Shillong: The increasing popularity of North Eastern fiction in India is playing its part in the integration of the region with the mainland, award-winning Assamese author, Jahnavi Barua said on the concluding day of the Symposia on Storytelling and Women’s Writing, organised by Sahitya Akademi in association with NEHU’s Department of English, here on Tuesday.
Barua was among a number of authors and publishers who gathered in Shillong for the two-day event, which was attended by students and teachers from NEHU and around the state. The other resource persons included authors Temsula Ao, Arup Kumar Dutta, Deepa Balsavar, Bibhash Choudhury, publisher Rupanjali Baruah and editor Deeyali Nayar.
In a recent trend, major literary festivals in India often have a panel featuring North Eastern writers, some of whom dislike being labeled. However, Barua does not have a problem with this, at least for now.
“As the North East is relatively new to writing in English, I think it’s okay to tag us like that,” she said at the final session.
“Fiction has been doing its bit in the soft integration between the mainland and the North East,” the Bangalore resident, who lived in Shillong until the age of six, added.
Other subjects discussed included the challenges of writing for children and encouraging them to read, the need to have books in local languages and the part folktales played in the development of Assamese children’s books.
The importance of writers on society was also highlighted by Lanosangla, who founded Heritage Publishing House in Nagaland.
“Women have been responsible for a paradigm shift in Naga writing especially since the 1990s,” she said. “They began challenging (previously accepted) colonial writings and now the identity of the Nagas can be represented as it deserves to be,” she added.
One point that was noted was that while Indian vernacular authors are often translated into English the reverse is not always true, thereby depriving many people of great works of literature.
Nayar, who is a longstanding editor at Tulika Publishers, paraphrased author and linguistic expert Ganesh Devy to hit this point home when she said, “When children don’t have books in their mother tongue, it’s like cutting off their tongues.”
In keeping with the makeup of the speakers, the subject of getting children and grownups to read more was often mentioned.
Dutta and Balsavar, noted children’s authors, said that it is up to parents and teachers to create the right ambience to encourage youngsters to read, while Lanosangla recalled that when she decided to start her own publishing house, she was told that Nagas are not big readers, a point she was determined to disprove.
