Temsula Ao

Stories

Laburnum for My Head

More Than Half A Century Of Bloodshed Has Marked The History Of The Naga People Who Live In The Troubled Northeastern Region Of India. Their Struggle For An Independent Nagaland And Their Continuing Search For Identity Provides The Backdrop For The Stories That Make Up This Unusual Collection. Describing How Ordinary People Cope With Violence, How They Negotiate Power And Force, How They Seek And Find Safe Spaces And Enjoyment In The Midst Of Terror, The Author Details A Way Of Life Under Threat From The Forces Of Modernization And War. No One The Young, The Old, The Ordinary Housewife, The Willing Partner, The Militant Who Takes To The Gun, And The Young Woman Who Sings Even As She Is Being Raped Is Untouched By The Violence. Theirs Are The Stories That Form The Subtext Of The Struggles That Lie At The Internal Faultlines Of The Indian Nation-State. These Are Stories That Speak Movingly Of Home, Country, Nation, Nationality, Identity, And Direct The Reader To The Urgency Of The Issues That Lie At Their Heart.

Stories from a War Zone

These Hills Called Home

Seventy-year-old Temsula Ao is a pioneer of northeastern Indian literature, who was recognized with India's highest civilian honor in 2007 for her work. The author of many volumes of poetry and short stories, Ao returns in this book to her beloved Nagaland homeland to bring readers the beautifully crafted story of Aosenla, a woman who is coming to terms with herself. The novel opens on a typical summer afternoon that will soon turn into another oppressive evening. Aosenla sits listening to her children playing nearby and is seized by a great lethargy. As she casts a watchful gaze over the house she has called home for so many years, Aosenla wonders how an inanimate structure like a house can exercise such power over a human being. Looking down at a wedding invitation in her hands, Aosenla begins to recall her own wedding ceremony many years ago, initiating a deep and moving reflection on the parts of this life that were made for her, and the parts she has made for herself.

Aosenla's Story

The Ao-Naga Oral Tradition

Born in 1945 in the Assamese town of Jorhat, Temsula Ao, her father's favourite of his six daughters, remembers her childhood as a time of happiness. The sudden loss of both parents mean that the orphaned children were left to fend for themselves as best they could. Desperately poor, emotionally scarred, lonely and often hungry, the young Temsula made up for her lack of resources with courage and determination. From these unpromising beginnings, Ao went on to become one of Northeast India's best known writers and to build a distinguished teaching career, serving as Director of the Northeast Zone Cultural Centre, and finally, Dean of the School of Humanities and Education, North Eastern Hill University, Shillong. Temsula Ao describes her memoir as 'an attempt to exorcise my own personal ghosts from a fractured childhood that was ripped apart by a series of tragedies... [it] is about love and what it is like to be deprived of it.' For her readers, Ao’s memoir gives not only an insight into her role as a leading figure in the Northeast, but is also a moving account of a writerly life. Published by Zubaan.

Temsula Ao

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