Interviewed by Patricia Mukhim
Questions followed by the answers
1. Can you tell us something about yourself and what prompted you to write this gem of a book that has created waves?
Ans 1: I believe I am a writer who happens to be a civil servant. I am currently posted in Mumbai working with the Customs and GST department. I always had these stories locked away somewhere in a cache of anecdotes. It was important for me to write about my town and the people as I remembered them, before they faded from my memory. It was only when I left Shillong that I began to remember them more clearly. Time and a detached perspective gave me the perspective I needed to put everything down.
2. What is it that you are trying to communicate through this book? Some angst? …some unfulfilled dream? Or is it just a creative urge?
Ans 2: I had stories to tell and I wanted to tell them. My best friend’s demise jostled all these memories I had locked up. It was important for me to write about her as it was to write about Shillong, a place I call home.
3. What were your thoughts on hearing that the book has been shortlisted the JCB prize for literature?
Ans 3: When I wrote my book, the hope was that a few people would read and enjoy it. I hardly imagined it would be shortlisted, and now it is being read by so many people since the announcement and I am more than grateful.
4. What best defines you? A committed civil servant? A writer par excellence or what else?
Ans 4: I do not think I should be defined by a single thing. A person can be a multitude of things. For now I believe I am a writer whose day job happens to be working as an IRS Officer with the Indirect tax department.
5. Is there any message you wish to send to your people back home especially since we have not had anyone in the civil services since 2013?
Ans 5: It has been almost ten years since I cleared the UPSC exam so I do not believe I have anything of value to offer in the way of advice. But good luck to everyone attempting the exam, it’s not easy and is in no way a measure of anyone’s worth.
And, I would love it if people read my book.
Name Place Animal Thing by Daribha Lyndem
A coming of age story of young Khasi girl set against the nostalgic backdrop of a bygone Shillong.
At a glance
Name Place Animal Thing follows ‘D’, the protagonist, over a decade, providing a glimpse into the city of Shillong and the life of girl entering womanhood through a series of vignettes, introducing the reader to people, places and life-changing events that were a part of her growing up years from seven to twenty.
Synopsis
In this novella, Daribha Lyndem gently lifts the curtain on the coming of age of a young Khasi woman and the politically charged city of Shillong in which she lives. Like the beloved school game from which it takes its name, the book meanders through ages, lives and places. The interconnected stories build on each other to cover the breadth of childhood, and move into the precarious awareness of adulthood. Name Place Animal Thing is an elegant examination of the porous boundaries between the adult world and that of a child.
Time and setting
Set in Shillong, Meghalaya in the late 90s and early 2000s.
The jury says
The book offers a clear sighted, honest and intimate view into a girl’s world. It describes the ordinary and in that it becomes extraordinary. Daribha’s writing is plain and elegant. She writes with a great lightness of touch where even heavy topics like insurgency are dealt with in an oblique manner. The writer has managed to very skilfully inhabit a child’s voice and a child’s way of looking at things while keeping it all consistent.
Themes and ideas
Girlhood: Told from the perspective of a young girl as she grows up from a seven-year-old child to an eighteen-year-old young woman, the book offers up a glimpse into the world and relationships of girls. The author skilfully weaves in the love, laughter, insecurities, and the complexities of a teenage life through the themes of friendship, race, religion and death.
“One afternoon soon after I had just turned thirteen I took solace in the empty Hindi room. I was upset that Yuva and my cousin, who was younger than me, had already gotten their period, but I had not. I felt they had achieved something which I had not.”
Shillong: Though centred on people and places; the book paints a broader picture of a changing city through the years. It introduces us to the history, the people, the language, the tensions, the religions and the verdant, rolling hills of Shillong.
“There was also a time when we had to switch off all the lights in the evening on the day of a curfew. I did not know why. I was ten.”
Frailty: The frailty of time, emotions and life all come together in a soft, subtle manner to highlight the frailty of innocence. As D grows up, she is often brought face to face with the rules and realities of adult life that mould her into the person she eventually becomes.
“Mortality is an ensnared butterfly dying in a glass jar.”
The author
Daribha Lyndem is a writer and civil servant currently living in Mumbai. She was born and raised in Shillong, studied English Literature at St Anthony’s College and Delhi University, before joining the Indian Revenue Service.
Name Place Animal Thing is her debut novel. She was named one of the Promising Writers of 2021 and Beyond by digital magazine Feminism in India, and her novel is in a list of ‘Best Summer Reads of 2020’ by Vogue India, and has reviews in The Hindu, The Caravan, and Firstpost.
When she is not writing or working at her day job, she is either redoing her house for the umpteeth time or hoarding skincare products. She shares a flat with her three cats and husband where she writes and gardens.
Publisher: Zubaan
Pages: 199
Price: Rs 495
Published: 2021
ISBN: 978 81 94760504