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The Northeast of India does have a special character of its own: the socio-cultural milieu of this region holds up in the present day…a picture that somehow distinguishesit from the rest of India(Datta, 119). The people of Northeast India are different physically, culturally and in their religious affiliations. The region is a confluence of a wide variety of tribes andsub-tribes with complex history migrations, cultural assimilation and absorption. Moreover,primitive communities and cultures of this remote region have borne the burden of a double colonization – from the white civilizing forces and the spread of Christianity and later in the post-independence era under the nation-state and its policies of integration and development of tribal areas. This has led to the marginalization of multihuedethnic,linguistic and cultural identities.This study attempts an analysis of The Legends of Pensam (2006), a collection of interconnected stories by one of the finest writers and poets from North-east India, namely Mamang Dai from Arunachal Pradesh. She was honoured with the Padma Shri in 2011 and awarded the Sahitya Akademi in 2017 for her novel The Black Hill.Her writings reveal some pertinent concerns that remain at the core of much literary writings emerging from this pristine, kaleidoscopic landscape. In her preface to, Arunachal Pradesh: The Hidden Land (2002), a non-fictional account of her home state, Dai stresses upon the necessity to retrieve the rich but threatened tribal heritage. She says. Today, change has come like a steam roller. The transition from unknown frontier to modern state has been sharp and rapid and the question of direction and destiny has become one of great complexity and soul searching. On the one hand, in keeping with the national agenda, the state is forging ahead with goals for progress and development. On The Other–the history of our people, our origins and routes of migration remain a matter of speculation, based purely on the few recorded documents left by the early explorers. There are also specialized niches in our tribal heritage that may be erased forever if change is not assessed and negotiated carefully. (9) Creative literature emerging from a marginalized region as Northeast India, exhibit search for roots. Kailash.C. Baral Says, In the absence of authentic histories of most communities in Northeast, the creative writers have taken it upon themselves to be cultural historians .Their works provide us the resource for writing alternative histories(8). Myth and memory, tradition and folklore are fused to create fascinating narratives which express a deep concern with the loss of space and identity. The lands of the ancestors are recreated in loving details as a place of belonging and longing. In her introduction to the Oxford Anthology of Writings from North-East India, Tilottama Mishra observes that: An intense awareness of cultural loss and recovery is a recurrent feature of the literature of the seven north-eastern states. Most fictional narratives and poetic voices in Northeast India are embedded within the peculiar experiences that the creative writers themselves undergo. Literary writing from Northeast India articulates memory and orality, two innovative tools of resistance (Borah 75) against the gradual erosion of age-old ways of life and belief systems. Such remedial literary devices (Borah 75) assist in reaffirming and recreating what has been subjugated, marginalized or lost due to hegemonic use of power politics along with other reasons such as migration, forced displacement, assimilation and cultural hybridization.Writers of this region are often seen delving deep into the past to retrieve forgotten ancestral customs and beliefs to recreate a possible alternative history. Remembering heals the sense of loss and is a strategic maneuver to reclaim a specific social space and indigenous identity that is slowly threatening to fade into oblivion. Aruni Kashyap from Assam, Mamang Daifrom Arunachal Pradesh, Temsula Ao and Easterine Kire from Nagaland, Robin Ngangom from Manipur and the Shillong poets’ namely Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih and Desmond Kharmawphlang exhibit a sense of alienation and identity crisis and a constant search for old values and cultural moorings.

Critical reading of English writings from Northeast India is still an uncharted territory. There exists a few readings of Mamang Dais works through postcolonial, ecocritical and feminist lenses. But none concentrates upon the writer’s role as peacemaker and her attempts at striking a compromise in a turbulent time of transition. Mamang Dai, like most creative writers of the Northeast, documents the angst, the violence, the conflict between the old and the new, the slowly dissolving traditions and folklore of her people. At the same time she like many others also try to find a middle path, to bridge the gap and to make peace.

Mamang Dais book of stories, The Legends of Pensam can be considered the history of a tribe, an ode to a long gone way of life. The author says in her foreword that the Adi tribe in habiting the beauteous Siang valley of Arunachal Pradesh is the subject of her book. The authors note in The Legends of Pensam, states:

…the Adis practice an animistic faith that is woven around forest ecology and co-existence with the natural world. There are few road links to their territory. distant villages still entails cumbersome river crossings, elephant rides, and long footmarches through dense forest or over high mountain passes. But the old villagers who walk miles every day say: When you look at the land you forget your aches and pains. And it really is a beautiful landscape. So far, isolation has been the best protection for the pristine forests and rich bio-diversity of Arunachal Pradesh.(1-2)This conjures an image of a pristine and primitive way of life, of a remote land cloistered from the effects of the modern world outside. Mamang Dai, like most writers from the Northeast, constructs ethnic identity by delineating the natural world of forests, rivers and mountains as the immediate space of tribes which also housed their rich store of beliefs and values..

The pristine and verdant land of the Adis exhibits an ideal space where the humans, nature and the spiritual coexist. The stories in the ‘Legends of Pensam’ show the Adi people living in harmony with their surroundings. Natural imagery is used with great effect to assert the unique identity of the Adis. The vision of the Siang river, the blue mountains, the green waterfalls, the lush, green valleys, the incessant rains and the dense forests frequented by hunters and malevolent spirits create a surreal vision of the natural world, an other-worldly abode and existence for the tribes. Here, in the wilderness, tucked away out of the reach of modernity, the human, the natural and the supernatural world are intertwined in an ethereal, inexplicable but palpable relationship. The tooth of a tiger and a wild boar were symbols of luck and success, inexplicable but auspicious nevertheless, since here “Faith is everything”(35).. Shamans or traditional healers and mystics who had the power to communicate with the other world were called in to cure human maladies by performing primitive rites and invoking the aid of spirits. Folk culture and oral knowledge handed down by the village elders, the shamans and rhapsodists as revered guardians of collective tribal memory are evoked in a way that elicits a willing suspension of disbelief. The fables of the Legends of Pensam can be summed up in the lines : ‘These are the stories, rhapsodies of time and destiny’ that must be guarded because ‘In the end, all we have is remembrance’(55). The author seems to echo the voice of the Miri, the shaman and the rhapsodist.

The traditional, almost magical way of life is constantly set up against the ruthless modernization that is slowly changing the socio-political and cultural landscape. There is a palpable regret at the onslaught of modernization and post-independence development projects undertaken by the state. The coming of the ‘Bee-ree-tiss’ (British) or the ‘Migluns’ and the Second World war ruptured the traditional fabric of the Adis. The Adis came into contact with the ‘Bee-ree-tiss’ as labourers of the ‘Stilwell Road’ which runs through the Siang Valley and was constructed during World War II to connect India and China. Dai describes the first brush of modernity that touches the land:

The first white priests, surveyors and soldiers had begun arriving in the region almost hundred years ago, in the early 1800s. Since then, people from other worlds had come and gone, though the only records of their journeys are the stories that the older men and women remember.(37-8)

The concluding section of the novel ‘matter of time’ documents the change that swept the valley in the name of development in post-independence India. The strategy of progress and integration undertaken by the Indian government to bring previously isolated tribal areas into the framework of the nation-state led to the steady erosion of ethnic identities of these hitherto unexposed people, much to the alarm of writers of the region. The change that came over their own people who worked as agents of the government is expressed thus:

His wide, fresh face broke into a smile and I understood that because Kasup had travelled to the city recently his head had been completely turned by the sights, sounds and smells of the other life. The representatives sent to the National Development Council for Backward Areas had been thoroughly overwhelmed by the sea of people, the lights and the roar of traffic and they had returned triumphant, as if they had learnt the secret of modern life (170)

The inroads made by the ‘Bee-ree-tiss’ and later by the development projects of the government caused the serene and scenic abode of the Adis to slowly transform into small, dirty towns, offices, hotels and tourist spots. The greenery is replaced by dust and debris as is evident in the description of Gurdum and Pigo towns.

The town was permanently awash in debris. Plastic floated across the hills, clung to river banks, perched on trees. Broken glass and discarded packaging scarred the bald slopes closest to the town. Workmen sucked on wet bidis and chipped away at the mountainside. Their women stood by and looked askance with dark, savage eyes.(164)

The migrated workmen from the North of India chipping away at the mountainside are a telling metaphor for the unwanted influences that were tearing apart the social and moral fabric of the region:

The texture and speed of change was visible in strange ways all across the land. A visitor coming to the town for the first time would still see the green hills , the green bamboo and the green river flowing in all directions, but now there were young men on motorcycles roaring across the stones while young picnickers wearing fake fur and woolen caps waved at passers-by.

Amidst the changing scenario and the descending unease, it is the task of the writers to take on the role of custodians of untold histories of the land and its people, to bridge the gap between past and present, to make peace.

The title ‘The Legends of Pensam’ is not only evocative but also suggests a negotiation, a middle path. ‘Pensam’, the fictional abode of the Adi tribe is a space in transition, caught between the old and the new, the primordial and the modern. Dai declares at the outset of her book:

In our language, the language of the Adis, the word ‘pensam’ means ‘in-between’. It suggests the middle, or middle ground, but it may also be interpreted as the hidden spaces of the heart where a secret garden grows. It is the small world where anything can happen and everything can be lived: where the narrow boat that we call life sails along somehow in calm or stormy weather; where the life of a man can be measured in the span of a song.(vii)

The important characters peopling ‘The Legends of Pensam’ guard their past fiercely, despite the inevitable changes. The only way to come to terms with the loss is to stay connected to the past. Nenem, beautiful and agile, the mythical daughter of the river woman could not survive and gave up without a struggle when the great earthquake of August , 1950 changed the lives and the landscape of her beloved land forever. “It was a fearful time, and it was a sad time”(127). The river was thrown off its course and it devoured every sign and symbol of the past years that Nenem nurtured in her heart. Most importantly, all the houses and the tree-lined avenues of the miglun quarters were gone forever with the violent waters and with them all memories of her first love, the young British officer, David. Her husband, Kao put a chain on the tin trunk and tied it to the thick wooden post so that it would not slip away-the tin trunk that Nenem had brought from her home at her marriage and contained her memories of her maiden life. This tin trunk holding untold stories were later carried away to her new home after marriage by Nenem’s daughter, Losi along with her other bridal gifts. Nenem’s husband, Kao never left the village after her passing although many were leaving their village homes for settling in the towns. He chose to stay near his beloved Nenem who was buried in the grove of orange trees. The orange trees had been lovingly planted and nurtured by Nenem since its fragrant blossoms recalled all the fragments of her past, her meeting David that only she could understand. Orange, the luscious fruit of the land, brought them together and shaped a love and a burning desire which Nenem never expected.

Nenem’s encounter with David made her long for change, for far-off places. She was young and wild “believing that whatever was happening to her now would have future value”(101), Dai comments ominously. It was an ill-fated union and pining for a ‘miglun’ could only lead nowhere. In the end, Nenem chooses her beloved land over her love and slowly tries to make peace with her present.

The leading character of The Legends of Pensam is Hoxo, the wonder boy who fell mysteriously from a great explosion of sound and fire in the sky. Hoxo was found by his foster father Lutor, the leader of the Adis, while working in the construction site. Everyone believed in his story of how Hoxo came to be discovered because “it was already a confused and haunted time of change when Hoxo was found”(38). Hoxo and his friend Rakut, are the threads which bind the narrative of magical tales in The Legends of Pensam. Both give an insight into the life of the Adis in their primitive abode and the changes they encounter. The omniscient narrator describes : “Here Hoxo and Rakut live and remember on a piece of green earth wedged between high mountains and big rivers”(190). Dai’s mesmerizing narrative presents these two friends from the very beginning to the end as witnessing and negotiating the change in the world around them. They experience the best of their world along with the currents of change which robs them of their pristine world as well as their identity.

Dai presents Hoxo as an embodiment of the tribal soul, nurturing the essential primeval wisdom of mankind. His birth is like a celestial event, akin to the birth of the universe in an explosion. Of unknown parentage, Hoxo encompasses within himself the knowledge of heaven and earth. He was born of the sky and married to Losi, the daughter of the river woman. The narrator comments on Hoxo: ‘He seemed to live in a timeless zone … It was as if he would never be surprised by any condition or behavior of man or beast’ (24). To the narrator, he was a mystery. He thought deeply and was aware of everything. Juxtaposed against him we have the educated narrator and her friends Mona and Jules, two globe-trotting, jet-paced European journalists, whose quest for exotic, unexplored stories led them to remote corners of the world like Pensam. Jules was enamoured by Pensam, “a deep bowl of a place in the hills”, which was in none of the maps that he had consulted. When the narrator had spoken of Mona and Jules little daughter, Adela’s autism, Hoxo had listened and understood and participated in Mona’s sorrow although he had never heard of the word. Earlier in the story, the narrator and Adela’s parents who were experienced in the ways of the world, had reacted with anger and confusion at the child’s diagnosis and had to resort to the library to learn about the condition. But the unlettered Hoxo stated as a matter of fact that these things happen all the time. He narrated the story of little Kepi who suffered from a crippling condition and it was thought that the spirit of a snake might have coiled itself around the torso of the boy. Hoxo was called in to perform a serpent ritual to invoke the spirits to heal him but they had gone too far away beyond recall. He saw clearly that the malady was a result of the killing of a snake by the boy’s father Togum. The two children, Adela and Kepi, from two different worlds, one in a modern city and the other in a primitive village, diagnosed with incurable and mysterious illnesses were however united in their common love for music. At a centre for autistic children in the city, Adela sang and played on the drum with other children while far away in primitive Yagbo, Kepi was soothed by the music playing all day on the radio. It acted as balms to their innocent spirits and comforted the parents.

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