16. A TERRIBLE MATRIARCHY

“I am Dielieno and I am five years old. I wish I didn't have to stay at my Grandmother’s home when I was growing up. I missed Mom and Dad every single day and I miss my brothers. If I had been at home, I would have been playing with them and they would have pampered me to no end since I am the youngest. I wish I didn't stay with her! However, now I no longer hate Grandma after Mother explained to me about the kind of life she had when she was younger!”

The simple, fluid, seamless narrative Esterine Kire gives her readers in A Terrible Matriarchy is worth a second read. There's not a second of solitude as the story set in a real backdrop, takes the onus of giving the reader the vitalities of a Naga life and its culture.

But one thing is for sure that I wouldn't like to have a Grandmother that Lieno had to grow up with! I had a wonderful Grandmom as a little girl and she was the best when it came to telling me and my cousins some wonderful stories; mostly detective stories! And when we asked her to say some horror stories, she would say, “There are no ghosts! Fear is the only ghost in our lives!” Oh, how I loved her!

15. ENCOUNTERS


I had bought ‘Encounters’ in Thimpu in 2009 after meeting Omair Ahmed while attending a two-day conference at Thimpu called Mountain Echoes. It wasn't only him that I met but a whole lot of other writers and Bollywood celebrities, who were not so snooty after all, except for Chetan Bhagat, who looked down at me as though I was some ‘pesky alien particle’, when I introduced myself and said I was from the Northeast of India! Well, this is not about Chetan anyway, whose books I have stopped reading a long time ago!

I completed reading Encounters a couple of months back. I took time to read it, not because it had the backdrop of atrocities on Muslims in India but more so because every page needed careful reading. The thoughts of the protagonist was so blatantly tangible for me. I was almost there with him when he was saddened and distressed by the innumerable incidents around him. I could feel the body-blows when vandals jumped on him while returning home from a game of chess with the very strict father of the only woman he loved; unfortunately for him,a Hindu. Every time he had broken ribs, his torn lips, the pages told me that there is more to come; more misfortune on a man whose only dream was to be a person to be reckoned with in the society and live in happiness! Omair tells me that more of his books are in the offing! A writer with a flair for the unpleasant truth!