TAKE THE LONG WAY HOME
Visier Meyasetsu Sanyu writes of the need to preserve Naga traditions , of fleeing into the jungles as a child, of travelling the world, and of finding peace
In the history of Naga political struggles, the village Khonoma occupies a unique place. “No other Naga village has ever enjoyed similar prestige or was strong enough to bully and levy such widespread tribute,” pronounced Pieter Steyn, the author of Zapuphizo: Voice of the Nagas. Khonoma was at the centre of Naga resistance to British colonial rule. It was burnt down and rebuilt multiple times. It was the home of AZ Phizo and Th Sakhrie, the two leading men of early Naga nationalism. It was also the birthplace of Visier Meyasetsu Sanyu, author of A Naga Odyssey: My Long Way Home.
Through his book, Visier, no less a Naga patriot than either Phizo or Sakhrie, strives to preserve the memory of the Naga rituals and traditions in danger of being lost due to western Christianity, and of the horrific tales of being nhanumia – an Angami term used to describe people forced to flee to the jungles due to war. Also in the memoir is his experience of being a refugee, of travelling the world propagating the Naga story, and of finding peace and home again. “This is a story I have to tell,” he insists, “and, in the telling, resolve my own trauma.”
Visier was born in 1950, the same year Phizo became president of the Naga National Council with the oath to ensure “the independence and sovereignty of Nagaland”. In 1951, Phizo’s NNC organized a plebiscite after which it claimed 99 percent of the Nagas had voted for full sovereignty. India’s first parliamentary election in 1952 was boycotted. A year later, thousands of Nagas turned their backs on Nehru, and according to some accounts, bared their posteriors during his visit to Kohima. The Free Naga Government was formed in 1954, and soon after, as the Indian army intensified its crackdown on Naga nationalists, a Naga army was created. In 1956, the NNC split even as the Naga constitution was approved. The faction led by NNC president Phizo chose armed struggle; the other led by its secretary Sakhrie favoured peaceful struggle. Sakhrie was soon abducted and killed. It was in the midst of this tumult that fiveyear-old Visier and his family and twothirds of the population of Khonoma fled to the jungles to escape the advancing Indian army. Khonoma burnt yet again. It was only in 1958, two whole years later, that the villagers emerged from the jungle when a general amnesty was declared.
Two years in the wild, constantly moving in fear of death, feeding on mushrooms, raw fruit, bush rats, birds and monkey meat can’t be easy. Add to the mix the fratricide, and the intra-clan and intra-village enmities that the fighting and suffering engendered. But Visier spares us the grim details. Instead, he talks of how the necessities of starvation and survival broke taboos, lessened the hold of tradition and give way to new perspectives on life and the world. When Dozo, Visier’s brother, was confronted while taking vegetables grown by someone else, he retorted, “We are not stealing! We are surviving!”
Visier later studied at the Sainik School, Bhubaneswar and in Shillong, went to college in Darjeeling, and earned a PhD from the North–Eastern Hill University (NEHU), Shillong. After a brief teaching gone cold,” but the “blast of anger in its vicinity had kept it warm.”
Then there are bats that observe a scene so purposefully that they “nudged the others awake for a very unusual sight.” Another scene is brought to life by observant spiders who somehow know “that Inspector Janardhan is plagued by haemorrhoids so that he cannot sit for too long.”
And there is the caricaturing of people in the village. Thambi “the stunningly dirty orphan” or Rappai “the dwarf.”
But underneath the clumsy writing and logic-defying insects is a story worth telling, a fictional town worth inhabiting.
The village drunk Joby is killing himself one bottle at a time until a retired policeman – Paachu Yemaan and his wife – Sharada decide to plot together to resurrect him. There are some truly lovely reflections on life and death in the pages of this story and also some micro-observations that do in fact hark back to a Malgudi-type original.
There is the hesitation in Paachu Yemaan’s wife Sharada in the way she approaches him on a difficult subject. “After almost a lifetime together,” Bhattathiri writes, “Sharada had still not found an appropriate noun or pronoun to attract her husband’s attention. Sometimes stint at Nagaland University, in 1996, he moved to Australia with his family and lived there until 2015 when he returned to Nagaland, to his Healing Garden near Khonoma.
Visier’s travels and work with other refugees and indigenous groups affirmed in him the importance of cultural rootedness. He likens losing one’s culture and language to losing one’s soul. He is critical of the westernized form of Christianity that the Baptist missionaries imported to Nagaland and elsewhere which portrayed all pre-Christian practices as evil, to be discarded. He believes this is wrong, and that the Christian gospel is culture neutral. Visier sees traditional concepts of Naga spirituality and ritual practices as being fully compatible with Christian values. Indeed, traditional Angami practices like kekinyi (the feast of peace between clans
MALGUDI REDUX
she would begin by saying ‘Actually…’, at other times it would be ‘Here…” and he adds, quite beautifully, this line. “If she was close enough to him, as she was now, she would only need to clear her throat and he would know that she was addressing him.”
Or the scene where Paachu Yemaan was too masculine to admit he was crying while watching a movie, so he “made all sorts of loud noises lest a sniffle escape.”
There is this tenuousness in the relationship between Joby, the central character in the book, and a little girl, Priya, who Joby drops to school every day. They escape to a phantasmagoria that holds them together against the cruel world they actually inhabit. In these scenes, we witness the beautiful lament of a lost romance and Joby’s long treatise on the nature of love and it’s fleeting, almost fictional quality.
Finally, there is the interplay between Joby and the village, that collectively drives him over the edge, that is precious. And the emotional arc that Paachu Yemaan crosses as he plays his part. But you have to use a pick-axe to cut through the careless writing and get to it.