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Waiting for the Dust to Settle
Ten-year-old Rakovei watches the army convoy rushing daily past his house in Senapati town and dreams of the day when he too will be a soldier. It is only when tragedy strikes his family that he comes to see the truth behind the glamour of military uniforms…
Set in Manipur during the 1980s and 90s, this novel follows the shared destinies of Rakovei and his family and community. Life is peaceful in the Naga villages around Senapati, until the spring of 1987, when cadres of the Nationalist Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN) attack the Assam Rifles outpost at Oinam Hill, and brutal retaliation follows—codenamed Operation Bluebird. Village after village is occupied, and young Rakovei, visiting his native village of Phyamaichi, witnesses the horror—ordinary men and women tortured and executed; homes and shops ransacked and burnt down. Deep disillusionment sets in as Rakovei begins to understand how his people suffer, caught in the war between the Indian Army and the Naga underground. The only chance of even basic security seems to lie far away, in the ‘mainland’, but it comes with the dark shadows of prejudice and racism.
Waiting for the Dust to Settle provides a poignant, often searing, glimpse into the realities of life for ordinary Nagas in the turbulent final decades of the twentieth century, even as it chronicles with great sensitivity the resilience of these men and women caught between hope and despair.
Set in Manipur during the 1980s and 90s, this novel follows the shared destinies of Rakovei and his family and community. Life is peaceful in the Naga villages around Senapati, until the spring of 1987, when cadres of the Nationalist Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN) attack the Assam Rifles outpost at Oinam Hill, and brutal retaliation follows—codenamed Operation Bluebird. Village after village is occupied, and young Rakovei, visiting his native village of Phyamaichi, witnesses the horror—ordinary men and women tortured and executed; homes and shops ransacked and burnt down. Deep disillusionment sets in as Rakovei begins to understand how his people suffer, caught in the war between the Indian Army and the Naga underground. The only chance of even basic security seems to lie far away, in the ‘mainland’, but it comes with the dark shadows of prejudice and racism.
Waiting for the Dust to Settle provides a poignant, often searing, glimpse into the realities of life for ordinary Nagas in the turbulent final decades of the twentieth century, even as it chronicles with great sensitivity the resilience of these men and women caught between hope and despair.
224 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
January 14, 2021
In his debut novel, Veio Pou weaves fiction to chronicle the forgotten history of Naga people, a past whose dust, even after three long decades, is yet to settle.
It is set against the backdrop of Indo-Naga conflict in Northeastern India. At the center of this novel is the Operation Bluebird, a counter-insurgency operation, carried out in the state of Manipur in 1987 by Assam Rifles (An Indian armed force), in response to an attack on one of their posts by Naga undergrounds (people from Naga tribe in North-Eastern States fighting for a soverign state) in which people of thirty villages were brutally tortured by the army.
By spinning the narrative around the operation, the author attempts to give voice to the otherwise erased account of a people’s history from the consciousness of a country.
My review for this book is published here:
https://borderlessjournal.com/2021/01...
It is set against the backdrop of Indo-Naga conflict in Northeastern India. At the center of this novel is the Operation Bluebird, a counter-insurgency operation, carried out in the state of Manipur in 1987 by Assam Rifles (An Indian armed force), in response to an attack on one of their posts by Naga undergrounds (people from Naga tribe in North-Eastern States fighting for a soverign state) in which people of thirty villages were brutally tortured by the army.
By spinning the narrative around the operation, the author attempts to give voice to the otherwise erased account of a people’s history from the consciousness of a country.
My review for this book is published here:
https://borderlessjournal.com/2021/01...
March 22, 2021
From the Unsettled Dusts of Manipur
Published on The Chakkar
In July 1987, the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN) attacked one of the Assam Rifles’ settlements, killing nine soldiers and fleeing away with the outpost’s arms and ammunition. What followed in response was ‘Operation Bluebird’: a military crackdown on innocent villagers, series of arbitrary arrests, and humiliation of people in Oinam, a village in the Senapati district.
An unfulfilled dream
Ten-year-old Rakovei is fascinated with army men. He wants to be like them. Being in the army will earn him respect, he believes, make him fearless, and give him power. He sees their convoys passing by on NH 39 from the front room of his house. The sound that the vehicles make is “music” to his ears.
Grandmother Toukhue believes stories are remembered when sung. “When we grew up, it was a matter of pride to be able to sing songs and narrate tales.” She’s afraid that the modern education system is making children strangers to their history.
On Christmas, Rakovei requests for a kids’ army uniform as a present. His parents—Khole and Sanei—insist for a different gift, but eventually, acquiesce to their only child’s insistence. The family visits their native village, Phyamaichi, for Christmas, a village formed in 1944 where everyone is related to one another. Rakovei is attracted to village life, loves spending time with his cousins, and listening to stories from his grandmother, Toukhue. She “was a treasure trove of stories—stories about animals, spirits, people, and all sorts of things about the grand and glorious past.”
During the festivities, Rakovei’s uncle, Lounü, asks him what he wants to become when he grows up. He pauses at first, fearing expressing his desire in front of people who despise the army, and then, speaks his mind. Sanei, the boy’s mother, is disturbed by this. She tells Rakovei of the story of how her father—Rakovei’s grandfather—was interrogated by the army because he was an informant for the undergrounds (UGs). He was given electric shocks and had to bear all sorts of torture until the day he was discarded lifeless at their doorstep. She still remembers the horror of imagining her father in this state. A desire for vengeance grew in her heart.
But it wasn’t his mother’s plea that made him detest army men, it’s his uncle, Lounü’s. Fed up of growing corruption in the government office where he was applying for a job, Lounü threw a chair at an official. The story was covered by local newspapers, and he had to change his name to Lenny to protect his identity. But he was soon on the army’s radar. ‘Lenny’ was also interrogated during the infamous Operation Bluebird, and thrashed and abused to the point that his back ruptured during the investigation. “Looking at his uncle, now immobilized because of them, a fresh anger sprouted inside [Rakovei]. Somehow, something changed in him that day.”
‘Do they tell you stories like I tell you?’
The Northeast has a rich tradition of oral storytelling. There’s even a story to explain the wrath that the Brahmaputra river unleashes: A beautiful girl married a snake, who transformed himself into a handsome man. When she became pregnant everyone knew it’ll be an unusual birth. She was made to give birth into a pot of boiling water. Of all the snakes that were born, all died except one whose head was smeared. “Since that time, people believed that the ‘smear-headed snake’ appeared whenever the river swelled to claim lives as revenge.”
Read the full review at The Chakkar my link text
Published on The Chakkar
In July 1987, the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN) attacked one of the Assam Rifles’ settlements, killing nine soldiers and fleeing away with the outpost’s arms and ammunition. What followed in response was ‘Operation Bluebird’: a military crackdown on innocent villagers, series of arbitrary arrests, and humiliation of people in Oinam, a village in the Senapati district.
“Even after 28 years the memory of those atrocities is alive,” Nandita Haksar wrote for Scroll when all charges against the Assam Rifles, for gross violation of human rights, were disposed of. It’s those atrocities and unforgiving memories that form the core of Veio Pou’s debut novel Waiting for the Dust to Settle (2020, Speaking Tiger). Set in Manipur in the 80s, the story draws from real-life incidents, blending the personal and the political.
An unfulfilled dream
Ten-year-old Rakovei is fascinated with army men. He wants to be like them. Being in the army will earn him respect, he believes, make him fearless, and give him power. He sees their convoys passing by on NH 39 from the front room of his house. The sound that the vehicles make is “music” to his ears.
Grandmother Toukhue believes stories are remembered when sung. “When we grew up, it was a matter of pride to be able to sing songs and narrate tales.” She’s afraid that the modern education system is making children strangers to their history.
On Christmas, Rakovei requests for a kids’ army uniform as a present. His parents—Khole and Sanei—insist for a different gift, but eventually, acquiesce to their only child’s insistence. The family visits their native village, Phyamaichi, for Christmas, a village formed in 1944 where everyone is related to one another. Rakovei is attracted to village life, loves spending time with his cousins, and listening to stories from his grandmother, Toukhue. She “was a treasure trove of stories—stories about animals, spirits, people, and all sorts of things about the grand and glorious past.”
During the festivities, Rakovei’s uncle, Lounü, asks him what he wants to become when he grows up. He pauses at first, fearing expressing his desire in front of people who despise the army, and then, speaks his mind. Sanei, the boy’s mother, is disturbed by this. She tells Rakovei of the story of how her father—Rakovei’s grandfather—was interrogated by the army because he was an informant for the undergrounds (UGs). He was given electric shocks and had to bear all sorts of torture until the day he was discarded lifeless at their doorstep. She still remembers the horror of imagining her father in this state. A desire for vengeance grew in her heart.
But it wasn’t his mother’s plea that made him detest army men, it’s his uncle, Lounü’s. Fed up of growing corruption in the government office where he was applying for a job, Lounü threw a chair at an official. The story was covered by local newspapers, and he had to change his name to Lenny to protect his identity. But he was soon on the army’s radar. ‘Lenny’ was also interrogated during the infamous Operation Bluebird, and thrashed and abused to the point that his back ruptured during the investigation. “Looking at his uncle, now immobilized because of them, a fresh anger sprouted inside [Rakovei]. Somehow, something changed in him that day.”
‘Do they tell you stories like I tell you?’
The Northeast has a rich tradition of oral storytelling. There’s even a story to explain the wrath that the Brahmaputra river unleashes: A beautiful girl married a snake, who transformed himself into a handsome man. When she became pregnant everyone knew it’ll be an unusual birth. She was made to give birth into a pot of boiling water. Of all the snakes that were born, all died except one whose head was smeared. “Since that time, people believed that the ‘smear-headed snake’ appeared whenever the river swelled to claim lives as revenge.”
Read the full review at The Chakkar my link text
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews