A couple of days ago in a sunny day, not so scorching, ultimately, I decided to spend a day with the debut anthology of poetry “And the Hills Chose to Speak”; unveiled recently for the readers by Sikkim-based poet Yumita Rai. Published by Bukant, a new publication house based in Salabri (Siliguri, West Bengal India), is brilliant in many ways. The Poet attempts to converse with her readers in various tones, themes, and moods. The poet is born and brought up in Darjeeling so it’s natural to see her language and poetic dimension shaped by the favour of Darjeeling. At least in this book we see her love for the Hills she was born with and has no hesitation to revel in it and relive it again through language, symbols, and poetics metaphor. The poetic actions in the book mainly take place in Darjeeling Hill and surrounding areas. The whole of Darjeeling unfolds before your eyes. The poem Hiraeth has had a lasting impact on my mind. Let us see what the poem speaks about.
Hiraeth
VII
A two and a half kattha* plot
in the vest lands
of the dusty, sweltering, and clangourous
Siliguri town
is where Sukman
has to build a new world
for his displaced family of eight
now.
Two and half kattha
in the vested land,
of this malaria-infested plains,
the worth of his loyalty
to the political ideals
he held close –
so close that
his own brethren
took arms against him,
torched his ancestral home
and hounded him and his family
brandishing khukuri* and faggots
flashing hatred in their bloodthirsty eyes
for days on end.
To the land
where he belonged
and which
he believed belonged to him,
he became a traitor overnight.
And his birth-land
almost his graveyard.
Sukman,
a hillman
nursing this festering wound
now vehemently swears
the hills no longer exist for him.
The hills too
like his hundred-year-old ancestral house,
have been gutted down to ashes.
The gluttonous fire consumed it all.
The people – his own people,
are all dead to him, as he is to them.
He curses the Gorkha blood
flowing in his veins
and swears vehemently
to sever all ties with the hills.
Yet he lovingly mixes a handful of earth
(whisked away as contraband
from his birthland)
to make a red mud chulha*
in the sanctum sanctorum
of his new home.
Sukman,
a skilled craftsman,
hunched over a block of jarool wood
on hot and humid summer days,
delicately carves out with his dexterous hands
the familiar contours of serene Khanchendzonga
to adorn the wall of his new home
and
his scrawny and restive fingers
dance all day,
as they did over the three-leaved green bushes
sprawled on acres of beatific hill terrain,
but now among warm bamboo strips and dry straw
as they deftly weave doko* and gundri*,
on the sun-baked veranda of his new home.
Sukman,
a hill farmer
plants ek jhyang * titepati*
ek jhyang
sishnu*, amlisho, apamarga, parijaat, bhimsenpati
and a few saplings of dalley,
in his small dry patch
of this two and half-katha plot
received as ex-gratia
in exchange for acres of fertile farmland
in the cool and misty hills,
a supreme sacrifice
for his beliefs and ideologies.
Spitting out the residue
of iron-laden bore well water
from his aluminum mug,
Sukman travels back to his land
everyday
through the pages of Sunchaari*
inhaling the familiar smell of the hills
with his mind.
He has always proclaimed to loathe
the very hills that he now tries to replicate
here
in this two and half of kattha plot,
where he is forced to rehabilitate
his displaced family of eight
now.
Sukman, a hillman
will always live and die
a hillman
no matter where he is,
even in this faraway land
in the sweltering plains
that has given him
and his family a refuge
and which
he proclaims is his only home
now.
Written in narrative style the poem poignantly portrays the struggle of Sukhman to relocate and establish his family of eight in an alien land and his enactment of living a sham life ( not true to self) in two-and-a-half katha-vested land received in exchange for not forsaking his ideologies and party line at the height of Great Agitation of Gorkhaland, is discerning yet tellingly expressive of Hiraeth. The term Hiraeth, used especially in the context of Wales or Welsh culture is the deep longing for something, especially one’s home. A blend of homesickness, nostalgia, and longing. “Hiraeth” is a pull on the heart that conveys a distinct feeling of missing something ……mountains and valleys. In Nepali, we can loosely translate the term into deep “pahad prem” “pahad samjhera man dukhnu”. In the poem, the character Sukhman is branded as a traitor for harbouring political ideals, not in line with the dominant Gorkha ideals, so permanently exiled to Siliguri. However, one can see in the poem, Sukhman does not show an iota of remorse for his action and has happily accepted his fate as a branded traitor for his belief in political ideals and ideologies not in confirmation of political nationalism espoused by the majority for self-determination and self-governance within Indian sovereignty. His surrender to the political ideals of his akka is so firm that he has no compunction for exchanging the acres of his land back home for two and half kothha’s of vested land in Siliguri ( malaria-infested dusty, sweltering, and clangourous) offered to his family as compensation. He has no guilt for turning his 100 years of ancestral home into ashes for adhering to his party line. Sukhman prefers to curse the Gorkha Blood flowing through his vein rather than preferring to curse his political leanings and loyalties.
” Sukman,
a hillman
nursing this festering wound
now vehemently swears
the hills no longer exist for him…
…
The hills
The people – his own people,
are all dead to him, as he is to them.
He curses the Gorkha blood
flowing in his veins
and swears vehemently
to sever all ties with the hills.”
Now the main question is: Can a hillman ever live as a Plain man??
Whether you are a champion of the hill cause or a misplaced ideologue and a prodigal son can you relegate your love for the hill?
Sukman,
a hill farmer
plants ek jhyang * titepati*
ek jhyang
sishnu*, amlisho, apamarga, parijaat, bhimsenpati
and a few saplings of dalley,
in his small dry patch
of this two and half-katha plot same ”
…
Sukman travels back to his land
everyday
through the pages of Sunchaari*
inhaling the familiar smell of the hills
with his mind.
He has always proclaimed to loathe
the very hills that he now tries to replicate
here”
Here lies the crux of the poem. In the concluding/ subsequent stanzas of the poem the brilliance of the poet and the poem come to the fore. Sukhman has a misplaced notion that he can recreate his surrounding akin to the hill for his family and live there. Sukhman, smuggle a piece of earth from the hill and build a chula (oven) in his newly constructed home. A master craftsman he is: he works on jarool wood to create Kanchendzonga-like contours to adorn his house wall. He weaves a doko and gundri for his sikuwa (veranda). He plants titepati, sisnu, amliso, bhimsen pati parijat dalley, etc in his two-and-a-half kathha land to create his hill-like surrounding. A good poem does not tell, but shows. Here the poet does not tell how much sukhman misses his homeland. But shows us the deeply ingrained hiraeth for his homeland in very ironic tones through his series of actions. Here the brilliance of Yumita as a master poet shines: the poet skillfully employs the literary techniques of objective corelative to show how unconsciously sukhman misses his homeland and vainly strives to recreate surroundings like his homeland. What is the use and significance of bhimsenpati, daily amliso titepati in plain if it’s not in its natural habitat? In plain, we can plant dalley. But will it give the same aromas as in the hill? What about the amliso, titepati, and bhimsenpati? Will they have the same socio-religious significance as in the hills? Or more importantly, the ecosphere created with help of hill plants will pacify Sukhman’s longing for his ancestral home? All these series of actions of Sukhman instantly evoke sympathy for him in the minds of the reader. What makes the reader pity Sukhman? It’s not that he is branded and treated as a traitor and banished from Darjeeling. Rather he has a kind of hubris’
In the last stanza, the poem famously says: “a hillman
will always live and die
a hillman
no matter where he is” is true not only in the case of Sukhman but every hillman, exiled or not. The hill indelibly leaks into every person.
The character Sukhman unmistakably reminds us of the famous episode of the celebrated poet of the hill BIKASH GOTAME being branded as a traitor for his ideologies and banished from Darjeeling hill during agitation and forced to live an exiled life in Siliguri yearning for his return to his homeland. The uncanny similarity between the poet BIKASH GOTAME and the character Sukhman is merely coincidental. Any discerning reader would easily see Bikash in the story of Sukhman. However, thousands are displaced not only from the hills but within the hills for supporting or opposing the cause of the hills. Even in the hills, some people are living as outsiders because they were forced to relocate to new villages because of harbouring different party lines. They are forced to exist as aliens in their own place. Some are displaced emotionally and psychologically.
The poem hiraeth can be read as a quintessential example of displacement in literature. The displacement theme can be located as a sub-motif in post-colonial and diasporic literature. The theme of relocation, displacement, identity, alienation, migration and the processes of assimilation are the major subtext of postcolonial literature. However post-colonial discourse and diasporic alienation generally studied in the context of inter-country movement, displacement, and cultural annihilation of locals by the majority culture. But when a person or community is forced to relocate to a new place, in the same territory or periphery of the territory, after forced migration due to violent agitation, and the exodus of the community or person and the ultimate process of assimilation in the new home becomes almost impossible in a new place of location; then how are we, as a reader, to interpret and study such kind of literature? We cannot name it or study it under diasporic or Postcolonial discourses.
Can we name it ‘displacement literature’ for the sake of convenience until our learned literary community comes with proper nomenclature?
Recently there is a spurt of literature on Grand Agitation of 1986. To name a few we have Fatsung ( Chuden Kabimo) Fulange ( Lekhnath Chettri, Bas Haraye Pachi ( Babita Maden), Kansbhada ( Pranay Shankar) Mata ko Ghar ( Sanjay Bista),Nunko chiya ( Bimal Lama) Endless Wait ( Wilfred Singh) Darjeeling Dairies ( Satyadip Chettri) Parbat Gomra ( Munnu Gautam ) Parakampan ( Sandhya Acharya) and many others. Apart from Parakampan almost all the literary piece dwells on the violent part of the Agitation and the hardships and sorrows borne by the people of the people of the hills. Some stories of Parakampan superbly delve into the lives of people displaced by the movement and they slowly come to terms with new realities of life after Agitation and displacements. Similarly there are series of poems under the head So the Hills Chose to Speak representing the title of the book speak mainly of the lives of the characters affected by the Hill agitation and their struggle to adjust to new realities, miss opportunities, psychological stress, cultural loss, and new social milieu.
So along with Parakampan and other literary pieces, (which I do not know of) can the poems of And the Hills Chose to Speak be grouped as precursors to displacement literature in the hills and studied under the theme?
[Pranay Shankar, a resident of Rangbull Gorkha Busty, Darjeeling is a banker by profession. He has recently published his debut anthology of poetry Kansbhada in Nepali.
