Book Review: How To Tell The Story of an Insurgency Edited by Aruni Kashyap.

 

Book: How To Tell The Story of an Insurgency 

Edited: Aruni Kashyap 

Publisher: Harper Collins India 

Read On: Kindle 

How Long it Took Me To Read: 2 days 

Plot Summary: 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. 

Review: I have been reading stories from Assam for a few years now. Since 2020 to be precise, I've been reading novels and short stories set in this eastern state and there is something so warm and familiar about this place. Some of it I know through these books I have read and loved and other aspects of it's people and history I have learnt from family stories and of course the News, the News (when I was growing up) was rather grim. So it's always a pleasure to return to Assam. Even if some stories break my heart. 

This collection is has a mix of stories written in English, Assamese and Bodo and I really appreciate the mix that is representative of the state in whole. The stories themselves also have so much diversity and variety. Of course, they are centered around insurgency, but apart from the altercations between the rebels and the military, so many of these stories also show issues between different tribes and minorities. I think it shows the state and it's life in a much more fleshed out way and gives you a real and often unfiltered look at life in Assam. 

There is so much humanity in these stories. So many lives upturned by violence and pain and struggle. There are so many stories showing the people left behind, the families who live in the shadow of uncertainty and worry and I can only imagine unending anxiety when sons/husbands/lovers/brothers leave to fight and you are left wondering if you'll ever see them again. This terrible angst is brought alive in these pages. The hurt and the disillusionment is also shown so so well. 

The disenchantment with the agitation and the fallout of said agitation is brought to life so painfully well in all of these stories. We see parents and siblings and sometimes the fighters themselves feel unsure of the fight and the price they've had to pay for it. 

Some of these stories will break your heart, more so because there is more than a grain of truth behind these stories. These horrors actually happened and keep happening. 

I enjoyed pretty much all of the stories and I can wholeheartedly recommend this collection as an introduction to modern Assamese, for me personally some of these writers were ones I have read before and some I encountered for the first time. A good mix. 

Rating: 4/5