Ankush Saikia’s crime novel “The Girl from Nongrim Hills” hit the book shelves in October last year. He is an Assamese writer born in Tezpur, Assam, and has also lived in Wisconsin, United States and Shillong, Meghalaya. “The Girl from Nongrim Hills” is his third novel.
In spite of the generous reviews it received from readers and critics alike, I did not get the opportunity to read the book till recently. The opportunity came in an airport book store, where I noticed a girl pointing a gun on the book’s cover page with a wicked smile playing on her lips. Upon reading, I found that the cover picture is a disturbing constant throughout the novel’s storyline. I do not claim that The Girl from Nongrim Hills is the new big explosion in the literary world and probably it will not be a worldwide masterpiece in its genre. But with a plot closer home, it is a good read for interested readers.
It is a story about the lead guitarist of a small-time band in Shillong, a disarmingly seductive yet mysterious woman, and a tale of every crime and misdeed that has infested India’s north eastern region. While spinning a story line involving musicians, criminals, politicians, terrorists and common men and women, Ankush Saikia has given a dark and depressing ode to the city of Shillong. The beauty of description lies in the author’s eye for details. He paints a vivid canvas of the city, from the jadoh (a local delicacy made of pork) stalls to the kwai (betel-nut) shops, the Sunday service at church to the football grounds, rock music playing taxis and cheap bars, etc. The descriptions are so realistic that even a person who has not been to Shillong would feel a tad nostalgic. And for those who have been there, they would actually find themselves cosying up in a small bed inside a wooden-floored room in downtown Shillong or end up in Lhasa restaurant for a plate of steaming pork momos. Or they may find themselves standing in the driving rain with rivulets of raindrops dripping down their leather jackets until they hop in for a pillion ride in Bok’s (the lead male character) motorcycle as he rides through the dusky valleys and hairpin turns of the roads in Shillong.
Donbok (a.k.a. Bok) is the lead guitarist of a local band whose brother gets involved in an arms deal that goes awry. Bok’s laid-back life goes haywire as he takes it upon himself to save his brother’s life, which hangs by a thread on the wrong side of a gun. He trades his guitar for a gun which, in a way, symbolises a disturbingly common phenomenon of north-east India. In a bid to save his brother’s life, he comes across rogue politicians, terrorists, police, and of course the girl from Nongrim Hills. What happens during a manic one week is for the readers to find out. The author pens an edgy fiction while at the same time succeeds in maintaining the intensity of a crime thriller. He stays close to the noir inclination of the story by avoiding particularly black and white lead characters and stringing the series of events into a possibly doomed misadventure. At times he lets the leash loosen to elaborate the frame of mind of the protagonist amidst the chaos that had descended upon his life. However, the narration doesn’t take sides or offer sympathy to any of its characters. While reading one might care to imagine a screen adaption of the novel as I did. And by all means it would make a very entertaining motion picture if the essence of the novel is appropriately captured in the big screen.
With frequent references of local food and drinks, rain and fog, rock songs and jamming sessions, traffic and taxis, immigrants and unemployment, all the essential inherent elements of the city’s social fabric, the author pays a glowing tribute to Shillong. As he draws the curtain on the story, the reader might feel that it is not any person but rather the beautiful city named Shillong who is the protagonist of the novel. However, as the author points out all that has gone wrong in his beloved city, he does so without any visible contempt or justification. Instead he chooses a matter-of-fact narrative peppered with subtle ironies and metaphors delivered through conversations and apt selection of rock and roll lyrics as references. Amidst the mess he finds himself in, Bok’s brother recalls their childhood favourite, the White Snake song “Here I go again”, a song about a troubled man who “like a drifter was born to walk alone”. Now White Snake or Guns N Roses songs are not exactly the types of bands that people would refer to in real life, not as much as a Bob Dylan or a Bruce Springsteen anyway. But then that is Shillong for you, a place where Firehouse and Mr. Big pack stadiums even after a decade of dormancy. The author stays true to these ground realities in this regard. He does not miss a chance to point out the irony of a young Khasi contractor hiring cheap immigrants to get the job done or mention the politician who lives in a mansion and remorselessly plunders the coal beds of the state as miners dig out black gold in rat-hole mines. In fact the very fact that Bok picks up the gun and lets his guitar gently weep is the symbolic representation of the recurrent phenomenon across north-east. The north-east, as one might recall, is often referred to as the land of guns and guitars. Saikia’s narration does not betray emotions or express regret while describing the anarchy that has started to cling in to the society in north east India. Instead he resigns to the fact that it might actually be “the new face of north east India”. This in a way reflects the mindset of the common people today, who are tired of the lack of development, unemployment, corruption and bloodshed, and even more tired of false promises. The air of submission that hangs in north-east India is well reflected in the novel. And even as the motorcycle is being driven away from the cemetery in the very last line of the novel, one might wonder how far it would go before being engulfed in another heavy fog of fatalism.
Raktim Sharma, raktim.sharma@yamail.com