Hou, the Nagas! Not the Kumbh variety, but the real McCoy from the simplified collective—for everyone’s convenience—called the Northeast. This is tricky territory; this Nagaland, this incontrovertible paradox for plain plains-folks. But for once, let’s peek beyond that panoptic view, that visceral, evocative portrait of a land filled with headhunters, dog-eaters, masked insurgents, and all that which fires popular imagination outside the rolling hills, valleys, streams, lush paddies and village morungs, those bachelor longhouses. And discover a Nagaland, more precisely Kohima, through the eyes of Khonuo and Kevinou—an Angami mother and daughter—growing up in two tumultuous times that define the place.
That’s Easterine Kire’s A Respectable Woman—set in her dearest Kohima, a township bombed-out in World War II transitioning to a modern city, offering education, electricity and bootlegged rum. Her latest work—equal parts fiction, history and a...
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