Stories have the potential to be disruptive, disturb the status quo, and inspire revolutions. And then there are those novels that transcend the particulars of its content to remind you that the human experience – in all its pain, glory, and meaninglessness – remains constant across space and time. Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih’s new novel The Distaste of the Earth strives to encompass all the elements that make for an excellent story.
For starters, it transports its reader to a land that is familiar to but a few, set in a time long, long gone. Nongkynrih narrates a tragic tale of star-crossed lovers residing in Hima Mokkhiew, a society nestled in the lush rainforests of the Khasi Hills. This is the tale of Manik Raitong, or Manik the Wretched, a “filthy pauper” who was orphaned by misfortune and a recluse by choice.
Through oral traditions, the tale has survived across generations in the Khasi community as the tragic love affair between the wretched Manik and the Khasi Queen Lieng Makaw continues to inspire an ideal for true love. However, Nongkynrih hints at his subversion of this classic Khasi legend as he confesses in the Author’s Note that the love story does not form the meat of the novel. Instead, he dedicates his words to re-creating a sliver of Khasi life and culture going far beyond the spatiotemporal reaches of oral traditions. In situating the circumstances in which an unlikely love affair between a Queen and a pauper bloomed, Nongkynrih lays out the best and the worst of humanity.
An ethnographic imagination
Nongkynrih makes it clear from the outset that his novel is not historical fiction, but a fabrication of an ancient world of kings, queens, drunkards and paupers. Yet his writing is inlaid with thick descriptions of the culture, morality, vices and conventions that ruled Khasi society. Part One of the novel is set almost entirely in Nongbah, the capital city of Hima Mokkhiew. The natural landscape is described as a flat land, surrounded by either forests or hills, girdled by little streams – making a perfect setting for civilisation. Nongkynrih chooses to introduce the people of Nongbah through a single shop in the town complex: Lyngkien’s pata. Lyngkien, a 36-year-old buxom beauty, runs this drinking den where people from all strains of the community flock.
One of her regular customers, Sapho – real name Rang Dkhar – leads a drunken gang that practically lives at the pata. Sapho’s drunken misadventures include showing up at his own divorce ceremony dead drunk and requiring a relative to move his body to complete the rituals. Sapho and his gang pursue hedonistic pleasures instead of fulfilling their duties as men in Khasi society, where a man is expected to be a provider and protector of his family and tribe, often proving his valour by going to war. Sapho and his friends’ failure to meet this societal standard reveals what the community values most.
Contrastingly, there is Siewdor, a muscular warrior with masculinity pumping through his veins. Traumatised by the horrors of war, Siewdor abandons the battlefield and becomes the chef at Lyngkien’s pata. He suffers from night terrors and chooses nightly intoxication to avoid confronting his fears. Eventually, Siewdor finds the courage to confide in the woman he loves, who helps him overcome his trauma. Through Siewdor, Nongkynrih explores the softer side of heroic masculinity.
Lyngkien herself is the focus of an entire chapter that narrates how this orphaned woman came to run the town’s most successful pata. Her fate is marked by a cruel repetitiveness: every man she marries eventually dies from overindulgence in her rice beer. She is widowed ten times before ending up with the obedient Pathaw, who vows never to drink for her sake. Her story sheds light on social attitudes towards widow remarriage and the agency women have in choosing their partners. Lyngkien and Pathaw make an unconventional couple, with her being much older and often ordering him around like a parental figure. However, unlike in modern societies we are familiar with, Lyngkien’s complex love life and her alcohol business do not tarnish her reputation. She is met with light teasing every so often, but for the large part, her customers have always got her back.
Lyngkein’s pata becomes the site of philosophical explorations through the respectable and wealthy customers Shemphang and Kynih. Together, the friends discuss dicey topics, such as whether patriotism is an emotion instilled in young men to manipulate them into going to war for their King. They venture into issues like how gossip can snowball to have disastrous consequences and even something as pure as faith in God can turn bitter and poisonous. Thus, through the conversations that erupt in a beer shop, Nongkynrih masterfully captures the ethos of Khasi society.
Additionally, Part One of the novel reveals the republican society that exists beneath the monarchical facade of Khasi society. Nongkynrih details the democratic proceedings of the King’s court, the matrilineal social structure and how trials of justice lay in the hands of the people and not the monarch. The reader is privileged to be an audience to a spectacular royal wedding, a naming ceremony for a newborn, and rituals of divorce and healing. Considering the lack of representation of North East Indian myths and stories, the first section of the book serves as an expertly guided tour through a largely overlooked aspect of Indian culture.
Manik Raitong and Lieng Makaw
The idyllic image painted for much of the beginning of the book is shattered with the introduction of the character Manik Raitong. Unlike the members of Lyngkein’s pata who tease, celebrate, philosophise and help one another as a community, Manik is a solitary figure. Dressed in a ragged sackcloth covered in ash, Manik sustains himself through his farming and his music. If he is to walk through the town, he does not stop to acknowledge a soul, not even the children stoning him in jest.
Manik wasn’t always like this. He was once a young 17-year-old belonging to a powerful warrior clan until tragedy struck. In a series of misfortunes, society, fate and even God abandons Manik, leaving him defenceless and homeless. The lengthiest chapter in the novel is dedicated to Manik’s interactions with the natural world, where he encounters all kinds of animals that have been on the receiving end of man’s cruelty. The crux of the novel lies in how a man whose life has been stripped of its meaning, a man who is truly alone in this world, finds purpose once more. Manik’s journey is one that discovers hope in meaninglessness. When the human world turns its back on a young boy, he is finally free from the material shackles that bind us all. Instead of feeding off of the world around him, he learns to enter into a symbiotic relationship with nature. Manik sees through the futile attempts at controlling fate through wealth or devotion and instead learns to find the beauty of the present moment, the only possession any of us truly have.
Nongkynrih sets up the handsome, well-built King Syiem Sait – whose rule brings prosperity, territorial expansion, and improved defences – as a foil to Manik’s character. Syiem Sait embodies the societal ideal of a man, both in physique and character. Conversely, the lanky and eccentric Manik is dismissed as a lunatic. However, when the King marries the sensitive Lieng Makaw, his disciplined and strategic mind proves too hardened to accommodate her needs. Lieng's sensitivity first draws her to Manik's musical art and later to his spiritual journey. In contrast to the King, Manik, with his insights on life, has ample room in his heart to love her.
Whether king or pauper, the novel reveals that only a few things truly matter in life. Like all candles that burn with intensity, Manik’s passionate love affair meets a predictably tragic end. Yet his journey shows that no amount of loss or despair can curb a man’s capacity to love. Life renders itself meaningful to those who love without scruples or restraint, despite knowing that time is never on our side. In the face of true understanding and acceptance between two souls, fleeting moments can unfurl into eternity, before which even death pales in comparison.
The tale of star-crossed lovers may be a tried and tested trope. However, Nongkynrih’s skill lies in the ability to broaden this archetype into broader spheres of life. As our relationship with the natural world deteriorates rapidly, and we find ourselves trapped in hyper-individualistic societies, Nongkynrih’s novel holds deep relevance to our present. He uses the ancient society to hold a mirror to how human nature has consistently failed to understand what really matters. Thus the love story extends beyond romantic love to show a more complex love shared between nature and man.
Although Nongkynrih has taken on an ambitious array of themes to cover in his tale, this is a book that achieves excellence in its execution. The Distaste of the Earth is a book that will leave you pondering for a long time after you shut its pages.
The Distaste of the Earth, Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih, Penguin India.
