Mamang Dai. Image credit – Arunachal Observer

Mamang Dai is one of the most prominent voices from the Northeast. A poet and novelist writing in English, she is from Arunachal Pradesh and the first woman in her state to have been selected for the IAS/IFS. However, she gave up her career in the Civil Service to pursue a career in journalism. Dai was a correspondent with the Hindustan Times, the Telegraph and the Sentinel newspapers and was President of the Arunachal Pradesh Union of Working Journalists.

Her first publication ‘River Poems’ hailed her as one of the most intensely poetic voices from the North East region. She has several novels and poetry books to her credit. In 2003, Dai was honoured with the state’s Verrier Elwin Award for her book Arunachal Pradesh: The Hidden Land which documented the culture and customs of her land. She is the recipient of the Padma Shri Award in 2011 and the Sahitya Akademi Award for English in 2017.

Here, Lalthansangi Ralte engages her in a conversation for Muse India.

Lalthansangi Ralte: Ms. Mamang Dai, thank you for fitting me into your busy schedule and agreeing to this interview. You are well known for your fictional and non-fictional works and poetry. A recipient of the Padma Shri Award in 2011 and the Sahitya Akademi Award in 2017. I am grateful for this wonderful opportunity. May I know when you first started writing/composing?
Mamang Dai: Thank you Sangi. That’s the question, you can’t pinpoint the beginning. I was always kind of scribbling, but I started focusing on poetry as late as the 1990s because at that time I came in touch with this Northeast Writers’ Forum. So, that was a kind of stimulus and it made us want to write a body of a collection of poems to read to each other, or share or at least feel that you have a poetry collection. When it starts in a more formal way, you think of getting together a collection.

Lalthansangi Rate: Do you write in your mother tongue?
Mamang Dai: No. I write only in English.

Lalthansangi Ralte: Your works are popular not only in the Northeast region of India but in the whole of India. So, when you write do you have a certain readership in mind? How do you view the question of readership?
Mamang Dai: Readership? In the northeast? Or in general? (LR: Both in the northeast and in general). In Arunachal, we have a very limited readership because the population is small, the number of readers is small, and for newspapers and news media networking and writing in English, it really limits your readers because of the language. In Arunachal, now, I find that many of the younger generation have read all the major authors and Indian writers writing in English, and it seems these writers have a huge readership in Arunachal. So, it means that they are reading a lot.

Lalthansangi Ralte: Do you feel that you have a large number of readers for your poetry in your hometown?
Mamang Dai: I think that poetry and novels, everyone knows about them at least in Itanagar and the major district towns. But then, in the villages, they are still very remote and they don’t have the time to read and write. It is people with leisure who have time to write, and in the villages, I don’t think they’ll appreciate you sitting and writing.

Lalthansangi Ralte: Are you a personal writer? Do you write for a big audience?
Mamang Dai: No, I don’t do that. The only consideration I have while I am writing is I think about the reader as my own people, what will they think if I put it like this, trying to re-enter their minds again and make it more real from their point of view instead of going into very romantic or romanticized nuances and images. But otherwise, the times I enjoy writing the most is when I am really into a character … you are feeling all the things that you are trying to make that person feel in that life you are trying to give them.
And when you think of Northeast writings, everyone is like mountains, rivers, nature, which is not the whole picture.

Lalthansangi Ralte: Mona Zote, a poet from Mizoram has written about ‘self-imposed exile’ in her poem ‘Rez’. What are your thoughts on ‘self-imposed exile’? Do you feel you have it? If so, has it enabled you to look at ‘India’ differently?
Mamang Dai: People’s reaction, the disappointment of the people, the behaviour of the leaders, everything becomes so disappointing. But otherwise, I don’t think I could function under a ‘self-imposed exile’ as life is very much a part of me. I am very reclusive. And when you become more serious about your writings then a lot of other things become extraneous. So that kind of reclusiveness is the only kind of ‘self-imposed exile’ I feel.
India, the mainland, I would look at it as I would look at the rest of the world. Also, I have this kind of feeling that if one is liberal and open to learning other people there is a much lighter way of living. I don’t have any kind of angst against mainland India or the rest of the world. I think people are by and large okay and you just have to find that connection.

Lalthansangi Ralte: You have an amazing list of non-fictional prose writings namely Arunachal Pradesh: The Hidden Land (2003) and Mountain Harvest: The Food of Arunachal (2004), The Sky Queen and Once Upon a Moontime (2003). Your fictional prose writings include The Legends of Pensam in 2006, Stupid Cupid (2008), The Black Hill (2014) and Escaping the Land (2021). You also have a number of poetry collections namely River Poems (2004), The Balm of Time (2008) Hambreelmai's Loom (2014) and Midsummer Survival Lyrics (2014). Having written extensively well in both genres of poetry and prose, do you see yourself as a poet or as a prose writer?
Mamang Dai: I think that to be a poet, you need to be only a poet. You can’t do anything else; you need the time and you can’t really have any other job. And with my work here and there, there are many times when it becomes impossible to write poetry. But with prose, it is a bit easier as you can scribble notes and say ‘I can characterize it’. With poetry, I think you just have to be a poet.

Lalthansangi Ralte: What is your take on Northeast Indian writing in English? How do you view the adulation or ‘scholarly interest’ it has received nationally in the past few years?
Mamang Dai: I think it is very lively. I think there is a lot of raw material still waiting to be found, not by others, but even by our own people. Characters often get lost and earlier explorers, missionaries and so many others are still lurking around the corners. If we go and explore, I think there is a lot of room for new fiction and new ideas. And when we look at the northeast, there’s something special about it. If you say northeast writings, people often ask, “What is northeast writings?” I have a disapproval of the term but we have quite picked up all the global influences much before the term globalization came into home with the readings of gun-fighters, and romances. For English writers, this has become an interesting imagery. I feel that there is a misuse of culture by the writers from the region.

Lalthansangi Ralte: What is the driving force behind the use of myth and lore in your poetry?
Mamang Dai: Myth and lore are all around me; when I talk to my relatives or to my hometown, everything is tied to a story or to an older belief. This has been told to many people, but I also believe that it also depends on the recipient and the temperament. I see many ways of seeing and looking at things. It makes the teller more interesting and me, the listener, more interested. It is also more consoling to know about these things (myth and lore) and more grounding too.

Lalthansangi Ralte: Northeast poets have often been said to be ‘rooted’ to their culture and identity. What do you feel is the reason behind their being ‘rooted’?
Mamang Dai: I can only speak for the group I know, the Northeast Writers Forum people like Robin Ngangom. It’s because all of them live in the region, everyone seems to be quite content with each other and with our homeland and also most of their resources are from the region, so this keeps them grounded. I know only Easterine Kire, the Naga writer, who stays in Norway because she couldn’t write in Nagaland because of the political situation. As for me, I can’t write anywhere else except in my room.

Lalthansangi Ralte: Is there anything in your poetry based upon a real-life event? If so, please tell us about it.
Mamang Dai: Oh yes, a lot of them like ‘Small town and a river’ written for an aunt who passed away in Delhi and they had to bring back her body over the river on the ferry to Pasihgat. That was a terrible sorrow with her little coffin and the flowers. It was my uncle, her husband, who brought down the poem because when he was waiting, he kept combing his hair; I think he was trying to cover up his sorrow.
When you really want to become a poet, I think you have to be just a poet because you need time for all these kinds of emotions.

Lalthansangi Ralte: What is your take on Arunachali poetry in English? How do you see the literature scenario in Arunachal Pradesh?
Mamang Dai: At the moment, it is a bit unfortunate. I don’t see a lot of young people writing at the moment. We have launched the Arunachali Literary Society; we have a lot of writers writing in Assamese as it used to be the medium of instruction in Arunachal. Many can write and speak in Assamese but even that population is gradually decreasing. At the moment, everything is so rushed that I think that most of them are too busy with getting a good job or joining politics. There is not much time for alternatives like music, painting and the arts. I hope it will improve. Slowly the response is improving. Ethnic writers are not too many right now except for the researchers.

Lalthansangi Ralte: What do you feel is the position of Northeast Indian writing in English among mainstream Indian literature?
Mamang Dai: Northeast writers have done quite well, in the last decade. Now is also the time for publishers to discover the northeast and northeast writers being ready with the material. So, it hasn’t worked out too badly.

Lalthansangi Ralte: What is the position of translation in Arunachali literature?
Mamang Dai: Translation- I think there is still a big gap in translation. Songs have been translated a lot by the young people. They are able to translate not just the lyrics but also the passions. And there is oral tradition – you can interpret it in so many ways. You can use it in so many ways, as a source for so many things. We are lucky that we still have this body of oral traditions.

Lalthansangi Ralte: Thank you so much, Mamang, for your precious time.