Small Towns and The River by Mamang Dai

SMALL TOWNS AND THE RIVER BY MAMANG DAI
Small Towns And The River by Mamang Dai is a poem of Arunchal pradesh
where she was born, of Shillong, Meghalaya where she read it, did her
schooloing from, of Assam where her graduation with English Honours from
Gauhati Universty and it all telling of the cartography and topgraphy of the
Northeast of India indirectly, how it was in the past, how it is now, how the
indigenous tribes and cultures of it in contrast to as well as taking us far for an
ethnogrphic, socio-linguistical study. A poetess from Pasighat, East Siang
District, Arunachal Pradesh is first an IAS, but for devoting more time to
journalism and literature she chose it otherwise. A recipient of Padma Shri
from the Govt. of India and Sahitya Akademi Award, she comes from the Adi
tribe with a folk base of her own deeply rooted into the soil of her land. To
read her is to be reminded of Verrier Elwin and George Grierson and Jim
Corbett.
In the poem, one can mark the history and growth of towns, Indian towns, hilly
towns and the history of struggling folks trying to shed ignorance as well as
underdevelopment, moving out for job and better opprtunites and also he
feels towards the pull of the tradition of patriarchs or tribal chieftains seeing
with the hawkish eye. But at the first instance it is a poem of the river and the
small town. But mythically it is a song of man and Nature, how the conncetion
is in between. The second thing is experience, the experience of life, the world,
as seen and experienced and viewed. How the contrasts between society and
development? How to clutch them along? How to myth and tradition with the
stride?
Small towns always remind me of death.

My hometown lies calmly amidst the trees,
it is always the same,
in summer or winter,
with the dust flying,
or the wind howling down the gorge.
The poetess while starting the narrative says what she has come to feel it
personally as an inhabitant, as an in-dweller what the town meant to her, how
the history of their, how the trends and traditions of them doing the rounds,
beleifs and faiths whch but sustaining them so far. To read the poem is to
come to feel the history of Assam and the frontiers, the history of the
ethnographic tribes and tribesmen, the opening of colleges and schools. How
was it Pasighat in the past? How is it now? Does development take a toll upon
nature? And if not developed, can man be man? Let us study it the relationship
between man and nature, the relationship between the town and the river.
The small towns remind her of death, what she has seen, come to feel it, how
the communities have been living, burying their dead, carrying on with rituals
and beliefs and in the midst of all, she lies with her divided self, split
personality in choosing in between the two as for where to go, what it to opt
for. Her hometown lies it calmly in the midst of trees and hills. It is almost the
same, the same archetypal village; the same hutment she sees it over the years
coming down to as an image and if to see it otherwise, ‘Home, home, there is
no place like home.’
Just the other day someone died.

In the dreadful silence we wept
looking at the sad wreath of tuberoses.
Life and death, life and death,
only the rituals are permanent.
How life goes on, keeps on moving she narrates it here in this poem. How did
happen it one day when soemone of her close died and she kept weeping,
mourning the loss in silence placed with a sad wreath of tuberorses? Life and
death, death and life, it will continue unto the last as long as man is on earth.
But it is the rituals which some may confide in for a repose.
Here identifying herself with the river the poetess tells the archetypal stories
of life and death. How do they bury their dead? How do they do away with?
The scene is one of silence and mourning; man coming and going whcih is but
never-ending story. The lines remind us of Tennyson’s Tears, Idle Tears, Break,
Break, Break, Crossing the Bar, The Brook and In Memoriam.
The river has a soul.

In the summer it cuts through the land
like a torrent of grief. Sometimes,
sometimes, I think it holds its breath
seeking a land of fish and stars
The river has a soul whcih she has come to feel it and it is also true that
without the river, the forest, the hill and the land man cannot live. The river is
a source of life-giving water as well as for agriculture and she has seen the river
in different seasons. During the rainy days, it has a tale of own to tell about the
babble and murmur by and during the summertime so different.
The river has a soul.

It knows, stretching past the town,
from the first drop of rain to dry earth
and mist on the mountaintops,
the river knows
the immortality of water.
Water, water, water, the drop of water for the thirsty, on the barren earth
parching and dried, burning with heat and dust swirling, how to pray for to be
blessed with a cold shower, the clouds gatehring over Himavant for a
cloudburst. No life without water is the thing. Water for fertility, vegetation,
how to explain it, for the seeds to germinate? But Coleridge describes it with
the sighting of the scenery and the return of the ship when retribution for the
guilt is done.
To read the lines here is to be reminded of The Waste Land, Kailasha and
Mansarovar, Meru and Vaigai river, the Ghagra which but Eliot, Yeats,
Ramanujan, Daruwalla refer to into their poems. It is the river on whose banks
lie it the settlements of the indigenous people. It is water for which the saints
prayed to Shiva for emanting the Ganges from his matted locks to the earth.
The tale of the Neelachal hills and the Brahmaputra of Kamakhya, how to
allude to?
A shrine of happy pictures

marks the days of childhood.
Small towns grow with anxiety
for the future.
The dead are placed pointing west.
When the soul rises
it will walk into the golden east,
into the house of the sun.
What golden dreams does she dream? Where her Konark Sun Temple? How
her land of the rising sun? Does she mean to hint towards the Tawang
monastery too?
Life, what was it during childhood? How had it been the times? How did the
huts after the growth of towns? There is something of Hood’s My Chldhood
and the loss of innocence. There is something of Lamb’s chimney-
sweepers.The sun has been used in as a myth and a motif too as Lawrence
refers to in his travelogues, novels and short stories. There is something of Sea
and Sardinia, The Lost Girl, Etruscan Places and Apocalypse; there is something
of The Ship of Death, Bavarian Gantians and Shadows. Resurrection stories of
Lawrence too can be referred to. The Mexican backgrounds which Lawrence
refers to too take us to a different world of native myth and mysticism. What
more do we know about the Mayan civilization?
In the cool bamboo,

restored in sunlight,
life matters, like this.
Life matters, as the bamboos keep murmuring in the wind adding to greenery
and vegetation. The word bamboo has a mythical text. How do we use, wehn
do we and for what purposes? Bamboos are needed for huts. Bamboos are
needed for making the bier. Even for making baskets, cots, mud houses and for
fences it is needed. This is how life goes in the forest ranges, the hilly terrains
where there is life too and it pulsates with. Here we can hear the mystic drums
of Nigeria not, but Arunachal.
In small towns by the river

we all want to walk with the gods.
The small towns dotting the river banks have a tale of ther own to tell, the folks
have a mythical base of their own to share with. The river is essential for every
purpose. Even in the past the ciivilizations grew up on the river banks. Even
now the Hindu people need them for pinda-dana on the ghat and asthi-kalasha
to keep it hanging by the tree of to be immersed in.
To read the poems is read the alternative version of history; is to know history
through folk mediums and local sources. It is also true we have neglected
regional history so much in attaching imporatnce to the war, loot and
plunder.To read is to be remembered of the poems of Wole Soyinka, Gabriel
Okara, Ben Okri and so on. To read the poem is to know the history of the
seven sisterly states and to relate to and align it with otherwise to the main
story. While reading the poem, the mind gets lifted to Nagaland and the Naga
sadhus; their rigorous and austere sadhna and hathayoga which but few know
it. What more do we abut the Ahom dynasty and the Sikkimese kings?
Her theme is one of A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal where Wordsworth talks of
the insensitive body of Lucy Gray turned into the rocks, stones and trees. Is it a
poem of the Siang river or the Siyom river? As Mahapatra talks of the river
Daya so does she here in this poem. Has Wordsworth not written about
Tintern Abbey and the Wye river and London 1802?
The river of Time, the hutment of Nature, the presence of Man, the history of
Earth, what to say it about? What it in race and ethnicity? What it in myth and
mysticism? Where do they lead to ultimately? Should we not ask our own
conscience to deliberate? Who can but about the pathway of life? But there
must be something to confide in, repose in as for temporary solace.

Small Towns and The River by Mamang Dai

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SMALL TOWNS AND THE RIVER BY MAMANG DAI

Small towns always remind me of death.

Just the other day someone died.

The river has a soul.

The river has a soul.

A shrine of happy pictures

In the cool bamboo,

In small towns by the river

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