His name is worth mentioning because the original Santhal rebellion against the Raj and feudal system in the 19th century was led by the Murmu brothers: Sido and Kanhu, with Chand, Bhairav. It is about a troupe master, Mangal Murmu, who refuses to perform for the President as a mark of rebellion. They have built big houses for themselves in town they wear nice clothes they send their children to good schools in faraway places…What do we get in returnIJ Such diseases that we can’t breathe properly, we cough blood and forever remain bare bones”. They sell the tones they mine from our earth in faraway place - Dilli, Noida, Panjab. The concluding story, The Adivasi Will Not Dance has the strongest and most political prose: “They turn our land upside down, inside out, with their heavy machines. Merely a Whore is arguably the most provocative story in the collection with its overtones of prostitution and misogyny, it is the most gripping and appalling. Many of the stories are brief at a peripheral level, but are intricately woven by engrossing anxiety. Baso-jhi revolves around the horrid practice of witch-hunting, Blue Baby is about a jilted lover’s dilemma about choosing between her husband and her estranged lover who is the father of her unborn child, Eating With the Enemy is about the parallel lives of two lower middle class women who had once shared the same man, and so on. Getting Even is about a kid being accused of raping a child, and told from the perspective of the doctor in charge Shekhar ostensibly, but aptly, commiserates it from his personal experiences as a medical officer in Jharkhand.

Most of the time, they exhibit an existential plight and display human beings as victims of circumstances.Īlthough written a while back, the opening story, They Eat Meat! seeps deep into the concerns of a homophobic, religious and hence volatile society, reminding one of the recent furore over meat ban and the killing of a Muslim man for ‘eating beef’ last week. Although the stories are remarkably different from each other, they are united by a reciprocated theme of despondency and the sincere dearth of belonging.

Shekhar, also a doctor by profession, whose novel The Mysterious Ailment of Rupi Baskey was critically acclaimed, returns with stories from rural Jharkhand that steer us through its humdrum lanes, into the routine lives of its people, largely that of the Santhal people. Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar’s The Adivasi Will Not Dance is one such collection of 10 short stories that revolves around self-transformation emanating from a unification of the personal and the political. Amidst the growing debate over what exactly Indian literature in English is, there is a notable fresh turn that Indian tribal literature has made in contemporary times, with the competence of maverick writers being published.

The adivasi will not dance stories