Are you warm?
Yes I’m warm, John. With you near me I’ll never be cold. (108)
Thus in their love world warmth of love always triumph over coldness of death.
Nongkynrih in her “Prelude” to the book Around the Hearth: Khasi Legends writes that “the Khasis are a great storytelling people” (Nongkynrih 2007, vii). This habit of storytelling flows down the generations in that clan based society. In Hazarika’s novel Kharkongor retains this art, and albeit he faces linguistic barrier, he exhibits this art while narrating his story to John.
The ethnic mosaic of this part of India offers a fascinating scope for academic discourse. How the tribal people of Shillong are desperate to keep their customs and traditions intact is proved by Kharkongor’s decision to fight with his bow and arrows, and it is a part of their culture to play teer game, so much so that to be in Shillong and not to have played teer is much like “a cultivator who has not felt mud in his toes” (36). Kharkongor’s decision to stick to bow and arrow and never use the more modernized and upgraded fire weapon like gun even when his life is at stake, is not a symbol of perpetuation of death and violence, rather it’s like a swansong to him, something which carries traditional tribal ethos and conscious. He carries bow and arrow, but he refuses to carry the thought of killing with what is traditionally known as instruments of killing:
Perhaps a bow but not a gun. I will use it without the thought of killing inside me… There is much poetry in the bow, John Dkhar, but in the gun there is only the matter of, what you say, much destruction, much thought of producing fear. That is not poetry, John Dkhar. (135)
No doubt Bah Kharkongor remains the best teer man in Shillong.
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Gill, Preeti. ed. The Peripheral Centre: Voices From India’s Northeast. New Delhi: Zubaan: Penguin Books. 2010. Print.
Guha, Aanaya. S. “Violence and Literature– Realities of North East India” . N.p. n.d. Web. 24 Oct. 2013.
Hasan, Anjum. Lunatic in My Head. New Delhi: Zubaan: Penguin Books. 2005. Print.
Hasan, Daisy. The To-Let House. Chennai: Tara Books. 2010. Print.
Hazarika, Dhruba. A Bowstring Winter. New Delhi: Penguin Books. 2006. Print.
Hazarika, Sanjoy. Strangers of the Mist. New Delhi: Penguin Books. 1995. Print.
Kashyap, Aruni. The House with A Thousand Stories. New Delhi: Penguin Viking. 2013. Print.
Nongkynrih, Kynpham Sing. Around the Hearth Khasi Legends. New Delhi:Penguin Books. 2007. Print. Folktales of India.
Phukan, Mitra. The Collector’s Wife. New Delhi:Zubaan: Penguin Books. 2005. Print.
Sioui, G. E. (2008). In Giroux D. (Ed.), Histoires de kanatha - histories of kanatha: Vues et contées - seen and told. Ottawa: Ottawa University of Ottawa Press.
Blood feuding and dushmani has only developed in the past few decades in Thull. It is stated that this has occurred because of economic change and political modernization, which both have been previously stated. As an American citizen I find it very difficult to understanding how such a society can actually work. This book is informative of a society and culture that most Americans probably have never heard of. I cannot even begin to imagine living in such a place. Worrying about your life everyday would have to be very frustrating especially not even knowing who your enemies are. I can understand why everybody carries a firearm because if you don’t your life is put at a much higher risk. Overall, this book gives great insight into another culture, but makes me appreciate the country I live in much more.
Ngarlu Dreaming Story centres on the taboo relationship between a Jungarrayi man and a Napangardi woman; a union forbidden under the Warlpiri skin group system. Through concepts such as kinship, animism and, indignity, the dreaming story vividly provides a commentary on beliefs central to Indigenous customs and traditions.
The popularity of throat singing among Tuvans seems to have arisen as a result of geographic location and culture. The open landscape of Tuva allows for the sounds to carry a great distance. Ethnomusicologists studying throat singing in these areas mark khoomei as an integral part in the ancient pastoral animism that is still practiced today. Throat singers will travel far into the countryside looking for the right river, or will go up to the steppes of the mountainside to create the proper environment for throat-singing.
Indian society was patriarchal, centered on villages and extended families dominated by males (Connections, Pg. 4). The villages, in which most people lived, were admini...
Heaphy, Linda. "Life in India: the Practice of Sati or Widow Burning." Life for the modern nomad. Kashgar, 2012. Web. 21 Mar. 2014. .
Salman Rushdie’s novel Midnight’s Children employs strategies which engage in an exploration of History, Nationalism and Hybridity. This essay will examine three passages from the novel which demonstrate these issues. Furthermore, it will explore why each passage is a good demonstration of these issues, how these issues apply to India in the novel, and how the novel critiques these concepts.
Pandey, T. N., 2014. Lecture 1/9/14: Culture of India: Aryan and Indigenous Population. Cultures of India. U.C. Santa Cruz.
• Lafferty, Anne. "Folk and Fairy Tales. By Martin Hallett and Barbara Karasek, Eds. Ethnologies 24.2 (2002): 261. Print.
Sri Nandanandana, “Preaching in India’s Northeast For Cultural Preservation” VaiShnava News February 21, 2003; Retrieved information Dec. 9,2003 http://www.vnn.org/world/WD0302/WD21-7837.html
McLeod, W. H. (2003). Sikhs of the Khalsa: A history of the Khalsa rahit. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Environmental degradation is nothing but an outcome of the dynamic interplay of socio-economic, institutional and technological activities. Environmental changes can be governed by many factors including economic growth, population growth, urbanization, agricultural intensification, mounting energy use and transportation. In the era of industrial revolution and sustainable development, poverty still resides as a problem at the root of several environmental problems. The basic intertwined liaison between environmental degradation, poverty, and violent conflict has been a prominent theme contained within the literature on sustainable development and conflict resolution since the mid-twentieth century. Although, some analysts have argued that violence has not been limited to the poor and deprived, but many have concluded from various studies that the devastation of the environment, poverty, and conflict are inextricably knotted. As a Journalist in Times of India, Adiga travelled a lot in different places in India and got unveiling realities with his novel. Therefore, he portrays these realities in the novel through the story of Balram’s, who belongs to a poor and low caste shudra, sufferings in this Materialist era and his journey for lightness from his native place Laxmangarh, situated in the darkness of Jharkhand (India), to the materialistic world of Delhi and Bangalore. He admits in the novel, “like all good stories; mine begins far away from Banglore. You see, I am in the light now, but I was born and raised in Darkness.” (p.14) Adiga portrays the real picture of India of light with the colour of bitterness, conflict, cunningness, corruption, murder and massive toxic traffic jams.
Aparna, Bhargava. Theatres of Independence: Drama, Theory, and Urban Performance in India Since 1947. New York: University of Iowa Press, 2009.
“The only people for whom we can even begin to imagine properly human, individual, existences are the literate and the consequential, the wazirs and the sultans, the chroniclers, and the priests—the people who had the power to inscribe themselves physically upon time” (Ghosh 17). History is written by the victorious, influential and powerful; however, history has forgotten the people whose voices were seized, those who were illiterate and ineloquent, and most importantly those who were oppressed by the institution of casted societies. Because history does not document those voices, it is the duty to the anthropologist, the historiographer, the philosopher as well as scholars in other fields of studies to dig for those lost people in the forgotten realm of time. In In An Antique Land, the footnotes of letters reveal critical information for the main character, which thematically expresses that under the surface of history is something more than the world can fathom.
Naipaul, V.S., India: A Wounded Civilization. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1983. All subsequent reference with page numbers are from this edition.