A Return to a Familiar Landscape
Each time you open a Jim Kasom book, you do so with a quiet certainty of the mood and texture that will surround you, like stepping into a landscape you’ve visited before yet never fully explored. The rainy mountains; the chorus of the cicadas; the simplicity of village life and the everyday concerns of the village folks; the quiet assurance of whatever the circumstance, be it communal conflict or the terror of power; a walk through the mountains, rivers and the monsoon rain, will gently put everything back in place. Yet the author opens another window providing an intimate portrayal of the tribal way of life simultaneously capturing the essence of tribal life in the 90’s Ukhrul.
Stories of a Shifting World
Kasom’s latest is his collection of short stories, The Last Free Naga. This collection of short stories traces the shifting of tribal life which is largely shaped by insurgency, war, political terror and the idea of home that reveal the solitude of a life largely forgotten. A jumble of characters, each carrying their own little world of stories – a farmer’s encounter with a mystic being; a skilled hunter’s quest; an adolescent boy leaving his ancestral land; a man confronts his State’s brutality; a boy’s hunting dog; a boy coming to terms with reality; a son revisits his past; unrequited love; familial affection; mourning for an uncle; and a mother’s love. These stories speak to a fractured identity: rooted, yet reshaped by memory and loss.
Also read | With ‘Cradling Memories of my Land’, storyteller Jim Wungramyao Kasom returns as a poet
Identity at the Edge of Conflict
In The Last Free Naga, Kasom offers a powerful portrayal of Naga identity as one shaped by both cultural richness and political turmoil. For those raised in the Naga Hills, identity is not merely a matter of tradition or landscape, but a lived experience forged in the tension between belonging and survival. While the narrative acknowledges the deep-rooted tribal customs and the striking natural beauty of the region, it does not romanticize life in Ukhrul during the 1990s. Instead, it foregrounds the impact of prolonged insurgency and militarization. Checkpoints, curfews, and encounters with security forces are not just background elements rather they become defining features of daily life. In the titular story, a boy recalls, “That was the first time I was frisked. That’s how I knew I had placed my foot into adulthood.” The line signals more than a loss of innocence but it marks a rite of passage in a place where political conflict has blurred the lines between childhood and adulthood. The act of being frisked, a mundane yet invasive procedure, becomes symbolic of a deeper awakening to the realities of state control and vulnerability. Through this moment, Kasom underscores how identity in the Naga Hills is intimately bound to both personal memory and collective trauma.
The Naga Movement, the imposition of AFSPA, and the Naga-Kuki conflict are not just historical events. They actively shape the lives of Kasom’s characters. These forces loom large in their memories, choices, and silences. In fact, it’s often the case that nearly every Tangkhul Naga family has lost someone to the Naga national movement. Such losses are not merely tragic but they are foundational, shaping a collective identity marked by grief, resilience, and an enduring sense of unfinished struggle.
The Provincial Life
Another essential dimension of the tribal way of life is its deeply provincial and grounded nature. The mist-laden hills, monsoon-soaked paddy fields, village playgrounds echoing with laughter and countless footsteps, the crowing of roosters at dawn, and the rhythmic chorus of cicadas. All speak to a life in close communion with nature. There is an earthy beauty in the smoke rising from hearth fires, the quiet companionship of hunting dogs, the pursuit of game in dense forests, and the ever-present sense that the natural and spiritual worlds are intertwined rather than separate. These details do not merely create atmosphere. They form the lived, breathing fabric of a community whose traditions are passed down not just through words, but through daily rituals and shared memory.
Jim Wungramyao Kasom captures this essence with remarkable sensitivity. His stories do not attempt to idealise tribal life. Instead, he renders it with a raw, unfiltered authenticity that is as instinctive as it is deliberate. His narrative voice is shaped by this world, rooted in its soil, shaped by its silences and animated by its myths making his storytelling feel not only true, but necessary.
Also read | World Folklore Day Celebrated in Ukhrul
Another vital aspect of Naga tribal identity is its deep-rooted connection to Christianity, which has become more than just a faith but a way of life. Kasom embraces this reality, weaving the Christian worldview organically into his narratives, where it subtly shapes the moral fabric, cultural values, and everyday rhythms of Naga life.
Simplicity with Depth: A Literary Strength
Kasom crafts his narratives with striking clarity and deceptive simplicity, resulting in stories that are both deeply accessible and richly layered with meaning. At a time when representations of tribal identity often strive to align with dominant discourses or make statements about the “right” kind of issues, The Last Free Naga stands apart. It does not attempt to be overtly political or self-consciously representative. Nor does it force-fit ideology into narrative. Instead, it remains grounded in lived experience, allowing the emotional and cultural truths of its characters to emerge organically. Kasom’s restraint is precisely what gives the collection its quiet power. He does not speak about tribal identity, he writes from within it.
Also read | Hannah Lalhlanpuii: When Blackbirds Fly
The Last Free Naga
The Naga ancestors lived beyond the grasp of modern systems embodying a freer, older world where life was guided by tradition, not regulation. Kasom echoes this in the titular story, where the boy reflects on his grandmother’s quiet bewilderment at the idea of needing to carry an identity card. This basically expresses a symbol of a world where the grandmother never belonged to. In her simplicity and steadfastness, the grandmother emerges as perhaps the last free Naga, untouched by the state and unshaken by the demands of modern life.
“Ayi never had an ID card. She had no use for it. In my eyes, Ayi had always been old. She was like a creature from another time zone, a woolly mammoth. She never learned to read or write, and she saw the world through her lens. Life was simple. There were rights and wrongs. Honest and dishonest people. And there were consequences for one’s action. The most important thing in her life was to choose one way and live by it.”
In another story, a character laments, “It started with salt, then sugar, and then other little luxuries of the modern world crept into our world. Did we lose our freedom in exchange for a little comfort? I wanted to sing folk songs of seed sowing, harvest, and headhunting like my forefathers. I wanted to carry the pride and freedom of my forefathers without the guilt of having to kill.” Here freedom is not only political but cultural spiritual and ancestral. The phrase “The last free Naga” may not refer to a single person, but to a vanishing way of life, one unmediated by the state, by war, by the pressure to assimilate. It reflects a longing for a time when identity wasn’t politicized or fragmented by conflict. The stories, then, are elegiac. They bear witness to what remains and quietly mourn what has been lost.
Also read | In Ukhrul’s Border Villages, Struggling Schools Find New Hope
A Voice Rooted in Soil and Memory
Kasom’s literary oeuvre is marked by quiet yet powerful narrative voice. Whether in his previous books, Homecoming and Other Stories or Cradling Memories of My Land, Jim Wungramyao Kasom documents the emotional and cultural landscapes of a people often left at the margins of mainstream Indian literature. The Last Free Naga is more than a collection of short stories. It is a literary act of remembering, reclaiming, and witnessing. His stories are grounded not just in place, but in memory, myth, and lived history. By refusing to idealise or politicize for effect, Kasom gives us something far more valuable: an authentic portrayal of Naga life shaped by beauty, struggle, and survival. His ability to evoke deep meaning through simplicity and silence makes his work not only necessary for readers seeking to understand the Northeast, but essential for anyone who values literature that speaks from the heart of a community, rather than about it. In telling these stories, Kasom reminds us that identity is not static. It is shaped in the tension between history and home, silence and resistance, the individual and the collective. And in doing so, he gives voice to a region still waiting to be heard on its own terms.
Publisher: Speaking Tiger
Publishing Year: August 2025
Genre: Fiction (Short Stories)
Pages: 201
INR: 399
To get your own copy from Amazon India Click HERE