your book wrestling day Recently released. What was it like to create a book with Naga characters and set in Kohima, which is rare for an Indian children’s publication in English?
It was a dream come true. I ventured into writing books for children because I could not find any picture books for children that featured Naga characters or places for my own children to read. There are only so many times one can ask or try to persuade other writers to fill that gap. So, I wrote my first picture book titled UkepenuopfüA retelling of the Angami origin myth, with my own ‘masala’. Locally, it was a huge success as it allowed many parents and children to see themselves and their life worlds in a book for the first time. When Sayoni Basu asked if I could write a book set in Nagaland, I jumped at the opportunity to give not only Naga children, but children in India and elsewhere, a glimpse of my beautiful home town and its culture through Wrestling Day.
You have a very gentle approach to a subject that is often considered hyper-masculine and aggressive. Anyingu, a boy about to debut as a wrestler, is upset because he has forgotten to take his mother’s shawl with him. “It is believed that if you wear your mother’s shawl while wrestling, it brings strength and protection,” says his cousin Ashiu. What excited you to write this story?
Very glad to hear your evaluation. Thank you! Traditionally, Naga wrestling was certainly an exclusively men’s sport, but that did not mean that women did not or did not participate in other ways – be it as mothers, sisters and wives supporting the wrestlers, or the many ways women contributed to the organization of matches. Wrestling is truly a community event – one that thrives on the synergy of men and women working together. Through my story, I wanted to inspire two little girls to ‘save’ their cousin, whom they clearly idolize. I was very impressed that one of the all-time greats of Naga wrestling, Kejhalili Keretsu, raised this topic when he read my book Wrestling Day. At the Kohima launch, he gave a moving speech about the role of women in his life, which made him a great wrestler.
The book uses a lot of non-English words, relying on readers to get the meaning from context rather than giving them a glossary. This is quite rare in children’s books. What was the thought process behind this?
This was a colonial thought process. If we imagine stories in their original form and intention – as oral – then language is the most profound way for a listener to get a feel for a people or a culture. In childhood, we were taught to address elders in the local language. I teach this to my children too. This is the most intimate way to connect with someone. As a poet, I’m always thinking about how my words sound, what kind of impact they create. When I write my stories, I also imagine them being spoken – if this story were being read, how unnatural it would feel for a little girl in a Kohima village to call her uncle ‘Uncle’, these words Affujaao, Apfujaao etc., depict kinship with such complexity that English cannot match it. and like things Mesu – a water vessel made from dried gourd peels – does not exist anywhere else, so it felt right to introduce a new word for the verbal melee that is the English language.
You use social media to promote indigenous textiles. How was the experience of working with illustrator Rishita Loitongbam on the clothes worn by your characters?
Sayoni Basu, my editor at Duckbill Books, proposed a unique way to put together a wrestling day. She corresponded with a painter, but we would communicate through her, not directly. I have a passion for textiles and a lot of my research focused on illustration for my previous book Ukepenuopfü Too. I paid equal attention to the images and information shared with Rishita. I liked the fact that Rishita understood the cultural and political importance of accurately representing the characters’ costumes. Furthermore, his depictions of Kohima and its surrounding places were thoughtfully created and I commend him for that. Most of the feedback I get from local readers involves praise for his illustrations, especially about how they inspired the view of our city life in his book.
tell us about it the only childYour book proposal received the Neve Literature Festival (NLF) Fellowship for Children’s Book Creators.
This book is proving devastating to me but it is also my chrysalis. The saying ‘those who can’t, teach’ keeps rubbing salt on my creative wounds. I am grateful that I was awarded the fellowship. It has allowed me to think more deeply about what a children’s book is, and to appreciate the difficulty as an academic of translating my ideas into a story that people will read.
The book is about KV, a boy of mixed tribal descent. His father is Angami and mother is Yimkhiung. He has been an only child for about 10 years when his parents became pregnant again. The father, who is an administrative officer, gets a posting in Shamtor district from where his mother hails. So, after living in Kohima, he has to move to an interior and remote place with his family and new sister. This book is about his first year there, his adventures and discoveries.
I really hope that this book will open up a new part of Nagaland to Naga readers and readers from elsewhere. As part of this fellowship, I went on a field trip to Shamtor district where the book is set and found a place rich with stories. I want to try to get some of that into the book.
At a writers’ retreat a day before the Neev Literature Festival in Bengaluru, you said, “Reading is about preparing children for life. Why are we sanitizing children’s books? The structure of childhood we hold on to is colonial. Indigenous traditions of storytelling do not infantilize children in this way.” Who do you hold responsible for this sanitization, colonization and infantilization?
Perhaps not so much the ‘who’ but the what – events and forces such as colonialism, neo-colonialism and capitalism have given rise to ways of thinking about childhood that have shifted from one class or culture to another. Even if imposed, the sense in which Pierre Bourdieu interpreted and associated ‘taste’ has simply been made aspirational.
At the same time, the ways in which these structures of childhood are organized into silos to better facilitate transactions perpetuates a certain network of profit and exploitation. When we consider that for many children literacy is the result of coming to school for a meal, the discussion of whether they are reading ‘age appropriate’ books and how we categorize books as such is almost ridiculous, bordering on immoral.
A young man I know, who grew up in the interior of Nagaland, read the Bible from cover to cover several times as a child – it was the only book he had to read. A similar experience is so poignantly captured by Betty Smith, in one of my all-time favorite books that I read as a child (I was 10), A tree grows in BrooklynWhere the only mother is francie nolan complete works of shakespeare and this holy bible To read to his children.
I loved to read, but ‘children’s books’ were hard to come by, so apart from my cousin’s wonderfully illustrated Beatrix Potter books or the picture books that my aunt would bring for me on her twice-yearly trips to Darjeeling to drop off her children, or the books that my parents would bring for me from their travels, I had to make do with the books at home.
I am also fortunate to have grown up in a bookish home. Both my parents love reading. But after I read my quota of ‘children’s books’, I read my parents’ copy of the book gone With the Wind When I was eight years old, I was scolded without asking permission, not congratulated. Retrospectively, I consider myself lucky to have outlived Enid Blyton. I didn’t know that Harold Robbins was not ‘age-appropriate’ until I reached those pages, and by then, it was too late to stop – it didn’t go well, the books were rearranged on the shelf, I think one was even burnt. Since my father is a gynecologist, there was a graphic labor manual, and yes, Sidney Sheldon’s encouraging motions. I often wonder whether I would have become such an avid reader if my parents had taken as much care and control over my reading as I do with my own children.
It is clear that, especially in rural or small town India, and from neck level down in our social hierarchy, the idea of ’children’s books’ becomes redundant. I like to think that the connection with books ‘down here’, if there is one at all, is more chaotic and visceral. I imagine that children, starved for words in addition to other essentials, snatch up whatever they can read and, in the process, mount a strong resistance to the world literary market and its disciplinary forces.
Chintan Girish Modi is a journalist, teacher, poet, fiction writer, literary critic and peace builder. His work has appeared in various anthologies, including Borderlines: Volume 1 (2015), Clear Hold Build (2019), Fearless Love (2019), and Bent Book (2020).
