Several people have asked me why I chose to write a novel set against the backdrop of the Assamese insurgency. The truth is that I had to deal with the subject because my generation has grown up under the shadow of this violent conflict. It is impossible not to tell stories set amid the conflict because almost all my memories of childhood and adolescence have been shaped by it. In fact, when I was in my teens one of the most shameful episodes of human rights violation under Indian democracy was unfolding. Throughout high school, I read reports in Assamese papers about the discovery of mutilated bodies or the massacre of entire families (such as poet and former insurgent Megan Kachari’s family) and heard stories from people in our ancestral village. My generation grew up amid this normalised sense of fear. Since it seemed so regular, and hence “normal”, a lot of us didn’t pay much attention to it until it touched us in some way. That happened to me in 2001, when a person called Jyotish Sarma was killed not very far from my house. The next morning, I was waiting for my school bus on Zoo Road Tiniali, Guwahati, when a few young men riding a Bajaj scooter stopped to tell me that I should return home, “because soon there will be trouble”.
Posted on: Fri, 28 Jun 2013 05:55:52 +0000
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