Mamang Dai, Indian writer, poetess and journalist, pens down an honest account of the NEFA days in her latest book, Escaping The Land. By Khushbu Kirti
The Padma Shri awardee, from Arunachal Pradesh, is one of the few modern Indian writers that have managed to add ‘seminal’ as a title in front of their names.
The writer dons multiple caps of achievement. She was the first woman from her state, then NEFA, to be selected for IAS, but decided to pursue journalism instead. Although she excelled in the field, she has never thought about how her life would have been if she had chosen the former career. We’re glad she didn’t! Or we wouldn’t be blessed with such great stories and poetry.
Poetry and prose are her strong suit, but she defines poetry as “the real lifeline.” The writer had also won the Sahitya Akademi Award for her novel The Black Hill in 2017.
Read on for excerpts from an exclusive interview with Dai about her latest creation, Escaping the Land:
What inspired you to begin this book and this saga? Please give us an overview of the same.
This book was always in the making, at the back of my mind, even when I was writing something else. A part of the book is a recollection of NEFA times based on first-hand accounts when Arunachal was the North East Frontier Agency (NEFA). Shillong was the capital and I can’t imagine how our parents took all the trouble to ferry us back and forth from boarding school in Shillong to wherever my father was posted at the time.
For my brothers and me, childhood was a landscape of rivers, stones, sand, ferry ghats and walking – one posting was a six-day foot march through the dense jungle when we were cajoled, carried, from one camp to another until we reached our destination — a small outpost, where it was a solid three months’ winter break before making the return journey back to school. Much of this travelling was through the districts now linked by the country’s longest rail-road Bogibeel bridge and the country’s longest Dhola Sadiya bridge, the latter also known as Bhupen Hazarika Setu, linking Assam and Arunachal Pradesh.
It was how it was then with the families of NEFA officers serving in the Indian Frontier Administrative Service.
The other portion of the book is more current, dealing with contemporary state politics with flashbacks inspired by real events. Viz: Achingmori, the era of political interpreters, the 1962 war, the constitutional and political changes, growth and attainment of statehood.
In fact, 2022 marks the closure of the erstwhile North East Frontier Agency and is the state’s golden jubilee year of achieving Union Territory status under the brand-new name of Arunachal Pradesh — ‘land of the dawn-lit mountains’.
Kojum-Koja to Arunachal Pradesh, talk to us about the journey covered in the book.
About the story of the ancient civilisation of Kojum-Koja, this crept in because these references to mythical times and different worlds like a land of fish and stars are parts of oral literature that is still chanted by traditional shaman priests invited to perform at special festivals.
What is the significance of the title — Escaping the Land?
It was the only title I could think of.
Midway, I thought maybe — NEFA Notebook, but somehow, ‘EL’ as it is labelled in my manuscripts, stuck. It’s a way of looking at what we say about the grass being greener on the other side. There was a boom period when everyone who had money was looking to invest outside of the state, going into big business, housing schemes and buying apartments.
It’s also about the desire to travel out from your hometown, to be somewhere else, even though, more often than not, it’s just to come back full circle — that sort of thing.
Is the objective behind writing this recording the history of your land and talking about the untold stories?
Well, in the last 50 years, Arunachal has undergone tremendous changes. I can tell you Itanagar has changed overnight from a rather ragged place of unfinished buildings to a place full of Korean eateries, gyms and shopping malls. So writing is a record of sorts, of a feeling or a remembrance of where we came from to get here.
For this book, I would say that there is still a great deal of nostalgia for the NEFA days. After all, it is the state’s common foundation. I also feel there was an air of innocence about that time, of integrity and even romance, and I wanted to write about this based on my father’s anecdotes, those of his colleagues and books and memoirs of some great pioneer officers like Nari K Rustomji, S Krishnatry, Indira Miri, to name a few.
Recently, a family in Assam was remembering how their father had gone off a long time ago, across the river, to serve as a school teacher in one of those unheard-of places in NEFA. They saw him on rare home visits, now and then, they told me, reminiscing. So, these are the stories of time, geography, memory.
Also, I feel the NEFA era and the Indo-China border war has little documentation/ record/ of the tribal peoples’ voices — how it was, what did they hear, what happened in the villages, what about the atmosphere of utter pandemonium as everyone fled before an advancing the Chinese army and how does it impact us now.
‘What is never lost is the original obsession that was a dream of love’. Please elaborate on this for us.
In the context of the book, I guess this line is for Lutor and Umsi. There is love for the land, love for its people, love for each other, maybe lost, and found. In the end, I think everyone wants to find and feel, a return to love. This can be a feeling of anticipation — a sense of wonder and mystery that is equal to a state of being in love, that there is something bigger than us beyond our doubts and struggles. Hard to explain. The reader will have to find its meaning for themselves.
I truly believe we need more female authors to write stories of women since they were either wiped out from the pages of history or their truths misconstrued by male voices. Care to weigh in?
Yes, in the historical context, the stories of women have been lost or misconstrued, but we can find them again and make up our minds. There are well known and widely read women writers taking a look at the literature of different periods from biblical times to Greek drama, western classical literature and portrayals of women in the great epics the Ramayana and Mahabharata. Female authors are writing in every genre with great impact, so I think the job is getting done.
How do you like to portray your female characters? For, Maying seems to be a determined woman looking for herself by unravelling the stories of people around her.
About portrayal of female characters: the female characters are like the women I know. There’s love, loyalty, wit and endurance, intellect and vulnerability. Maying is determined because in the book she represents these qualities of women who are secure because they know who they are.
