine years, before failure forced a change of heart. After his return, his simple wish is “to live like my great forefathers, who were independent and didn’t need anything from the outside world except salt, which they bartered occasionally”. The many conflicts make him wonder if salt, then sugar, and “other little luxuries of the modern world crept into our world” to trade off freedom “for a little comfort”.
Kasom has acknowledged that his writing germinated from the traditions of oral storytelling and collective memory that is a part of the Tangkhul Nagas. The Last Free Naga honours that spirit. The River that Bends Time, where a father takes his city-bred child to a fishing trip to recreate a family tradition, and What is Heaven Baking Today?—centred around a NSCN-IM martyr and his old mother memorialising him—are particularly moving.
The appetite whetted, one hopes this is just the hors d’oeuvre and Kasom will serve up a lot more.
