Hit and myths: Poems of love, tales of anger from Meghalaya
The poet and author Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih has just won another award, for works that weave past and present, what we’ve lost and are at risk of losing.
When he was in high school in Shillong, a classmate approached Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih for a favour. He really liked this girl in their school, he said, and wanted to write her a love letter. But he had no idea what to say. Could Nongkynrih help?
“The girl loved the letter I wrote, and accepted his courtship,” says the 60-year-old, chuckling. “Then word spread, and pretty soon I was writing so many of these love letters, in exchange for ‘tea money’. It was only much later that I realised they were my first attempts at poetry.”
He would later write love poems of his own (most of which he never delivered). And move on from there to published works.
Over about four decades, Nongkynrih has brought out more than a dozen collections of poetry, in Khasi and in English; two critically acclaimed English-language novels; and numerous anthologies, short stories and works of critical non-fiction.
He recently won the prestigious Shakti Bhatt Prize, in recognition of his body of work and his contribution to Indian literature. It is the latest of many he has won over the years, including Sparrow Literary Awards, the Veer Shankar Shah-Raghunath Shah National prize, the Northeast Poetry Award.
The Distaste of the Earth (2024), which uses a Khasi legend about star-crossed lovers to explore themes of religion, justice and communal conflict, has also been longlisted for the JCB Prize for Literature.
Nongkynrih’s writing, deeply rooted in the history, culture and natural beauty of his home state of Meghalaya, combines a deep yearning for an idyllic past with sharp-eyed, critical perspectives on contemporary issues such as sectarian violence, police brutality, environmental degradation, political instability, and the loss of Khasi identity.
If his poems started out prompted by love, his anthologies of folk tales were prompted by anger (more on that in a bit). Much of his writing, he says, is driven by a sense that we, as a species, are losing our way.
He himself, he adds, isn’t where he wants to be.
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Nongkynrih was born in the mountain town of Sohra (formerly Cherrapunji), and grew up amid picturesque hills, valleys and crystal-clear streams, cementing an early bond with nature. He even loved the incessant rain and fog, which had been known to drive visiting relatives to tears, he remembers.
“As the rain of Chile was to Neruda, the rain of Sohra, Sohra itself, are ‘an unforgettable presence’ to me,” he says.
When rain and mist kept the children indoors (his hometown was, after all, once called the wettest place on earth, and still holds world records for highest annual rainfall), Nongkynrih’s mother would gather them around the fire and tell them stories from Khasi folklore and from a body of religious myths and morality tales known as the khanatang.
“It was through these stories that I first became acquainted with the wisdom of my ancestors and developed a deep love and reverence for them,” he says.
The family eventually moved to Shillong. Nongkynrih hated the city, he says. He pined for his hometown.
But it was in school in Shillong that he was introduced to the writings of U Soso Tham (1873-1940), considered the torchbearer of Khasi poetry. By the time he had finished school, Nongkynrih was writing poetry for himself. Actually, he says, it was dedicated to a divorcee who lived in a nearby tenement.
The infatuation soon petered out, but his love for poetry had taken hold.
He was soon filling notebooks with odes to his beloved Sohra. It’s a theme he still returns to from time to time.
“No more do I hear the morning sounds of home:
birds warbling, cicadas whining, crows cawing,
chickens yapping about the yard and my uncle
readying for the cement factory”
he writes in the poem Hiraeth (Welsh for Longing; 2003).
“But the outside forms no part of my possession.
The heart that slithers out of its hole
To curl up in its sunshine warmth
Must risk being stoned.”
he writes in the poem The Fungus (2011).
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In-between came the anthologies of folk tales, driven by anger.
Over the years, Nongkynrih had come across collections by British and mainland Indian authors that misrepresented cherished Khasi fables, he says. “They were mere skeletons, a mockery of the moving beauties that were the original tales.”
Galvanised by indignation, he compiled a collection titled Around the Hearth, in 2007. A bit of that distaste is also evident in his genre-defying, 1,000-page breakout novel, Funeral Nights (2021).
“I was sick of all these writers who came here for a night and then wrote articles saying Khasi men are good for nothing,” he says. “Even more appalling is the ignorance of our own people. I wanted to educate not only strangers but especially the Khasis themselves.”
So, in Funeral Nights, a group of young people from Shillong head into the forest, hoping to observe a dying rite in which a tribal chief’s body, kept in a tree for nine months, is cremated in a six-day ceremony. They miscalculate the date, arrive in the forest early, and camp there, swapping 10 elaborate stories over 10 nights.
“Inspired by Boccaccio’s Decameron and the Arabian Nights… (the book is) an intensively researched and intricately rendered account of everything from the natural world to the sociopolitics of the Khasi tribe,” said a review by Sana Goyal in The Guardian.
Nongkynrih spent years doing research for the book, diving deep into the tribe’s mythology, religious philosophy and socio-political history.
The Distaste of the Earth involved a fair amount of research too. It fleshes out the myth of Manik Raitong or Manik the Wretched, a pauper and recluse who falls in love with the queen and immolates himself when their love is thwarted. It then uses this tale to represent a fictionalised slice of ancient Khasi life, and uses this fictionalised world to reflect on how our bonds with our selves, our communities, and our world, have changed.
“Ancient Khasis believed that humans were sent to Earth not as the crowning glory of God’s creation, but as honourable carers for Earth and its creatures,” Nongkynrih says. “We can see how important this kind of anti-anthropocentrism is, in this era marked by all sorts of earth-wrecking activities in the name of progress.”
Similarly, he points to the Khasi religion’s emphasis on living in peace and harmony with fellow humans. “The myths make it clear that the first duty of man is to know, respect and love his fellow man. Only this can bind men together in a functioning society. Today, we live in a world too drunk with religion, and even live-streamed genocides are committed in the name of God. But the ancient Khasis had already seen the harm that fanaticism could breed.”
QUICK FACTS
* Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih, 60, writes at a frenetic pace. He is currently co-editing an English-language anthology of stories from across the north-east. It is due out in February. There are also three poetry collections currently being pitched by his agent to publishers. One of these, Nameri: A Verse Romance, brings 208 short poems together in a single poetic narrative.
* Nongkynrih also recently finished writing a book of narrative essays on Khasi culture. And there are two books in Khasi making their way through the publishing pipeline: a poetry collection and a book of one-hour plays.
* What are his dreams for the future?“I live in Shillong but I only long for the life that I lost in Sohra,” he says. “I feel a burning desire, a terrible hiraeth, and my soul’s lament for Sohra, my place of repose, will not be silenced. One day, I will return to build a spacious home with wide open spaces, not hemmed in by neighbours.”