Book Review by Asenla Yanger
Has Nagaland, that small heath in the far north-east of India, ever been a place of intrigue to you? Have you only heard of the head-hunting practice bringing panic shocks to your nerves? There always had been a question ticking in the grey matter of mine regarding why are people scared the moment they hear the word ‘Nagaland’ or precisely ‘Nagas’, why they think it is a place from where there is no return, why the stigma, why the fear? Nagaland, is that place which is a piece of the tranquil heaven on Earth with its rich canopy of forests and glades, color and beauty and a whole lot of tradition keeping the people rooted to the land no matter how far they go. To these questions justice has been favored by Easterine Kire in her 2021 published juvenile fiction The Rain- Maiden and the Bear-Man. The ten stories inside the beautifully designed jacket by Sunandini Banerjee will take one to the mesmerizing beauty of Nagaland with its folklore which passed on orally from generation to generation. My heart still goes back to the days when Grandparents used to tell us those folktales of the different tribes of Nagaland, the stories of how the killing of the serpent led to the slow death of the Naga girl in one of the traditional villages, and many more such lore as we used to be tugged in the blankets those Christmas vacations somewhere in the rustic cold of Nagaland. But with age only a bit of those remained. I am indebted to Easterine Kire for this book because now I know where to turn back to to replenish my knowledge of all that happened sometimes in the deep dark woods of the forest or the depth of the river or inside that tiny little thatched hut.
If you are someone whose curiosity level shoots up the epinephrine rush in your body listening to the encounters with the spirits, co-mingling of the natural and the spiritual realms, the Weretigerman, etc. then this is just the right book you should be having in your book shelf because wonderfully the book jacket reads “Kire makes Nagaland come alive with her rich portrayal of both the natural and the spiritual worlds, which, to the Naga mind, harmoniously coexisted until the recent past.” Coming to the book titled story, my mind started to create a picture of the Rain-Maiden that day when the silver drops were dancing on the flowers in the lawn. I could see the Rain- Maiden with her beauty of “infinite loveliness, diamond raindrops in a shower of sunlight, furiously falling raindrops leaving faint maiden shapes in the air” (3). The outside world is always ready with its arrows and darts thus making us change ourselves to someone we can never be and in this rush, we are made to lose our true self. Our hearts kindness is taken advantage of and we unwillingly acclimatize to the cunningness outside. The Bear-Man was the kindest of the creatures projecting the innocent true self which he himself hid facing the cruelty of the human world. Don’t we also sometimes wear a mask to meet with the social norms realizing of the damage we are causing to our true inner self? We do. Here I put forward a question: is it the fear of rejection or something else that makes us reluctantly ignore the Rain-Maiden, who appears only to the fortunate few, thereby hurting our own feelings, inner being, the true self?
Have you ever encountered a spirit? Spirits are everywhere and I feel there lies a very close proximity between the spirits and the nature. In fact, the American writer Zitkála-Šá once quoted, “The voice of the Great Spirit is heard in the twittering of birds, the rippling of mighty waters, and the sweet breathing of flowers.” It was only after reading these stories in the book viz., Forest Song, The New Road, The Man Who Lost His Spirit, and others I came to know about the spirits and their particular way of behaving with the human, who many a times spoil the harmony of the spirits. Had heard that deep inside the forest reside the forest spirits and with their sweet tone they pull the passerby and this passerby, mesmerized, walk deep and fade away in the dark thickness of the forest, sometimes to be found while many a times disappointment only returns with the ones searching for the lost companion. Isn’t this captivating? Some years back had heard of this kind of a missing news of a boy in one beautiful hill district of Nagaland only to be found in the forest in his subconscious state after four days. Frankly, I didn’t believe in such an event happening these days, but Forest Song made me erase my disbelief and my heart cried with Zeno’s inconsolable mother who lost her girl after the clansman abandoned the twelve days long search. I won’t be wrong if I say that as the stories keep on unfolding readers will have complex palpitation to know more about the spirits be it the Road-spirit, the River-spirit, Earth-spirit. River-spirits “are the most beautiful of the spirits”(31). Reading about the River-spirit I realized that nature has its own way of teaching man the lesson of not inflicting any harm on it. River-spirits come to play here as it is a taboo that these ethereally beautiful spirits get angry if, even by mistake, a house is built on the river-bed and also if a human man, who has been favored by the river-spirit, “ask for a beautiful woman to marry, it displeases them because they consider themselves more desirable than any human’(32). Fascinating right?
“…incredibly sweet music coming from the forest, sweeter than the forest, sweeter than the songs of courtship their age-mates sing at the harvest festivals when marriages are contracted and the feast of harvest combines with the feast of the marriage” (9). Legends have it that songs and music had been used since the beginning of mankind to talk with all the spirits that reside in nature. The author here makes us learn of the songs with which the spirits communicate, call and draw a traveler closer and this traveler goes deeper in to the heart of the forest unknown of what he or she is doing or going because the song “seems to be inside their heads, sung up close into their ears, their harmonies swaying back and forth and sending them into a deep slumber” (9).The Man Who Went to Heaven is one beautiful story that transcends us to the fairy land where we see “beautiful sky-women coming down to earth, singing a sky- song” (47), a story of the happy earth-man living harmoniously with his sky-wife who finally ascends back to the sky-home singing her sky-song. How did a sky-woman stay back? Did she take her earth-man along to her sky home? The story answers many of these questions leaving a feeling of awe.
“Man, Spirit and Tiger were once brothers.” Really? One’s spirit does not become a tiger from birth rather “a tigerman progressed from lower forms of life until he attained the final stature of a tiger” (70). I always thought why was my forefather’s spirit living in a tiger, why did he become a Weretigerman? Well yes, “it was the power of course, but something more than that…Only a few men were destined to carry its spirit” (71). Listening about were tigers had always got me enraptured and that day when I was reading this story titled The Weretigerman my eight years old nephew came to me and as I started to tell him this entrancing story of Tsaricho, the tigerman, whose father and grandfather were tiger spirits too, I could feel the curiosity in his heart as his expressions changed with every turn in the story and I didn’t really mind repeating the story for consecutive days. I feel this is what our roots teach us- to learn, to carry, to gift the legacy of our great tradition thereby letting this circle continue for generations to come.
All the stories are highly informative and beautiful. I am, however, taken by The Man Who Lost His Spirit, story of Pesuohie who left his spirit in the tree he had climbed and how he brings back his spirit which had completely forgotten him. Highly gripping, yes.
This book is a literary genius. The beautiful tapestry of imagination gets weaved as we start to see ourselves attuned with the characters. I call this book “an ocean full of knowledge, full of wisdom.” Just as the depth and vastness of an ocean is a call to the weary soul, so is Easterine Kire’s The Rain-Maiden and the Bear-Man.
(The numbers in the bracket indicate the page number in the book where the quoted lines are found)
The writer is a Doctoral research scholar pursuing Ph.d from The Assam Royal Global University, Guwahati.
