In Conversation with Easterine Kire You are considered one of the first Naga writers to begin writing in English. You’ve said in an interview that you wanted to put indigenous works into the limelight, and so you began writing and translating. Was it hard to find a publisher for your initial works? What were the challenges faced by you in the process of setting up your own publishing house, Barkweaver Did I really say I wanted to ‘put indigenous works in the limelight’? Or was that what the interviewer was asking me? It sounds a bit arrogant, doesn’t it? And I do apologise if it comes out like that. I have always I wanted to chronologically write down the historical life of the Nagas, and I believe I have been doing that all along. Oral Naga historians continually narrate history using wars as a timeline. It is a device that is also used by the older generation in Zimbabwe. They use wars or major events like the year of the installation of the railroad to tell time for instance. Mothers would say that a certain child was born in the year of the railroad, or the year after or the year before. Our forefathers also did this and would use historical events such as wars in the same manner. I have worked with oral historians, getting out information from them and writing them down as historical novels. Fortunately, Ura Academy published my first novel in English and the same book has now been bought by Speaking Tiger and is retitled, ‘Sky is my Father. Zubaan was looking to publish women writers from the Northeast and so it was not too long a wait before getting on the Zubaan list. Speaking Tiger has, in addition, been doing a good job of bringing out my books. Barkweaver Publications is a project for we four who are in it. It was not difficult to set up, but we quickly realised that our objectives are dif.
ferent from the traditional publishing houses. So, we are publishing only select titles.
Often it is said that a lot is lost in translation— in reference to this, did you face any difficulties with regards to translation, given that you have translated around 200 poems into English? Translation of folk poetry is not easy at all. I had to choose what kind of English to use in translating the folk poems which were so old that they were difficult for a casual Tenyidie (my mother tongue and the language in which the poems were written) user to get at the deep meanings that many of the words and phrases held. Many of these words are no longer used. So, their meaning was also more or less lost due to the fact that the context no longer existed. As it is, poetry itself is so complex that one always wonders if the translation does justice to the original. I think the translation becomes another literary experience altogether.
How and to what extent does politics inform your work? We from the Northeast - we should fiercely resist being persistently defined by politics. For far too long, our region has been defined by its political troubles and this has created so many stereotypes that the media continues to perpetuate. It has dictated expectations upon Northeast writers and artists. Politics should not be given more importance than all the other elements that we grow up with and get our influences from – religion, culture, history, and so on. We should not allow the political to be thrown like a dirty blanket over the many, beautifully layered cultures of the Northeastern states, because we would then be so grossly misrepresented. When I write historical novels, political incidents take their place in the movement of the book – as part of our history. I have written a novel, Bitter Wormwood, which was an attempt to let others understand the beginnings of the Naga struggle for freedom in the 50s and 60s and the road it took by the 80s, 90s, and beyond. But besides that, I think it’s unhealthy to give too much importance to politics, just as there would be a lack of balance in our lives if we did the same to other elements like religion for example.I know there are people out there who insist that Northeast writers have to write more about the political situation political situations in our region. 18
