When the River Sleeps……..

“WHEN THE RIVER SLEEPS” is a novel by Easterine Kire. A poet and a novelist from Nagaland Easterine Kire brings us the taste of Nagaland through this novel which is a great example of fiction from India in the Magic realism style.  She deeply feels that the stories from Nagaland have to be written for the next generations. Nagaland has a rich tradition of oral storytelling and the folk lore from these parts is rich with mysticism and music. But in the present scenario she feels that the culture of Nagaland should be preserved in written literature and she chooses to write about her state and her people. She also has translated a lot of songs and poetry of Nagaland into English.  WHEN THE RIVER SLEEPS was first published in the year 2014 and won the Hindu prize for the year 2015.

Tribal culture and its folk lore appear mystical to the urban folk. Especially when the tribes are living deeper in the forest they have a different mystical language and understanding with the nature. Their connection with the super power, super gods and the nature around explains their deep involvement with the mother earth and the natural resources around. They view their surroundings with awe and respect. This respect is spiritual and their connection with the nature is much more intense than the connection with humanity around. There is a feeling of respect in everything they do in their daily life. The fire, food grains, water and the shelter they create for themselves all are viewed with respect and that helps them to be connected to their tribes in a much humane manner. Every hut built in the middle of the forest is left with minimum provisions for the wandering travelers or hunters. The men, who come across these shelters while hunting, use them for the night, repair them for the unknown wanderers who may later come in that way and also clean it up as a respect to the owner who left it for them. Such small gestures bring people together as a race and that’s the beauty of their culture which can be seen in every page of this novel. Every guest who visits the home of a local is given a grand welcome and is provided with food and shelter. Fire lit in the forest has to be smoke less, animals hunted have to be shared and we find collective vegetation too.

We find mystic figures like were tigers, spirits which dress themselves as beautiful young woman to tempt the hunters and there are some special supernatural spirits, shadowy widows from the river and many such mystical forms which teach us about goodness and badness as characters to be understood and explored to finally get to the meaning of life. All the good spirits and bad spirits test human goodness, their balance of emotions and their love for the fellow beings. Weretigers attack the hunters, but when the hunter calls them by their spiritual name they leave him taking him to be their own brother. This may sound mystical but it also talks about the connection man tries to builds with the animals around. Here we find human race comparing itself with the animals and never boasting itself to be of a superior race. We find humans accepting that they and animals are equal brothers in the forest area and they need to be undisturbed to continue the connection. Every race has to be left in its space and given enough freedom. Freedom should be first given to be enjoyed by self.

The book tells the story of Villie, a man from Angami tribe. He is more in connection with the forest and when his attempts to marry the girl he loved failed due to the girls untimely death, he chose to remain single and spends his time in the middle of the forest alone. He takes forest as his wedded wife and decides to remain loyal to it. His love for the forest and his connection with it surprises his own tribe too, who want him to marry and settle down in the village. Villie decides to be a forest man and therefore works for the government trying to protect the forest resources. He dreams about the sleeping river and wishes to get the heart stone from it. Legend says that when the river goes to sleep, the stones lying in it get magical powers. A warrior has to get to the bottom of the river and find the heart stone and that becomes his ultimate treasure and weapon. Not everyone can succeed in this mission. A man who possesses the hand stone gets everything he wishes for. More than his wishes to be fulfilled, the mystical river draws Villie to this adventure. He goes on a voyage to the river and decides to come back with the heart stone proving himself as the true son of the nature.

During this journey he meets a lot of people. His Nepali friend gives him shelter and provides him with a few basic amenities for the journey. From there he goes deeper into the jungle and meets a group of youngsters. One of them kills the leader of the group and the crime is directed towards Villie. He runs away but when he finds that he is being trapped around on four sides by the local villagers who believe him to be the murderer, he surrenders to them. The leader of the search team is an old friend of Villie. With his help he proves his innocence and moves on. He learns that he has to be very careful before getting acquainted with men from another village. He finally reaches the river and with the help of a kind couple also succeeds in procuring the heart stone. Here also he has to fight with the river spirits and the temptations they weave around him. The Widows from the river chase him but he runs away with the treasured heart stone.

He now decides to return back to his ancestral village. On this return journey he meets Zote and Ate two sisters from the Kirhupfumia tribe. This is an out casted tribe.  The woman of this tribe are believed to have magical powers and a lot of bitterness in them which makes them near to  witches. Zote is the angry frustrated witch who steals the heart stone and casts a spell on the villagers who have forced the sisters to move out. The village is burnt. Lot of innocents die. This angers the good spirits who come and  take Zote away. She dies and falls down into a heap of dust. Ate is the kind hearted woman who has no bad powers but her sister insists her to stay in the village calling her a Kirhupfumia woman. Villie rescues Ate and takes her with him to his native village. On the way he finds that the Nepali neighbors are murdered and their son has now become an orphan. Ate adopts the child and she lives with Villie’s Aunts.

Villie moves into the forest to live alone. Here a thief comes to steal his heart stone. Villie leaves the stone with Ate when he decides to move into the forest. In his search for the stone Villie understands that human character and goodness is incomparable to any precious stone on earth. The good human heart is the best thing in the world. Nothing can actually be better than human goodness. After gaining this wisdom, Villie goes back alone to live with this spiritual knowledge and decides to devote his life working for his tribe till the end. The thief who heard about the heart stone, brutally attacks Villie, but a wear tiger kills the thief. Next morning the locals find the dead body of the thief in a very bad state and presume it to be Villie’s and they bury him there.

Ate feels that Villie is still in the forest in the spiritual form and visits his hut regularly. She visits the hut and cleans it for him. Ate also believes that the stone is not an object of worship. The wisdom of the stone is more spiritual than physical. It helps us discover the spiritual identity that is within us so we can use it to combat the dark forces that are always trying to control and suppress us. But men who are not initiated don’t understand this about the stone, and they try to use it to gain wealth and other material things. Villie has grown spiritually during his journey for the stone and he understood that material things do not matter much to the people on this planet who wish to gain eternal knowledge and power. True power is a sense of feeling achieved by winning over oneself. That is winning over ones wants and greed. This is the ultimate purpose of life and the search for this stone has given Villie this wisdom and knowledge which have brought him nearer to the Supreme Being.

Ate leaves the stone in the hut after visiting it when Villie was presumed dead. During the next visit she finds that the stone has disappeared and assumes that Villie must have taken it back. Ate is married now and has a life of her own. The Nepali couple’s kid is still with her and she loves him as her own. Villie has gone into the nature and his goodness stays alive in the form of Ate and her happiness.

This novel gives us the sense of Paulo Coelho’s  “The Alchemist”  Man’s search for treasure and life’s happiness leads him to the very beginning of his journey with eternal wisdom gained that nothing is as precious than oneself and no victory is actually fruitful than the victory over oneself. Real wealth is the wisdom we get through life and the way we put it into use makes us superior to our fellow beings. Life’s lessons are more precious than the gains and losses we encounter. Experiences in life have a meaning and a lesson to learn from. How prepared are we to take the lesson makes all the difference.

With all the mystical descriptions the writer tries to explain the tribal connection with the natural forces and that Nature can be our best teacher if we are ready to be a student. The fantasy is not into the level of exaggeration in this novel. The writer keeps it short and beautiful and therefore the journey of Villie becomes more interesting. We also experience shades of Gabriel Garcia Marquez in this novel. The beauty of that genius reflects in the writer’s style and her magic realism the reader experiences in the novel. Over all it’s a good read and a proud one for the Indian English readers who are in search of such poetic prose in Fiction.

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