Morung Express News
Kohima | July 22
22-year-old Ketousieno Priscilla Khamo, who hails from a very artistic family comprising of passionate and talented people, skilled in different art forms like writing, painting, singing, dancing, photography, a plethora of art forms today made her debut as a published author through the launch of her book titled, A Underwhelming Thing.’
The book was formally released by Dr T Keditsu, Assistant Professor, Kohima College, Kohima on July 22 at Red Cross Conference Hall Kohima. Taught to love and appreciate ART while growing up, Ketousieno Priscilla Khamo said she inherently thinks that she was always meant to be an artistic person.
She started reading between the ages of 11 and 12, which was subsequently followed by writing. Recalling that she wrote her first poem as an English homework, Khamo said she wrote it without much thought. “My teacher complimented me the next day saying she liked my poem the best. And that's how it all started”, she recalled.
While she was not very fond of reading poetry initially, she developed deep appreciation for poetry when she came across American poets. “I felt heard and understood and less alone in my journey and that inspired me to do the same with my writing. So in a way I would say reading acted as a gateway to writing”, she expressed.
The book, she highlighted, “is a collection about growing up and growing out of all the things you were and had as a child that no longer exist within reach. It captures the moments of losing people and memories that were once important to you and parts of yourself that you had to let go in order to move forward in life.”
Just as her favourite authors before her, she loves to write about struggles pertaining to mental, emotional, spiritual and physical aspects of life. “As blue as it is, there is hope. There is hope and faith. From a sense of feeling lost to finding purpose, meeting new people and creating memories with them and discovering new parts of yourself, an underwhelming thing is a book about acknowledging pain, sitting with it, accepting it and departing from it to move on to the next chapter of life”, she said about the book.
“It is an honour, a dream and life's greatest pleasure to be able to hold this book in my hands and call it mine, to be able to fit it into my shelf besides all the talented and passionate Naga authors I grew up reading and admiring”, she added.
‘The ordinary, underwhelming realities make up greater part of our existence’
Addressing the launch, Dr T Keditsu, Assistant Professor, Kohima College, Kohima remarked that she is “grateful for writers like Ketousieno who concern themselves with the ordinary, underwhelming realities that actually make up greater part of our existence.”
She highlighted, “When we lose something that we take for granted, when we lose the ordinary, the mundane, the regular or when we lose people close to us, whose presence we take for granted like comfortable furniture in the house, when we lose even time in the form of minutes, hours and years, as we age and grow older and wiser. This is the kind of loss without trauma and often without notice. It is the loss that is underwhelming because it leaves us with a deficit emotions and responses.”
The book, she stated, “is an understated meditation on loss of the ordinary mundane kind- the losses we accrue as we age, as friends turn strangers, lovers leave and people pass. Loss can be dramatic, chaotic, traumatic but more often it can be as the book’s title suggests- an underwhelming thing.”
Expressing that the book allowed her to experience loss in its minute and mundane manifestations, she said that Ketousieno’s verse allay to the natural human aversions and fear of loss. “I hope you will all read this lovely book that reminds us that loss is not to be feared rather engaging with loss allows us to focus on everything we gain because of it-memories, meaning and wisdom”, she added.
In her publisher’s note, Vishü Rita Krocha observed that there has been so much growth in literature and the publishing industry in Nagaland as a whole in the last decade and young people are writing, and reading more than ever. This trend towards building our literature, she said, is definitely headed in the right direction. Despite the explosion of technology, she noted that it has not killed the interest of young people to write but has rather motivated young people further to write because socialising online almost always involves text.
She also congratulated Ketousieno on the book which, she said, “is an exclusive collection of 40 endearing poems.”
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