Dear Reader,
Kohima-based PenThrill Publication, owned by writer and journalist Vishü Rita Krocha, has been coming out with some very good books over the years — some time back, I had written about one of them, a beautifully illustrated graphic non-fiction titled 1872, on the coming of Christianity in Nagaland (you can check it out here). Recently, Penthrill opened an independent bookstore, The StoryKeeper, in Kohima. In a report on the bookshop in EastMojo, Krocha was quoted as saying, “I have never read an e-book or digital book. My relationship with the physical book is so important… that even as a publisher, I have still not thought of venturing into that space. The experience of reading physical books is different, from the flipping of pages to the smell of books.”
That heady smell of fresh paper and ink is precisely what hit me when I opened a bunch of books Krocha had sent me. The thoughtfully designed volumes, all by her, contain poetry, short stories, and folklore. The poems — on rains, changing seasons, lost loves, nostalgia, and more — are simple, lyrical, and affective. Sample this, from the book Yearnings: “A crackling fireside,/ wandering thoughts,/ and a cat for company. (“XLVII”). Krocha had personalised the books with little handwritten notes, which made them all the more special.
The book I found the most fascinating is Tales from the Enchanted Village, a slight collection of stories which Krocha had heard in her childhood from her grandparents in her native village, Zhavame. As Krocha explains in the introduction, “Zhavame literally means ‘people of the enchanted lake’, and this is the very inspiration of the book title.” The book cover, showing three half-human, half-bovine creatures engaged in some activity while the full moon casts long, eerie shadows, immediately invites the curious in, and the stories live up to the promise of the intriguing image (which, we learn later, is a painting by the renowned visual artist from Nagaland, Krusielhou Tepa.)
What attracted me to these stories is the way they upend expectations of usual fairy/ folktales — to take just one example, the magical creatures here are no deus ex machina who drop from heaven to sort out human affairs. Rather, they are cornered, kept firmly under the humans’ thumbs, and made to do their bidding. In a story like “Litu”, two farmer brothers fool the supernatural creature of the title into giving them a charm stone that will always keep them well-fed. If they still die horrible deaths, it is simply because they are greedy, not because the creature exacts revenge.
Another way in which the stories are startling involves how, within the plots, crimes of negligence in the family are punished severely, even if the perpetrators are close relatives like the father. In two of the stories (“The Last Yodel” and “A Tree for a Home”), a son and a daughter, respectively, are abandoned by their fathers and left to die in the forest. They survive, of course, and at the end of the stories, when they are all grown-up and successful, get to meet the offending parent. The father in both cases is filled with remorse and die soon while the offspring continue to live happily.
In “Grains of Rice,” the trope of the deserting father takes a more sinister turn as the father tries to woo his adult daughter, not knowing that she is the child he abandoned. He dies of starvation soon after.
In “Love at the Grazing Site,” the love story of Dürule and Sacho has a high chance of tanking when the boy, Sancho, sleeps with another girl as soon as Dürule goes missing while Dürule cleverly steals Sacho’s best bull when he is not to be found. It is almost by accident that they still get to marry each other.
In their violence and darkness, these folktales are like the original fairy tales collected by the Grimm Brothers. One might assume they are meant for children but their content can surprise even adults. There is no attempt to shy away from the realities of life — parents can be cruel; apparent friends might be jealous and vindictive; non-normative characters who find themselves out of place in the humdrum world of petty desires can bond among themselves or with animals; even after having their wishes fulfilled, characters can spoil their lives with their vices. The stories from Zhavame are life lessons in their authenticity. One wonders how many stories like these are hidden in the hearts of villagers in remote corners of the country and are waiting for writers like Krocha to document them in books.
It is apt that Penthrill’s shop is called The StoryKeeper: in the EastMojo report referred to earlier, Krocha hopes that “the space will not just be about books, but also about sharing, learning, and connecting through each other’s life stories.” We wish her all the best.
When we meet next Saturday, I hope it thunders and rains because we need that ambience for the forthcoming newsletter — on hauntings. Stay with me.
See you soon,
Anusua Mukherjee
Deputy Editor, Frontline
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