There are some books you read, just like that and books that
you cherish and never go back to reading. However, Janice Pariat’s Boats on Land is a book that belongs to a different league. Once you are done
reading the stories will continue to play in your head, unraveling just like a
film.
A beautiful collection of 15 unique short stories, Pariat
gives us tales from a land whose stories are much like ours yet forgotten or
lost in transition – Northeast India. Through these short stories, she takes
us into a world which is at once living in its past, present and dreaming of a
better ‘future’.
The very first story, A Waterfall of Horses, sets the mood
for an enchanting read. Taking one back to the 1850s, this is a story of the
tussle between the ‘bilati people’ aka the British and the villagers in Pomreng. Pomreng as the narrator describes is a smudge on the map of the
world and hardly visible to the outside world – a tiny spec of a Microcosm in
the Macrocosm. Peppered with myths and old world ideologies, the lives of locals
are suddenly disrupted by the ways of the outside world. Narrated through a
small boy, the story tells how the villagers use magic to rid the village of
the foreigners and in return have to flee as well because magic so strong, used
for good or bad, does leave a trace.
Dream of the Golden
Mahaseer is a story of two aging brothers and how the World Wars changed
their lives forever. Fighting inner demons, one takes to drinking while the
other dreams of the Golden Mahaseers. Here, Pariat introduces us to a variety
of superstitions and beliefs followed by the locals – planting a broom outside
one’s room so that water fairies or ‘puris’ as they are called, do not seduce
one away.
Sky Graves is packed with land legends where shape-shifting is
common or people taking the form of animals to safeguard their own is called
for. The
Keeper of Souls is another beautiful story that tells us many believe how
spirits of our loved ones live in the forests to watch over their living kin
and if the trees are felled these souls will have nowhere to go. The
Discovery of flight is a melancholy tale of losing a loved one to the
mysterious beings of the land.
To the outsider, the
Northeast is made up of one sect. We are unaware of their struggles, their
lives and their beliefs. To us, they are all north east Indians, period. But
like us Indians, each of them too has a different sense of identity. Invisible political
borders and ideologies have turned friends into foes and for Northeast India,
it is no different.
19/87 brings out the differences between the ‘Khasis’ and the ‘dkhars’ – one is the so-called insider and the other, the
outsider. Kite flying is used as a metaphor here to depict a sense of freedom
and dominance. Earning his daily bread as a tailor, Suleiman who has lived for
three decades here, is now being called as a dkhar. He is pronounced as an
outsider while he has lived here longer than the ‘new’ insiders. His home is
here and the very thought of leaving frightens him as he has never known what
lies outside and has nowhere to go.
My favourite story of the lot is Pilgrimage. It talks
about how life has drastically changed for people who have left their North
Eastern home towns for a better future and when they do come back, it is either
for a short holiday or treated as a retirement. While the protagonist in the
story wants to trace back her good old days, she is firmly told that one should
not be a pilgrim to the past. Aren’t we all ‘pilgrims’ to our past?
‘Has Shillong moved on with the world or has the world got
onto Shillong?’ This is a feeling many of Pariat’s protagonists voice in the
novel.
The Secret Corridor and Boats on Land talk of self-realization
and acceptance. The first one takes us into the adolescent world of Natalie who
is trying hard to fit in with the ‘cooler’ ones, forgoing notions of right and
wrong. It gives us an insight into the mind of a young girl who is struggling
to come to terms with her choice of sexual orientation, not chastising herself
for it but is in search of expressions.
The latter, Boats on Land, is beautifully
narrated in first person. It is almost poetry as the lyrical quality of the
depiction of the North East India country side is just brilliant. It makes you
want to be there. Here again, the story takes us through two lives. One who has
a normal childhood, blossoming into a lovely teenager with set ambitions,
guided by her parents, the other is dwelling in sadness. This is story is at
once full of facts as well philosophical in nature with initiations of
superstitions, myths and old world land legends.
