Reading the short stories of Temsula Ao: looking towards an alternate-narrative
- Part 2 -

Kumam Davidson Singh *

Technically in her literature, Temsula does play with humour and language. She is also so aware that she is writing in English, a language which is not her own. She lets the army speak in Hindi in the story "The Jungle Mayor" while the village woman sends off her husband in disguise as a servant who is a militant and who is being searched for.

The couple of lines in Hindi creates a sense of humour, the linguistic awareness and difference, captures the sexual connotation and threat, violence and oppression that are perhaps legitimised by the power endowed upon them by the Centre in the name of so called "security". Temsula uses Hindi or any other regional dialect very rare. So her use of Hindi hints at all these.

One can always look for interpretations. In another story called "Saoba" which in Ao language means an "idiot" Temsula Ao looks at the scene of linguistic transformation, the use of English at certain junctures. She is quoting words like "convoy", "emergency", "curfew" and "situation" and telling the readers how they became part of the imagination of the people over long period of violence despite their newness in the beginning. People have helplessly living their lives in the midst of such military tension. Is there any safe space? Is there an in-between space that is safe? If we define the in-between space as the space occupied by the common people, then one has to define who these common people are.

Both space and identity have become very fluid. The possibility of an in-between space has been so much penetrated and intruded from both sides of the Government force and the underground militants. This space is always in threat and it's so unsafe. The identity of the so called common people is very fluid because often people are related to one of the sides of the force or militant or even both. How does one define and deal with a family in which a government force and an underground militant come from the same family?

In fact there is no in-between space while the lives of the people are caught in a perpetual web of violence. Temsula doesn't leave without exposing the hollowness and fraud nature of the so called "state forces". This doesn't undermine the oppressive and criminality of the Army and Central forces either. Temsula in her moving story "The Last Song" examines the nature of violence and crime against female in a place of tension. The extremely pitiable condition of law and order in these places and the manipulation of power and law by the Army is what this story is about. She mixes the personal and the political.

The law and judicial system is not there to first of all protect the women from such crime and second more tragically punish the criminal for such violations And one has to remember that such violations cannot be equated with violations of the same kind in a different set up because here the power structure is clearly different. There is just no justice perhaps because certain acts empower the Army.

She also engages and questions the notion of "nationalism" in the context of Nagaland. She deals with the Naga militancy vis-à-vis the Army. She is neither celebrating nor negating nationalism per se, but showing the flip-side of it, the price one has to pay for it and the violence involved there. From the story "Shadows" one cannot leave out, "when you have a gun in your hand, you cease to think like a normal human being." She is definitely questioning violence from a very humanistic ground. The rest one doesn't really need to say; all the conspiracies, killings, extortions are endless. If that is nationalism, it might not be worth achieving it. Nevertheless these kinds of violence do have a political and historical origin. Temsula comes out with another volume of short stories.

In the later volume of short stories "Laburnum for My Head" Temsula poses extremely complex questions. She links up poverty, violence and militancy in the story "The Letter". The man tries to extort money and he is killed in that process. But after his dead, the letter found from him shows the dead man's son asking money for his exam fees. Temsual does infuse sentiments and dilemma in a realistic situation. Here she is not even giving a simplistic opinion on what she has written. She has left it to the readers to decide.

And the readers do start looking at contemporary reality with a keen and insightful eye through this story. What often one takes for granted and as a part of life need a proper rethinking. If people and the governments themselves do not attempt at change, who else will come and do it? Only similar fates like this will go on and on; in search of a livelihood. These are some of the immediate concerns picked up from the two volumes of short stories.

Every single concern cannot be discussed entirely in one single paper. There are still other issues that Temsula talks about. Indeed the reality in Nagaland like some other states is too vast to be captured in a small text. It needs more and more writings and publications. In terms of her writing, she does employ the art of story-telling, oral culture which is traditional in that sense but not the stories per se. One gets an overview of the nature of violence.

The winner and victim dichotomy is no longer separable, only the policies are. There is no safe-zone, there is no escape and the idea of innocence of the common people is lost to a great extent. Then how does one deal with this kind of situation which is so rooted in history and the political and by now is already established as the living reality? People need to talk, need to face each other, the Government of state and the Centre need to tackle carefully and seriously. People need to respect each other, differences need to be respected and compromised as well.

Responsibility from all sides is of the most urgent task. What kind of responsibility? Levinas did talk about responsibility. Let's always remember that language is insufficient of expression and communication and the "other" cannot be known entirely. So in the "self/other" relationship, responsibility becomes crucial. I want to use the words of Levinas to explain the nature of this responsibility, "responsibility as responding to the other in an indeclinable fashion; responsibility as responding for oneself to the other person and its demand; and responsibility as responding for the other in the sense of substituting oneself for the other person in its responsibilities."

Here I come to my own explanation of the need to do away with the power politics involved in the "self/other" binary. Without taking away that hegemony any discussion or negotiation will not be successful. So I am talking of a "self/other" relationship based on differences alone. And the alternate-narrative based on the notion of this responsibility, language, "self/other" is not confined to literature only. This form of narrative implies at other forms or art and culture, political discourse, act of speech and communication.

And in my reading I see this kind of narrative being constructed to an extent in the short stories of Temsula Ao. But more effective construction and wider expansion to other sects is necessary. But last of all, please remember all these ideas and attempts at formulations in terms of ideological positions and narrative structure have no life and meaning and cannot be proliferated if at the start AFSPA 1958 is not repealed from the affected areas. This is also my first concern.

Concluded...

REFERENCES

1. Ao, Temsula, These Hills called Home: Stories from a War Zone, Zubaan and Penguin Books, 2006, New Delhi.
2. Ao, Temsula, These Hills called Home: Stories from a War Zone, Preface/Lest we forget, Zubaan and Penguin Books, 2006, New Delhi.
3. Ao, Temsula, These Hills called Home: Stories from a War Zone, Preface/Lest we forget-X, Zubaan and Penguin Books, 2006, New Delhi.
4. Ao, Temsula, These Hills called Home: Stories from a War Zone, Preface/Lest we forget-X, Zubaan and Penguin Books, 2006, New Delhi.
5. Ao, Temsula, These Hills called Home: Stories from a War Zone, Preface/Lest we forget-X, Zubaan and Penguin Books, 2006, New Delhi.
6. Ao, Temsula, These Hills called Home: Stories from a War Zone, 85, Zubaan and Penguin Books, 2006, New Delhi.
7. Temsula, Ao, Laburnum for My Head, Penguin Books , 2009, New delhi.
8. Hutchens, Benjamin C, Levinas:A Guide for the Perplexed, 19, Continuum, 2006, accessed here at , 8:00 pm 27 April 2012.