From Oral Tradition to Written Record, A.C. Kharingpam’s ‘The Red Rhododendron Songs’ Unleash Voices that are Heard and Unheard of

A POET in his cocoon sings for no one. He sings for himself, of life gone by, and life to come. But no poet is deaf and blind to his surroundings. The poems that the poets write are as much, the replay and post-mortem of the past and the things to come (excerpt from the introduction by A.C. Kharingpam).

In her enthusiastic foreword to A.C. Kharingpam’s The Red Rhododendron Songs: An Anthology of Tangkhul English Poetry, Simi Malhotra observes that this anthology offers a more, diversified and fuller view of the writings from India’s Northeast representing the anthropology and cosmology of the Tangkhuls in and through poetry. The Tangkhuls have always been reliant on oral tradition when it comes to preserving history. But the later part of the 19th century saw the emergence of the English language and writing. With the arrival of Reverend William Pettigrew in 1896, the Tangkhuls were introduced to the Western Education which became necessary for the Tangkhuls to learn reading and writing. Thus, writing emerged as a new form of preserving history. 

“The poems in the collection are no doubt an experience, intimately and exclusively belonging to the poet and poets alone, however, each poet reveals a thousand stories that have never been told in any form.”

The Red Rhododendron Songs: An Anthology of Tangkhul English Poetry (with a critical introduction) edited by A.C. Kharingpam is a collection of over 400 poems by 23 contemporary Tangkhul poets, past and present, spanning from pre-1940 to the present time. Consisting of myriad themes, ranging from tribal identity, history, nationalism, religion, loss, sense of belonging and the like, the poems are embodiments of the identities of the poets and the status of their society. Each poem expresses an element of the individual poet’s experience, the tip of the iceberg, of that poet’s full experience. The list of poets ranges from the unsung Naga revolutionary Rungsung Suisa to modern day Tangkhul poets. This anthology is an act of preserving or archiving, of documenting voices and histories of a community rich with it. 

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To page through an anthology is like entering a room full of people. Everyone has a reason for being there. Likewise, The Red Rhododendron Songs is evocative and exhilarating, every poem exudes the raison d’être of the individual poet. There are poems that are long out of print; unpublished voices; published and poems that have been beloved for years.

In “A Story not so Long Ago”, the poet A.C. Kharingpam tributes his ancestral land:

“Let me tell you the story of my land

A beautiful land, a bountiful country

where every man’s work was 

never unrewarded.

It was so when we were still young.”

Lumyangnao Shaiza, another poet, in her poem “Ode to Childhood” remembers childhood:

“I want the wind to stop, turn around,

return us to when we were ten

when I could call you

from my window to yours.

But we’re twenty-five, the old homes are photographs now.”

Raw, powerful and immediate these poems strike impressive chords, with each poem resonating energy and angst, anguish and anticipation with eternal search for hope. There is a force of optimism and expectation in the verses as the poets in collective call out for cultural and tribal identity. 

In “I’m not Alone”, Rungsung Suisa, like the rest of his seventy-six poems recorded here, he praises God and seeks his guidance:

“Alone! I’m not alone, I’m not alone

Day and night one unseen friend is with me

Yes, my unseen friend is none else but Christ.”

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Having thoroughly enjoyed this anthology of Tangkhul English poetry edited by A.C. Kharingpam, it needs to be said that the book provides an interesting wander through the poetic or the literary history of the Tangkhuls in a way or two. As the book’s subtitle suggests, this is quite a vast book. It features 100s of poems in 650 pages. Earnest voices are raised through this volume; voices that are witness to life lived and lost, God’s love, of joy, a woman’s identity in patriarchy, love and a nation’s history. There is a lot of great poetry here and tonnes of enlightening thoughts and stories. This anthology of Tangkhul English poetry is a good overview of the interesting language and literary history of the Tangkhuls.