Stories from the North-East

Book Review

Title: Lapbah: Stories from the North-East (2 volumes)

Editors: Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih & Rimi Nath

Publisher: Penguin Random House India 2025

Pages: 366 + 358

 

Nestled among the eastern Himalayas and some breathtakingly charming valleys, the Northeastern region of India is home to hundreds of indigenous communities, each with distinct traditions, attire, music, and festivals. Languages spoken range from Tibeto-Burman and Austroasiatic tongues to Indo-Aryan dialects, reflecting centuries of migration and interaction.

Tribal matrilineal societies thrive in Meghalaya, while Nagaland and Mizoram showcase rich Christian tribal traditions. Manipur is famed for classical dance and martial arts, and Tripura and Arunachal Pradesh add further layers of ethnic plurality and ecological richness. Sikkim blends Buddhist heritage with mountainous serenity, and Assam is known for its tea gardens and vibrant Vaishnavite culture. Collectively, the Northeast is a unique cultural tapestry that won’t be found in any other region of the world.

One can imagine the infinite variety that the literature from the region can offer us. Lapbah is a collection of 57 short stories from the eight states, though two are excerpts from novels. Most of the writers are well-known in the region as well as outside, like Indira Goswami, Easterine Kire, and Janice Pariat. The stories span a period of the whole last century.

The editors also underscore the diversity of the place and hence its stories, in their brief introduction. “A variety of themes and styles could be found in these stories,” they inform us, “emanating from the many different linguistic, literary and ethnic cultures.” We are offered different genres within the short story, such as realistic, satirical, political, and the fantastical. Altogether, these 52 writers (a couple of them are represented more than once) present eloquently before us the rather exotic world of the Northeast which has a lot of international borders too.

In the very first story, ‘Laburnum for My Head’, we meet an old, ordinary woman who defies the rigidity of man-made traditions and rituals as well as the passivity expected in death, by claiming an active agency over her own death. Individual autonomy is a recurrent theme in the anthology. One of the final stories in the second volume, ‘No Man’s Land’, has a Khasi woman living in the Bangladesh border and whose love crosses the international border. Lily Marbaniang’s love for Riyaz Ahmed is seen as treason. Lily has to learn it the hard way that she can’t defy borders as smoothly as men cross some.

Patriarchy and gender discrimination, corruption in politics, struggle for survival, militancy, ordinary domestic problems, drugs, insanity… They are all there in these stories. The intention of the editors seems to be to bring together the finest writers of the region rather than go for thematic cohesion or chronological order.

It would have been advisable, especially because there is no chronological order, to mention the year of each story’s original publication. Every story, every work of literature, is rooted in a particular time and place. As the time changes, meanings change too. The reader’s understanding changes. Some of the stories are a century old and the reader’s cognitive faculties have to make quantum leaps from 1932 to contemporary period as they move from one story to the next.

Most of the stories are more than entertaining. They are well-crafted. The prose is precise, often poetic or suggestive. There are catchy twists towards the end of some of them. A few end in thought-provoking ambiguity. Characterisation is admirably subtle in quite many.

By the time we move from Temsula Ao’s sobering laburnums in the first story to the scandalous corruption in the 57^th story, ‘School Inspection Report’ by Lamabam Viramani, we will have travelled across the length and breadth of the wonder that is the Northeast of India. Personally, I missed Sikkim which is represented only by two stories. Otherwise, this is a remarkable compilation.

PS. This review is powered by Blogchatter Book Review Program.

Order your copies from Amazon.