This is indeed a terribly late post.

Last year, after a very long time, I got to see my byline on the Himal Southasian, the magazine that I have huge, huge respect for. An editor reached out to me wondering if I could write a review essay on the recent works of fiction that were based on the Gorkhaland movement of Darjeeling. I had read a few books already and was greatly moved with some of the discoveries, and realisations, I had made. So, I quickly jumped at the opportunity.

I spent almost six months labouring on the story. At first the plan was to limit the essay to only those books available in English, either original or in translation. Then I thought of also including those in Nepali and Bangla, and very soon I found myself going down the rabbit hole. It was a nerve-wracking experience I must say (with kids and illnesses thrown in in good measure). But it was a hugely rewarding experience and I consider this essay among the best I have done till date. It featured in Himal’s year-end list of its ten most-read book reviews of 2023.

The essay includes the titles like Fatsung, Song of the Soil, Phoolangey, Fruits of the Barren Tree, Nun Cha, Noonko Chiya, Gorkhaland Diaries and The Hills are Burning. The only non-fiction I could land my hands on was 1986, Baas Haraye Pachhi. Coming almost 40 years after the agitation of the eighties, these writings for the first time expose the horrors of the violent movement from a local perspective. Kiran Desai had earlier attempted to write on the movement in her second novel, the Booker Prize-winning Inheritance of Loss but like many who trashed her work, I too found the work inadequate, albeit not for the same reasons.

It is not easy to remember, and write, on a violent past that a community had taken great pains to forget. We must thank these authors for working through the collective amnesia to bring to fore the inexplicable violent phase that the people of Darjeeling and Kalimpong witnessed in the late eighties. A lot we knew; a lot more we did not.

I do hope there will be more such writings in future, especially non-fiction that will document the pain and sufferings of the people. Writing is an act of remembrance; without remembrance there can be no reconciliation or healing.

Read the full story, A Wave of Bold New Books on Gorkhaland Agitation.