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How to Tell the Story of an Insurgency: Fifteen tales from Assam
A former militant is unable to reconcile his tranquil domesticity with his brutal past. A mother walks an emotional tightrope, for her two sons -- a police officer and an underground rebel -- fight on opposite sides of the Assam insurgency. A deaf and mute child who sells locally brewed alcohol ventures into dangerous territory through his interaction with members of the local militant outfit. How to Tell the Story of an Insurgency is an unflinching account of a war India has been fighting in the margins. Written originally in Assamese, Bodo and English, the fifteen stories in this book attempt to humanize the longstanding, bloody conflict that the rest of India knows of only through facts and figures or reports in newspapers and on television channels.
256 pages, Paperback
Published February 25, 2020
13 people are currently reading
220 people want to read
About the author
Aruni Kashyap
15 books59 followersAruni Kashyap is the author of The Way You Want To Be Loved, The House With a Thousand Stories, and the forthcoming How to Date a Fanatic. Along with editing a collection of stories called How to Tell the Story of an Insurgency, he is the translator of four novels from Assamese to English. A 2024 Carl and Lily Pforzheimer Foundation Fellow at Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University, he is also the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, the Faculty Research Grants in the Humanities and Arts Program, the Arts Lab Faculty Fellowship, and the Charles Wallace India Trust Scholarship for Creative Writing to the University of Edinburgh, his poetry collection, There is No Good Time for Bad News, was nominated for the 58th Georgia Author of the Year Awards 2022, a finalist for the Marsh Hawk Press Poetry Prize, and the Four Way Books Levis Award in Poetry.
His translations, which have been shortlisted for the 2023 and 2024 Armory Square Prize for South Asian Literature in Translation and VOW Book Awards 2024, include The Bronze Sword of Tengphakhri Tehsildar by Indira Goswami (Zubaan), My Poems Are Not for Your Ad Campaign by Anuradha Sarma Pujari (Penguin), An Illuminated Valley by Dipak Kumar Barkakaty (Penguin), and Ten Love Stories and a Story of Despair (Westland). He has served as a visiting writer at Lander University, Minnesota State University, Converse University, The College of William & Mary, Valdosta State University, Dibrugarh University, Assam Don Bosco University, and delivered the Tagore Lecture in Modern Indian Literature at Cornell University. His short stories, poems, and essays have appeared in Granta, The Boston Review, Electric Literature, Catapult, Bitch Media, The Kenyon Review, The LitHub, The Oxford Anthology of Writings from the Northeast, The New York Times, The Guardian UK, and others. He also writes in Assamese and is the author of a novel, Noikhon Etia Duroit, and three novellas. He is an Associate Professor of English & Creative Writing and the Director of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Georgia, Athens.
His translations, which have been shortlisted for the 2023 and 2024 Armory Square Prize for South Asian Literature in Translation and VOW Book Awards 2024, include The Bronze Sword of Tengphakhri Tehsildar by Indira Goswami (Zubaan), My Poems Are Not for Your Ad Campaign by Anuradha Sarma Pujari (Penguin), An Illuminated Valley by Dipak Kumar Barkakaty (Penguin), and Ten Love Stories and a Story of Despair (Westland). He has served as a visiting writer at Lander University, Minnesota State University, Converse University, The College of William & Mary, Valdosta State University, Dibrugarh University, Assam Don Bosco University, and delivered the Tagore Lecture in Modern Indian Literature at Cornell University. His short stories, poems, and essays have appeared in Granta, The Boston Review, Electric Literature, Catapult, Bitch Media, The Kenyon Review, The LitHub, The Oxford Anthology of Writings from the Northeast, The New York Times, The Guardian UK, and others. He also writes in Assamese and is the author of a novel, Noikhon Etia Duroit, and three novellas. He is an Associate Professor of English & Creative Writing and the Director of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Georgia, Athens.
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
October 12, 2020
"The curtain is open and, in the open window, the moon is framed. Why does the sight of the solitary moon move Nirmala so? This might she feels a kinship with it that she has never felt before. They are two of a kind: beings afloat in a dark, silent world. No one to talk to and no one to listen to them."
RATING: 3.5/5
Discussions about India often tend to centre only the Northern Hindi-belt. The South is usually ignored and the Northeast tends to disappear. These eight states have a long history of being massively neglected by the central government. Most of them have a violent past going back to the British colonial era and still continuing to the present. It is a progression of wars, constant erosion of the vibrant indigenous cultures, and North Indian hegemony. As a result, this region has been repeatedly embroiled in insurgent activities which have been met with a disproportionate military response from the government. A very draconian act (AFSPA) granting special powers to the Indian Armed Forces is still in effect in four states. The northeast is largely absent from the mainland imagining, reduced to facts, figures, and newspaper headlines, giving rise to stereotypes about the area and its people, leading to steady prejudicial discrimination. Hence, I am on a mission to read & showcase more books from here.
As you can tell from the title, this collection is focused on stories from Assam and all are about the insurgency. The themes deal with family, militancy, the idea of freedom and home, language and belonging. A common strand was a focus on religious and ethnic violence between communities. The stories don't hold back in terms of brutality, they reckon with a dark past and always attempt to humanise in order to show how easy it is for violence to break out. My favourite story in the collection was Kaushik Barua's "Run to the Valley" which uses one of my favourite literary devices in terms of narrative and was crazy good. I also liked Jahnavi Barua's "The Vigil", the source of the quote. This story tenderly highlights a mother's relationship with two very different sons. The Nitoo Das story, "Charred Paper", was another good one. I really like her poetry and it was great to read prose by her. Among the translated stories, I really liked the ones by Nandeswar Daimari and Manikuntala Bhattacharya. All over, it was a balanced collection and there wasn't a story that I did not like or outright hated. I was introduced to a few new writers whose work I now want to check out. Also, I look forward to reading similar anthologies.
Some Asides: I would have appreciated a longer introduction which described the turbulent history of the state in brief and highlighted the contexts of the stories in the anthology. A lot of non-Assamese readers, especially those not from the northeast, would be largely unaware of events so it could have been a helpful tool for them to gain a broader understanding. A glossary at the end providing meaning to region-specific terms borrowed from languages others than English and a brief overview of the literary traditions of Assam would have been useful.
RATING: 3.5/5
Discussions about India often tend to centre only the Northern Hindi-belt. The South is usually ignored and the Northeast tends to disappear. These eight states have a long history of being massively neglected by the central government. Most of them have a violent past going back to the British colonial era and still continuing to the present. It is a progression of wars, constant erosion of the vibrant indigenous cultures, and North Indian hegemony. As a result, this region has been repeatedly embroiled in insurgent activities which have been met with a disproportionate military response from the government. A very draconian act (AFSPA) granting special powers to the Indian Armed Forces is still in effect in four states. The northeast is largely absent from the mainland imagining, reduced to facts, figures, and newspaper headlines, giving rise to stereotypes about the area and its people, leading to steady prejudicial discrimination. Hence, I am on a mission to read & showcase more books from here.
As you can tell from the title, this collection is focused on stories from Assam and all are about the insurgency. The themes deal with family, militancy, the idea of freedom and home, language and belonging. A common strand was a focus on religious and ethnic violence between communities. The stories don't hold back in terms of brutality, they reckon with a dark past and always attempt to humanise in order to show how easy it is for violence to break out. My favourite story in the collection was Kaushik Barua's "Run to the Valley" which uses one of my favourite literary devices in terms of narrative and was crazy good. I also liked Jahnavi Barua's "The Vigil", the source of the quote. This story tenderly highlights a mother's relationship with two very different sons. The Nitoo Das story, "Charred Paper", was another good one. I really like her poetry and it was great to read prose by her. Among the translated stories, I really liked the ones by Nandeswar Daimari and Manikuntala Bhattacharya. All over, it was a balanced collection and there wasn't a story that I did not like or outright hated. I was introduced to a few new writers whose work I now want to check out. Also, I look forward to reading similar anthologies.
Some Asides: I would have appreciated a longer introduction which described the turbulent history of the state in brief and highlighted the contexts of the stories in the anthology. A lot of non-Assamese readers, especially those not from the northeast, would be largely unaware of events so it could have been a helpful tool for them to gain a broader understanding. A glossary at the end providing meaning to region-specific terms borrowed from languages others than English and a brief overview of the literary traditions of Assam would have been useful.
November 12, 2020
Edited by Aruni Kashyap, the 15 short stories in this collection feature writing from Assam written in English, Assamese and Bodo with the central theme of insurgency in the state. You will get to read authors whose works you have been familiar with but you will also discover the works of others that have not reached you yet. Each of the story featured in this collection are impassioned in their calls for humanity even as the semblance of life is torn apart by violence and gore outside, as much as the internal fear, prejudice and hate that keeps apart people from the close kinship that has tied everyone for generations.
The stories are brutally honest, they sear through you for they are about suffering and pain and suppressed trauma that the most vulnerable have to try to cope with for there is no choice: aged parents, elders, young children, women and men bristling with ideals, who do what they must, to survive, or try to. The socio cultural fabric of life as it was once is seen in the stories around community rites and observations while the politics of the Assam agitation over the years peeks through in the mention of marches and protest rallies and the way the mood of the people is reflected.
It is difficult to pick one favourite from the lot for each story has a voice that is unique in the way the author has crafted it and set it up under the shadow of the gun. The two stories originally written in Bodo stand out for me personally in the way the writing borders between socio political satire on one hand and dark comedy on the other.
The stories are brutally honest, they sear through you for they are about suffering and pain and suppressed trauma that the most vulnerable have to try to cope with for there is no choice: aged parents, elders, young children, women and men bristling with ideals, who do what they must, to survive, or try to. The socio cultural fabric of life as it was once is seen in the stories around community rites and observations while the politics of the Assam agitation over the years peeks through in the mention of marches and protest rallies and the way the mood of the people is reflected.
It is difficult to pick one favourite from the lot for each story has a voice that is unique in the way the author has crafted it and set it up under the shadow of the gun. The two stories originally written in Bodo stand out for me personally in the way the writing borders between socio political satire on one hand and dark comedy on the other.
June 6, 2020
Review: 4.5/5
A man gave up guns & decided to be part of the mainstream and yet he cannot live in peace. He is continuously haunted by his past, and the people around him as well as the administration makes it sure that he doesn’t forget it. In another case a mother waits till late night for her militant son to come home & have dinner with her while her other son who happens to be a police officer fights against the same militants.
Read the review on Just Another Bookaholic
A man gave up guns & decided to be part of the mainstream and yet he cannot live in peace. He is continuously haunted by his past, and the people around him as well as the administration makes it sure that he doesn’t forget it. In another case a mother waits till late night for her militant son to come home & have dinner with her while her other son who happens to be a police officer fights against the same militants.
Read the review on Just Another Bookaholic
January 4, 2022
How To Tell The Story Of An Insurgency by Aruni Kashyap has a granary of metaphors while writing about the best anecdotes from Assam.
What makes this book different? Well, when we think of Assam we only know about the language Assamese and there are hardly any English translations from the language. However, this anthology are polyphonic just like the people from Assam i.e. they only speak in Assamese but also Bodo.
These original stories in Bodo and Assamese were written by acclaimed and award-winning authors which have been carefully translated and edited by Aruni Kashyap. This book is not just the contribution of Kashyap but 15 other writers whose stories were waiting to be read.
The stories revolve around how common people turn into militants and how much it affects their families. It even delved deep into the controversial part where Indian army personnel do injustice and rape tribal women. Out of all the heart-warming stories, the best ones were surrender, colours and stone people.
Should stories from a violent land only have violence in them? Can a writer from Assam write a folk tale or a story that is completely unrelated when people are getting killed in the neighbourhood? Is that an act of resistance?
Anthologies provide the perfect space to depict the experience of the minorities, settler-communities and tribal people, and their experience of caste, class and a torn social fabric.
Assam is the geographical space where these stories are located; but these stories tell us many other things: how to depict violence, how to represent the resilience of common people in a space rented by political conflict, what role stories can play to begin conversations about justice and human rights and, finally, it teaches writers how to foreground the human experience while writing stories from an embattled region.
This will remind the reader of our common humanity and create more dialogue, and perhaps peace. I hope such anthologies are the beginning of the conversation.
What makes this book different? Well, when we think of Assam we only know about the language Assamese and there are hardly any English translations from the language. However, this anthology are polyphonic just like the people from Assam i.e. they only speak in Assamese but also Bodo.
These original stories in Bodo and Assamese were written by acclaimed and award-winning authors which have been carefully translated and edited by Aruni Kashyap. This book is not just the contribution of Kashyap but 15 other writers whose stories were waiting to be read.
The stories revolve around how common people turn into militants and how much it affects their families. It even delved deep into the controversial part where Indian army personnel do injustice and rape tribal women. Out of all the heart-warming stories, the best ones were surrender, colours and stone people.
Should stories from a violent land only have violence in them? Can a writer from Assam write a folk tale or a story that is completely unrelated when people are getting killed in the neighbourhood? Is that an act of resistance?
Anthologies provide the perfect space to depict the experience of the minorities, settler-communities and tribal people, and their experience of caste, class and a torn social fabric.
Assam is the geographical space where these stories are located; but these stories tell us many other things: how to depict violence, how to represent the resilience of common people in a space rented by political conflict, what role stories can play to begin conversations about justice and human rights and, finally, it teaches writers how to foreground the human experience while writing stories from an embattled region.
This will remind the reader of our common humanity and create more dialogue, and perhaps peace. I hope such anthologies are the beginning of the conversation.
November 3, 2021
รวมเรื่องสั้นจากรัฐอัสสัม พื้นที่ซึ่งอินเดียพยายามกำราบชนกลุ่มน้อยที่พยายามต่อสู้เพื่อปกครองตนเองมาตั้งแต่หลังบริติซรัจ อ่านมาประมาณแถวอัสสัม นาคาแลนด์ มณีปุระ เราไม่เห็นว่าพื้นที่พวกนี้เป็นอินเดียเลย มันมีการต่อสู้ ปะทะอยู่ตลอดเวลา จากเพราะหวังว่าอังกฤษจะคืนอำนาจให้พวกเขาปกครองกันเอง แต่กลับขีดพรมแดนแบบสั่วๆ มอบมันให้คนอินเดียทั้งหมด
หลายมุมมองจากผู้คนที่ใช้ชีวิตอยู่ท่ามกลางความตึงเครียด รุนแรง หวาดระแวง เศร้าโศก อดีตกบฏที่รามือมาใช้ชีวิตแบบคนธรรมดา แต่อดีตหลอกหลอนไม่ยอมปล่อยให้ได้ใช้ชีวิต แม่ที่ลูกชายทั้งสองยืนอยู่คนละฝั่ง การเข่นคร่าระหว่างชนกลุ่มน้อย กับเด็กผู้หญิงที่กลายเป็นสีแดงฉาน ผู้หญิงที่ทนทุกข์อยู่กับพ่อแม่ที่คร่ำครวญถึงแต่พี่ชายที่ทิ้งพวกเขาไปร่วมต่อสู้ ความหวังไร้เดียงสาของคนเป็นน้อง หลายเรื่องไม่ประณีประนอมต่อขวัญฉันเลย อย่างเด็กผู้หญิงที่หนีมาจากการฆ่าล้างครัวได้ แต่สุดท้ายก็กลายเป็นดอกไม้สีแดง ToT
หลายมุมมองจากผู้คนที่ใช้ชีวิตอยู่ท่ามกลางความตึงเครียด รุนแรง หวาดระแวง เศร้าโศก อดีตกบฏที่รามือมาใช้ชีวิตแบบคนธรรมดา แต่อดีตหลอกหลอนไม่ยอมปล่อยให้ได้ใช้ชีวิต แม่ที่ลูกชายทั้งสองยืนอยู่คนละฝั่ง การเข่นคร่าระหว่างชนกลุ่มน้อย กับเด็กผู้หญิงที่กลายเป็นสีแดงฉาน ผู้หญิงที่ทนทุกข์อยู่กับพ่อแม่ที่คร่ำครวญถึงแต่พี่ชายที่ทิ้งพวกเขาไปร่วมต่อสู้ ความหวังไร้เดียงสาของคนเป็นน้อง หลายเรื่องไม่ประณีประนอมต่อขวัญฉันเลย อย่างเด็กผู้หญิงที่หนีมาจากการฆ่าล้างครัวได้ แต่สุดท้ายก็กลายเป็นดอกไม้สีแดง ToT
May 13, 2021
One Story a Day
This is a book of fantastic collection of short stories (some really short). However, they leave an impact and you are left with it to linger on for some time. Conflicts, relationships, emotions and roles of politics and armed forces - you find everything. This is not to say that the book is entertaining. This should not be read with a mindset of reading for entertainment but for pondering to do.
My recommendation would be for any reader for this book to read one story a day. It really is a good book. I regret that I don't know Assamese now. Could have read the originals. Alas!
This is a book of fantastic collection of short stories (some really short). However, they leave an impact and you are left with it to linger on for some time. Conflicts, relationships, emotions and roles of politics and armed forces - you find everything. This is not to say that the book is entertaining. This should not be read with a mindset of reading for entertainment but for pondering to do.
My recommendation would be for any reader for this book to read one story a day. It really is a good book. I regret that I don't know Assamese now. Could have read the originals. Alas!
May 30, 2023
4.5 stars, docking just the half star for Juri Baruah's verbal diarrhoea. It's the only story unworthy of being part of this collection, and of being published altogether.
To me, one of the many admirable things about the editor's picks is that less than a third of these stories are originally written in English. That makes 11 stories that have been masterfully translated from Bodo and Assamese.
To me, one of the many admirable things about the editor's picks is that less than a third of these stories are originally written in English. That makes 11 stories that have been masterfully translated from Bodo and Assamese.
May 11, 2024
Fifteen short stories that describe life in a tumultuous region, marred by conflict. The stories are raw, unfiltered, with characters that are real, grey, yet doing the best they can and know to be. I found the Bodo stories searing at a different level, but all in all, a book that gave much insight into Assam's turbulent past. I grew up in Meghalaya myself but knew little of the conflict and this book was a revelation in that sense, truly.
January 7, 2021
A brutally honest take on the violent past of Assam. Fifteen different authors tell fifteen stories - all of a time in a place marked by terror, fear and search for identities. This book can be an eye-opener for anyone - those who have lived in Assam and those who have not, those who want to know about Assam and those who think they know.
May 9, 2022
This masterful collection really helped to me understand what underlies the news we watch almost everyday. A revolution, a lost brother, an unfortunate immigrant; a timeless collection of lives intertwined with the challenges that we are confronted with today. I bought this with me to Delhi, so that I can have a piece of home with me. I highly recommend this read!
March 21, 2020
A brilliant collection of stories from Assam's violent recent past
August 20, 2021
4.5🌟
ONE OF THE FINEST SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS RELEASED IN RECENT YEARS!
ONE OF THE FINEST SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS RELEASED IN RECENT YEARS!
December 12, 2022
Reading this book made me realise how less I know about north east and unrest over there that has destroyed so many lives.
November 1, 2023
Beautiful compilation of anarchical stories of Assam...One can hear the echoing voices of Assam, Assamese...An enchanting presentation of Assam for readers across the globe.
October 25, 2020
How To Tell The Story Of An Insurgency is a compilation of 15 stories about political and ethnic conflicts in Assam. The stories are compiled by Aruni Kashyap, one of the foremost names in Assamese literature. The focus of all the stories, as the tittle suggests, is about political and ethnic turmoil. The stories deal with themes like family, the idea of home, self-identity, insurgency, freedom, language and belonging. In all the stories, the characters are dealing with religious violence as well.
The tales in How Tell The Story Of An Insurgency are angry and courageous. The writing is earnest, almost to the point, as if the writers want to reject any kind of stylization, so the meaning remains clear. These are important stories about a people who have been largely ignored by the mainstream media, there stories need to be told to a larger audience. The stories are deeply human. Their anguish is easily felt and you realise that they are no different than us.
You can detailed review on http://theliterarycircle.com/book-rev...
The tales in How Tell The Story Of An Insurgency are angry and courageous. The writing is earnest, almost to the point, as if the writers want to reject any kind of stylization, so the meaning remains clear. These are important stories about a people who have been largely ignored by the mainstream media, there stories need to be told to a larger audience. The stories are deeply human. Their anguish is easily felt and you realise that they are no different than us.
You can detailed review on http://theliterarycircle.com/book-rev...
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews