BOOKMARK

Aruni Kashyap’s frst novel

 was written while the au-

thor was still a college stu-

dent and accepted for publication

by the same publisher who had pub-

lished Arundhati Roy’s celebrated

frst novel—an indication, perhaps,

of things to come. Both novels also

centered on childhood angst and

had an ominous atmosphere of im-

pending gloom.

An Assamese would readily feel

at ease with the novel—starting

 with the cover that has a mekhela

sador   motif on it to references to

Zubeen Garg, sewali ower leaves,

Down Town hospital, mortons,

senisompa  bananas, popular Assa-

mese idioms—to whole sentences in

Assamese. This is not an outsider’s

story written from a distance, it is

a closely lived-in tale of vivid ex-

periences. Narrated by Pablo, a 17-

 year-old town boy, The House with

a Thousand Stories  is the poignant

story of the Bishoyas of Mayong.

Pablo lives with his family in a posh

locality of Guwahati and knows

how to speak in phai phai  English.

His extended paternal family in the

 village has a wedding planned—his

aunt Moina’s.

Despite his mother’s concerns,

Pablo manages to convince his

parents and leaves for the village

 with his cousin, Mridul. The an-

cestral house is literally one with a

thousand layered stories and as the

 wedding preparations progress, the

stories tumble out one by one. The

characters ring true-to-life, and

the most interesting, of course, is

Oholya-jethai with her command-

ing presence and a secret past; then

there is Mridul, the good-looking

 youngster the girls in the village

pine for; the nervous bride Moina;

the mild Onima-borma; the head-

of-the-family Mukut-khura, Pablo’s

love-interest Anamika; the gossip-

loving Anil-da; and the rebel Pro-

santo-khura who is bent on mar-

rying a divorced colleague. Only

Anamika’s character at times slips

into a mere image of her body as

 what she thinks and feels becomes

secondary.

The readers’ initial comfort with

the novel‘s familiar setting is soon

replaced with a sense of vague dis-

comfort when the Nepali Bihu danc-

er, Manju, passionately emphasizes

that deep down she is an Assamese

as Mridul refuses to play the dhool

for her because he couldn’t imagine

a Nepali girl as the  Bihu  troupe’s

main dancer. In modern Assam,

aren’t such attestations demanded

every day?

In this novel, the personal is po-

litical. Thus myths, hearsay, gossip

assume signifcance in the charged

political situation of 2002 to chal-

lenge the dominant political nar-

rative. The secret killings of rebel

ULFA leaders by the government,

the dadagiri of the SULFA’s or sur-

rendered ULFA’s, the peoples’ ul-

timate disillusionment with the

ULFA’s armed rebellion, and the ex-

cesses of the Indian Army have been

portrayed as never before. But make

no mistake; there is no eroticization

of violence here, rather it speaks

of the resilience of Assam’s rural

population and their ability to sing

songs in the shadow of guns.

The House with a Thousand Sto-

ries is a family’s intimate history, a

novel about growing up, about fnd-

ing love, and ultimately about iden-

tity and independence. Read it for

an unforgettable experience.

The House with aThousand Stories

{Viking (Penguin) 2013}

The House with a Thousand Stories has gar-

nered rave reviews for its rst-time author.

Nasreen Habib reviews the moving novel

set in rural Assam.