Like a garment caught on a nail…

Writing short stories is tough because it requires a tight plot and characters that will hold the attention of the readers from start to finish. Parismita Singh, who has earlier written graphic novels, The Hotel at the End of the World and Mara and the Clay Cows, does well on this count in her anthology of shorts, Peace Has Come (Context).

Set in an uneasy and purgatory atmosphere of ceasefire, the varied tales, relatable and heart-wrenching, come from the peace that follows a period of violence. So we have narratives about a Muslim woman striking up a friendship with an unlikely acquaintance from another community; a mysterious gun-flute man bringing peace and terror; an ageing man recollecting a romance from his college days which was interrupted by the girl’s marriage to a militant; and a journalist searching for a scoop, among others.

Excerpts:

On how the book came into being

This book of stories came about quite organically. While working on an education project and writing reports and short pieces on issues mainly concerned with primary schools in the rural areas of Assam, at some point, I began writing stories. I wrote them in a span of perhaps, three years. In the beginning of the book, there is the sketch of a map with places, forests and borders marked out. Some of these are real places like Bhutan or the Kochugaon Reserve Forest, but the world I have constructed is fictional. It is not a map as such, but a fictional representation, but that is one way of charting the book — the stories of the book, the characters and their circumstances slowly came about and made their home around the various landmarks, rivers and fields, markets, forests and border towns of this region.

On switching from graphic novels to short stories and its challenges

People working in art do this all the time — move from one medium to another or work across mediums. So I didn’t think it was a very big deal. The challenges of moving to prose? Punctuation, for one!

On choosing “ceasefire” as the background of stories

One way of reading the stories is to locate them in a certain time. The time when active conflict has ceased and certain negotiated settlements are in place. But often, many of the issues of the past have not been addressed, and you have what commentators have called a ‘manufactured peace’. People move on, but the past and its unresolved problems and narratives continue to persist. This is true of many places that have seen conflict over a long period. It is as if the very contours of this landscape are shaped by the conflicts of the past. There is a passage in The House by the Highway (Peace has Come: A Triptych) where one of the characters complains about the nature of this peace: “Their road, Bahadur’s wife liked to joke, was like the peace: too slow to get there, too fractious and fragmented, like a garment caught on a nail, every slight movement ripping it further.”

On how violence begets distrust, like in Sultana

What does strife do to people? I am not sure. Living under conditions of insecurity and violence is a very difficult thing; it affects people and places, for years to come. And at the same time, people continue to live and love and go through life. It is this tension that the stories draw their strength and inspiration from: the unremitting force of circumstances and people’s resilience, the desire to hold on to life and make something of it.

On whether people used to conflict find peace difficult

No, I don’t think so. Perhaps, what conflict does is produce structures and conditions that make a return to peace difficult — the legacies of violence and conflict are difficult to unravel. Also, there are certain historical and other conditions that lead to the conflict in the first place, and often you have to see if those issues have been addressed by the ceasefire agreements and negotiations, which again, are often brokered by powerful interests, by Governments and those close to power. But what happens to the young people who had taken up arms, to those who lost years in relief camps, how do you resolve the mutual distrust between communities, the loss and anger and grief of so many years? I think the stories try to reach those places, explore some of these questions.

On characters being neither black nor white

But much of life is like that, isn’t it? The stories look at a section of people who perhaps do not have as much access to power or money or privilege, factors that are necessary to accord you a certain amount of protection, allow you to profit from the new ‘peace’ in the form of contracts for roads or new jobs. Many of these people are in forest villages or just about getting by, and are often shaped by these very difficult circumstances and times. Like Sylvia’s mother in A Time made of Glass, is very conscious of the fact that the difficult decision the family made was determined by ‘the time’ they were in, their circumstances, and the young people understand that. But within this milieu too, there will be the ones who rebel, who will aspire to love and life, and Sylvia does that. But how difficult is this?

On using a several communities like Bodos, Assamese, Rabha, Santhal, Muslim, Nepali, Rajbonshi, etc in the stories

The people in these stories come from several communities, people who across time have come to make this place their home. Most of these communities have a history of marginalisation — these are people, across communities — who are living very precarious lives in forest villages and relief camps and border towns, away from the centres of power and vulnerable to social and political turmoil. Often, mobilising ethnic identity is the only way for a community to gain language rights and other privileges, within the Indian system. But this has implications both within the community and in the multi-cultural, multi-lingual milieu of the region. And one must not forget the many decades of Government repression and failed treaties and peace talks and their politics which have lead to many of the ethnic riots and tensions.

Often, the culturally diverse characters find their lives and circumstances tied to each other, such as in a shared ride in a police jeep as in An incident in Late Autumn or in people with very different histories coming together under desperate circumstances as they do in Looking for Mongru.