The diary
arrived addressed to me, bearing a message:
We live forever through our
stories. Tell ours.
And so began the author’s journey
into the life and legends of the Naga – a forgotten people living in the far
north-east of India, struggling to survive in the modern world.
An extraordinarily powerful and evocative literary
work that traverses new ground in the hinterland between biography and
mythology.
Nagaland is the story of Augustine and of the
Naga people. With sensitively poetic prose, Doherty deftly draws the reader
into worlds of parallel realities. The love story, desperate and damned,
destined for tragedy; forged and upheld against the wishes of family and the
dictates of culture, with a backdrop of violence and reprisals amidst the
brutality of communal conflict. Alongside this is the telling of Augustine’s
childhood story, growing up in the beautiful mountain state of Nagaland where the traditional way of life, loyalties and beliefs collide
with modern imperatives that, for many, lead inexorably to poverty,
dislocation, drug addiction, disease and despair.
Seamlessly woven
through each story, Naga legends and myths connect these disparate worlds, the
source of profound insights that are simultaneously confronting and
transcendent. Poignant and profound, the reader is left with a yearning
nostalgia for a past where eternal truths prevailed, to be gleaned from ancient
fables and sages; where a people lived in communities richly endowed with
cultural and spiritual certainties, and were valued members of large family and
tribal networks. Except, of course, if you choose not to follow the rules…
