Noted Indian-English writer Parismita Singh’s latest book of short stories Peace Has Come, details the day to day encounters of a group of people living in insurgency prone BTAD area of Assam.
A personal drama set in Assam’s BTAD, the book deals with raw human emotions and taps into the most vulnerable feat of the psyche of violence. Singh weaves a beautiful tapestry of stories that aptly reflect the restlessness and constant state of fear the people of the area live in.
The stories are set in the extreme northern bank of Brahmaputra, below Bhutan and Arunachal Pradesh, what is territorially Bodoland and traces the tragic stories of two militant friends Dwipen and Prabin.
Interwoven with heartfelt stories of different people, such as, the dream romance of Rwmaii and Sylvia, brutally interrupted by her marriage to a militant. A journalist in search of a scoop amid skin-singeing rain and a gruesome accident, a terrorizing yet martyr-like gun-flute man, a Muslim woman’s unlikely friendship with a man from another community, families fractured by mysterious strangers who land up outside their gates.
Though Singh’s book resonates with the test of times, its most alluring quality is the representation of the characters interwoven with a global identity of people surviving in times of violence.
She beautifully represents Bodo, Assamese, Santhal, Rabha, Nepali and Rajbongshi and their love-hate relationship with one another.
Singh’s works, along the lines of other Northeastern writers such as Temsula Ao, Mamang Dai, Dhruba Hazarika, Easterine Kire narrates the socio-political conditions and the soul of the northeast by tactfully combining fact and fiction.
Singh’s earlier works include The Hotel at the End of the World (2009) and Mara and the Clay Crows (2015), which are graphic novels inspired by folktales of the northeast.
Born in Assam, Singh completed her higher education outside the state. Along with translations of various works from the northeast, Singh has been involved with the NGO Pratham since 2009 and working on various projects regarding primary school education in Assam