Have you ever regretted for not picking up a book earlier? I sure have. Here’s an ode to one of these books!
‘Everyday I saw clouds dropping lower and lower like omnious waves. The hills were blue, their outline rimmed in black, and the trees were still. Then fierce, hissing rain would cover the land like the sea’.
The Legends of Pensam by Mamang Dai
Introduction
I’m regretting now, I’ve never had bookish regrets like this for years. This book is an enchantress, an absolutely beautiful enchantress. The stories are lulling, it pulled me in to picturize the narration, to dream, to contemplate. The folklores, the enchanting description of nature, breathtaking portrayal of the Arunachal Pradesh gave me a book hangover. This book is certainly a tidbit for those who love reading contemporary Indian Writings in English.
PLOTLINE ANALYSIS
‘The Legends of Pensam‘ by Mamang Dai is a collection of short stories. They are all interconnected. There’s a story of a widow Pinyar and her son, interwoven in the folklore of supernatural being Miti Mili, the beliefs of indigenous people, their exquisite narration of the ancient stories are told in the mercurial prose.
The stories portray the colonial period, the Japanese wars, the landscape of Arunachal Pradesh, one of my favorite stories in this collection is ‘the words of women’. The story revolves around the rural women working in the mountains, cutting wood, cracking dry bamboo and carrying it back to the village, the raw portrayal of their demeanor. The generations of the families and their curiosity about learning the stories of the village are evocative.
CONCLUSION
Pensam means ‘In between’, the beautiful title syncs magically with the balmy stories. I picked this book up last month for the Northeast Readathon but I couldn’t read it, I was procrastinating relentlessly to read this beauty. I regret it now. I should’ve read this book earlier. Don’t be like Lavanya, if you are looking for a warm, sweet, beautiful short story collection! Get this right away guys!
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