Nagaland’s folklore comes alive in a tale of myth and memory

‘People without stories disappear,’ goes one of the more poignant lines from Huthuka Sumi’s Giants. Stories have the power to raise and raze civilisations, to dehumanise and to humanise, for they are the essence of being. To lose them is to lose oneself. Tales carry culture and community into the future.

With this in mind, the author, in a slim 200-odd page novel, weaves the life, culture and mythology of the Sumi tribe of Nagaland into a fictional world. The result is an accessible, luminous narrative that introduces (and in some cases reintroduces) a marginalised society to the mainstream. It leaves one wondering how many more such books lie untold in this cultural melting pot of a state, home to over 15 tribes and myriad tongues so distinct that they rely on English or Nagamese, a pidgin Assamese, as their shared voice.

The story follows Kato, a mute on the cusp of manhood, whose life takes a tumble into the magical when he is chosen as the storyteller by a mythological giant, Timi-Ala, Kene. The nocturnal adventures of the duo, where they traverse the region and scale the tallest of the mystical trees, give the book its soul and their wanderings across forests and mystical trees form the book’s beating heart. Through their conversations, the reader glimpses the tribe’s older ways of living in harmony with nature — a fragile connection now dangling by a thread.

Kato embodies the familiar fantasy archetype of a young man shunned by society, insecure and struggling to find his place in the world. Kato’s life is defined by the loving relationship with his family, particularly his mother and grandmother. It gives him resilience, propped up by love and by a desire to prove himself to the world. Kato goes through the proverbial hero’s journey, from a reluctant chosen one, through the death of innocence, and finally comes of age as a competent and confident man.

Set in the mid-20th century, the village holds a quiet whimsy, thanks to its isolated location in a picturesque world, its self-sustaining nature of life and governance, and on account of being a place relatively untouched by modernity. The missionary work from the West was already in the region, and though aware of the outside world (with references to Kohima and Dimapur), the people are content to spend their entire lives according to their old customs and traditions in the region. Superstition lingers—where even a photograph is viewed as a soul-snatching terror.

When the outside world finally pierces this fragile isolation, it does so with violence. Real events, such as the Great War, are woven seamlessly with the fantastic until myth and history comfortably overlap.

Two characters stay with the reader: Kato’s mother and grandmother. The interaction between the two women and Kato is endearing. The women are strong presences, a reflection, perhaps, of the tribe’s cultural fabric. The writing brings a certain lifelike quality to their feelings; the pain, happiness, and helplessness all have a certain resonance.

The book also explores the topics of colonialism, the fading of the indigenous ways of life, the carnage and collateral damage of war, and climate change. It directs one’s attention to the history of the region in itself, caught in the crossfire of a world undergoing seismic changes when empires collide. It pulls back the veil of magic to show a shared world, one where humans coexist with beings beyond themselves.

Reflective and pensive, the book lingers over traditions, food habits, and daily life in a region too often overlooked. For outsiders, it could serve as the gentlest of introductions.

What keeps one motivated to turn the pages, above all else, is the simple but descriptive writing and its vivid imagery. The folktale elements give the book a certain magic shimmer. Sumi, in his debut, has achieved a rare feat: a seamless blending of old and new, myth and memory, tradition and reality.