5. Mishing Link

I have been reading the book as if the world would end the very next second. It was riveting and captivated me to no end. I somehow never anticipated that a 96 page book could actually turn me into a bloody leech and that this leech would squirm to drink up each and every word in the book.

Mishing written by Yeshe Dorjee Thongchi, in Assamese, somewhat demystified a lot about the Sherdukpen community of Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh. The Mishing (The spirit of a person, which travels between spaces to meet the people he loves while he is still alive) of an old driver goes to meet the protagonist in a hotel. He tells him gory secrets during his employment as a driver with the protagonist’s father.  The protagonist is pretty much shocked learning about things he never knew as a young boy, more so because he stayed away from home most of the time studying in a distant locale. His seething anger was pacified only after meeting in spirit form the long lost driver who preferred to run away from their place, fearing for his life, which he saw as an apparition on a fateful evening. He saw that the truck he used to drive rolled down the hill killing the owner’s second wife and little baby. However, he couldn’t find his body in the debris of the car, further aggravating his fear.

A couple of days after the Mishing makes a visitation to the hotel where the protagonist was lodged in during his stay in Guwahati, the ailing driver returns to the city in person to meet the protagonist for one last time before his final destination.

Every page is worth turning and reading. Thrilling to the core.