Arūpā Paṭaṃgīẏā Kalitā

'Musk and the other Stories' is a collection of short stories depicting the life of the public in Assam. Translated from Assamese, it shares both the beautiful and bestial sides of Assam—how political turmoil badly affects the life of an individual as well as public located at the vicinity of its green field and elegant rivers and high mountain ranges. The writing style of the story evolves itself from the good to the bad into the worse, leaving a hardcore questions and emotions behind.
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The book begins with Two Days of Phantom’s Diary which revolves around the consequences faced by the common public because of the ongoing tussle between the army and the extremists.
Aai,the Mother illustrates the agony of a poor mother who lost his son in a fake encounter addressing a clear cut perspective on how the lives of the innocent people fall in trap.
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Goddess shares a poignant tale about a ‘mortal woman’ being tortured and abused for gulping the offerings of the ‘goddess Kali’ depicting the sheer hypocrisy and show off done in the name of religion as well as disrespect shown to the poor people in the society.

Being beaten up and kicked around, she would scream most piteously, ‘My belly is burning with hunger’. The stout ragged her out like a rope.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Mriganabhi: The Musk is a critically acclaimed story of Arupa Patangia Kalita, revolves around Sontara whose life completely changes after the demise of her husband. The emotional struggle that single mothers face have been clearly shown in the story. As one should never lose hope, how Sontara eventually came over her mental turmoil is a worth read.
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Overall 4/5, it makes itself a best collection in which each story share different shades of individual struggle. The strong and realistic narratives will provoke its readers to personify themselves with each and every character they will encounter.… (més)

A translated collection of Kalita's short stories that deal with conflict in Assam, from the Agitation of the 70s through to the Bodo separatists and anti-immigration unrest of today. The violence is not so acute as in her novel Felanee, but the tone is still fairly grim and I was aware of reading it more in factual interest than in aesthetic enjoyment. Though there are moments of pure sensual detail – as with the beguiling opening to ‘Arunima's Motherland’:

Outside, a gentle breeze blew. The perfume they had sprayed all over her last night still clung to her now-crumpled bridal mekhela chador; the lengths of jasmine and tuberose coiled around her hair seemed to perk up again in the morning breeze. Their fragrances mingled with hints of other smells—the turmeric-and-black-gram scrub of her ritual bath, the sandalwood paste, the spanking new jewellery, the streak of oil in the parting of her hair over which her mother-in-law had applied vermilion during the joran ceremony, and the smoky hom, the wedding fire fuelled by ghee and mango-wood. In a heartbeat, she could breathe it all even now.

As can I! Of course you can be sure that this character will soon end up facing men with guns emerging from the forest, since that's what happens in basically all of her stories.

One of the most interesting pieces is ‘Face in the Mirror’, a nonfictionish piece of apparent life-writing which retraces Kalita's childhood at a Christian boarding-school and the beginnings of the affinity she feels with society's victims. It includes a long extract (like several pages) from Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye – Kalita has translated the novel into Assamese – of a difficult scene where a gang of white guys force a black man to rape his girlfriend in front of them. Kalita uses this as a kind of prism through which to refract the racial/tribal/sexual dominance that is acted out in her own homeland. It's a very unexpected and interesting juxtaposition.

In other pieces, her technique is dreamier and more magic-realist:

Wherever the shadow of the bus fell on the river, the water became blood-red in colour and the fish died. As the bus tore through the midnight silence with its screeching ghetleng, ghetleng sound, the fireflies in flight above burnt into ashes and vanished into the jungle.

The women in these stories are often victims, in a literal sense, but they are not defeated, submissive, or beaten-down. They are all angry and determined to defy the system. Sometimes this has horrific results which she does not shy away from; but sometimes, Kalita suggests, this defiance, combined with a strong sense of community, can bring the potential for meaningful change. Overall, a solid if somewhat worthy collection, with a lot to reveal not just about the political situation in Assam, but about the details of daily life in a very particular place and culture that gets little outside attention.… (més)