Once Upon a Time

This is a work of fiction woven around two historical events — a French priest’s mysterious disappearance and the execution of a Mishmi tribal for his murder. Dai’s lament that “nothing of this period is recorded anywhere…” in the history of the Northeast becomes a recurrent motif. The sense of erasure of one’s cultural and socio-political identity in the face of colonisation is fought with a poignant request: “Tell them we were good. Tell them we also had some things to say. But we cannot read and write. So we tell stories.”

[related-post]

The protagonist Kajinsha is the embodiment of nature. His love for the hills and the wilderness is matched only by Krick’s dogged determination to reach Tibet. “The gods have played a game”, intertwining the destinies of Kajinsha and Krick, both of whose journeys are dogged by death and destruction.

Dai’s prose is poetic and conversational, a celebration of oral history and storytelling. The novel is essentially “the words of a woman telling me a story” and Dai the chronicler of undocumented “versions that were misplaced yesterday or a thousand years ago”.

However, The Black Hill remains surprisingly noncommittal on the question of colonisation and the socio-cultural fallout of proselytising among a colonised people. The English are used as a mere plot device to add to the drama, despite the fact that it is they who eventually bring about the fall of Kajinsha. “They are very clever and careful people. When they want something they will never leave until they get it. Mark my words,” says Gimur’s mother. But we are never told what the British are looking for other than the passingly mentioned fact that the “root of the conflict, it seemed…was always about land”.

Unlike in Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, where Okonkwo’s friend Obierika notes, “The white man is very clever. He came quietly and peaceably with his religion. We were amused at his foolishness and allowed him to stay. Now he has won our brothers and our clan can no longer act like one.”