Bendangrenla S Longkumer
Sentilong Ozukum over the course of the decade has cemented his place among the contemporary towering Naga writers in English. Ozukum’s success as a writer and publisher lies in his acumen in discerningexactly what his readers want,the demography of the readership and how to deliver it. He has five books to his name and a quick skimming of the hundreds of reviews of his booksalmost never fail to mention how relatable the characters and the situations the author creates are for the readers. Perhaps the greatest asset of any fiction writer is the relatability factor and Ozukum seems to effortlessly succeed in doing this, book after book, and Teacher Man is no exception. There is a calculated effortlessness in the way the plots are woven. Castiglione, the Italian writer, calls it Sprezzatura—the art of performing a difficult task so gracefully that it looks effortless. In other words, the art of mastery over a subject. Ozukum has proved himself to be a literary chameleon by hopping across genres, forms and voices.
When I first saw the book, I was flummoxed by the title to say the least. The unassuming title was ambiguous and intriguing. It is only when the last pages turned that it dawned on me that not all superheroes wear capes and Shisa, the protagonist was the perfect subversion of a superhero—an ordinary human with the bare minimum resources, yet capable of extraordinary feats, thus truly deserving of the titular name, and thus making him relatable to us mere humans morethan any superhero possibly could.
Ozukumas a writer has the tendency to pick up what would be considered conventionally as the dregs and failures of the society and redeeming them, be it in the case of his most popular protagonist, Moluti in Campus Blues and Dreams and Chaos, or Shisa in this case. There is something very heartwarming and empathetic in the way the characters are written and come alive to the readers. Regardless of whether it’s an intentional or a subconscious choice by the author, Ozukum’s choice of protagonists, are designed to be relatable to the angry and desolate youth of contemporary Naga society.Teacher Man is your quintessential coming of age story sprinkled with a heavy dose of realism where Shisa the protagonist takes on a journey to find purpose and meaning in life. Set against the contemporary Naga society with its dilapidated education and health care systems and infrastructure in general, with the reliable “Tata Sumo” and the “dusty highway” as charactersopening the novel, any reader by now would go “Ah! This is a novel set in Nagaland.” The protagonist’s journey in the novel would speak to the contemporary Naga youth trapped in a system that seems to work only against their aspirations and dreams. The novel in a lot of ways is a much-needed clarion call, a tad too utopian no doubt, but one that is surely within our reach.
Shisa’s redemptive and endearing quality as the protagonist is in his response to what he sees at Sangtor, the idyllic agrarian village where the novel is set. Perhaps reluctantly and unwillingly at first but he sure does stay, almost impulsively, unlike his other colleagues who chooses to leave and for good reason. The reluctant and aimless young man who seems to have failed at everything according to societal parameters of success, to the surprise of everyone, not only sustains in his efforts but consciously decides to call Sangtor his home.The protagonist, at times, seems to exhibit traits of messiah complex but one can be more forgiving of Shisa ashe tries to work towards understanding the village ecosystem and work with the villagers instead of imposing himself on them.The closing line of the novel “It was home now” banishes any doubts that the readers might have of Shisa’s intentions and plans of moving away. As much as Sangtor is his home, Sangtorand its inhabitants also seems to have accepted him as their own, completing the narratorial arc.
Much like the author’s previous works, Teacher Man offers a close look into the everyday and the mundane of the contemporary Naga society. A reader who has no idea of the context could easily conjure up a close idea of the Naga way of life, including its material culture. The vivid sketches of Sangtor and the adjoining towns that comprise of the novel’s universe is one of stark juxtapositions of the old and the new, the traditional and the modern, both in terms of material culture and worldviews that have entangled the 21st century Naga society in all in its throes.
“Northeast” in general in the popular imagination is a homogeneous identity—an identity that has been enforced and one that writers from the north east have consciously resisted. What Teacher Man also does as a novel, other than offer a scathing social critique, which has become one of Ozukum’s trademark, is how even within the Naga society, there are complex layers in terms of the cultural, political, economic and the social that needs to be explored, distinguished, acknowledged and represented. Teacher Man adds depth and dimension to counter the dominant narratives that attempts to homogenize, diminish and suppress the many voices and lived experiences that we are.
The inherent clarity and lucidity in terms of what the novel aspires to achieve, in a language that is accessible to the lay person makes it a page turner and a very interesting read. Ozukum in many ways has become the people’s writer because of the relatability factorand his use of accessible language without diluting or over simplifying the content. Orwellwould certainly approve of Ozukum’s approach to writing. Orwell in his six rules of writing would advice writers to value simplicity and fresh perspectives over complex language and redundant jargons, and Ozukum’s writings are replete with such elements.
In terms of literary merit, the author is consistent in the way he conjures up fresh metaphors and giving them a distinct“local taste” to it. The use of the colloquial and the everyday language as spoken by Nagas adds an element of authenticity, distinctiveness and particularity. The politics of language has to be taken into consideration while assessing any literary work given the uneasy position of English as a language. The question ofhow does one write as a postcolonial, in a language that is considered a colonial imposition but has also become a necessity has to be probed and taken into account. While this would require an entire research paper to explore, the oversimplified answer would be to unapologetically use the colloquial and the common, in other words, the accessible and the local, as the author does.
As far as the character writing goes, Shisa is as relatable as he is well-rounded and developed. The author is known for his on point, eagle eyed observation skills, which he artfully paints for the readers in such a way that we cry, laugh, feel the hurt and joy, and at times, as is in the last chapter, feel the rush and urgency of the situation that you don’t realise you were not breathing until the character breathes.
Academic writings have often been criticized for its inaccessibility to the layperson. It is writings like Teacher Man that bridges the gap between the ivory towers of academia and the lay, between theory and praxis, and there lies the role and the usefulness of keen storytellers like Ozukum. As an author, he is so much more than the armchair philosophersand your average keyboard warriors that plague our society because anyone who knows the author also knows his actions in the real world add weight and gravitas to the fiction he weaves. A memoir in his later years, if one can dare to hope, I am sure would include encounters that are stranger than fiction itself.
If something has to be said at all about the novel, it is its undying optimism and a gnawing sense of the “should've, could've, would've” had we had more people with a mission like Shisa in the real world. We are exasperated by the thought of the lack of potential Teacher Man, Engineer Woman, Doctor Girl, Nurse Boy and the many possibilities that there are.It is here that we as readers should be reminded that what is eluded in reality is grasped vividly in fiction and this in turn offers catharsis. The novel inspires because the novel seems to suggest that there is light at the end of the tunnel. It also frustrates because of wasted potential, couple with a sense of helplessness because of a collective paralysis that seems to be so rampant.As readers, we get the sense that there is an insurmountable mountain that Shisa and his compatriots have to scale but we are also left with the assurance that they will somehow triumph. The future of Sangtor definitely looks hopeful, and so does ours by extension.
Kafka, the French Modernist wrote, “I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book we're reading doesn't wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for? We need books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.”
Teacher Man for me has been that book.
May Teacher Man stab us, wound us, crack open the frozen sea within all of us. But may it also inspire us readers, to be better.
