Review: The Rainbow Runners byDhrubajyoti Borah
Taking in the Brahmaputra plains and the verdant Himalayan ranges, this book by Dhrubajyoti Borah that the author has also translated from the original Assamese, presents the high cost of the violence experienced by the people of India’s northeast
The Rainbow Runners is a novel about violence, trauma, life and rediscovery. Sriman, the protagonist, is a bookish type with a squeamish disposition. The book stretches from the Brahmaputra plains in Assam, where people can be made to “disappear” without a trace, to the verdant Himalayan ranges where ochre-clad Buddhist monks and nuns roam, searching for wisdom and meaning.
The story begins on an evening that Sriman goes strolling along the sand banks of the Brahmaputra. He had loved to do this, feeling the soft sand on his feet, the evening breeze on his cheeks and his eyes set on the rapidly changing colours of the darkening sky. But on that evening, as he sat trance-like inside a sandpit soaking in the serene ambience, he witnesses a cold-blooded murder. A Maruti van pulls up, and three men alight from it, dragging along a blind-folded man. The man was made to kneel and shot point blank at the back of the head. He was then pushed inside a deep sandpit. After the killers had left, frightened but unable to contain his curiosity, Sriman went to check. In the glow of a gas lighter, the dead man’s dull eyes stared up at him. He had died with his eyes and mouth open.
The sight haunts Sriman from that day on. He cannot shake off the trauma. Any mention of deaths trigger spasms. Desperate to stay sane, he takes a job as a translator at an incipient newspaper. Then, a chance meeting with his school friend Ramen catapults him into Guwahati’s gangland. A fixer and deal-maker, Ramen introduces Sriman to Anjuda, who runs a building mafia. Soon, the group takes possession of a residential plot in Guwahati’s panbazar, which Sriman’s family was on the verge of losing to recalcitrant tenants, and develops it into a multistoreyed property. Just as things are looking up for Sriman’s family, Assam’s violent past catches up with them. Rival factions shoot both Ramen and Anjuda. Though both escape with injuries, Sriman comes face to face with murder yet again. This time, the, he suffers a mental breakdown which necessitates prolonged psychiatric treatment in Delhi. Fortuitous circumstances then take him to a log cabin in the Himalayan foothills where his mafia friends run a trekking company. There, he meets a mysterious woman with a wounded past. An American citizen of Assamese origins, she becomes his soul mate and the roam the lofty ranges dotted with Buddhist monasteries, discussing, through rainy days and chilly nights, their fears and regrets with copious amounts of Buddhist philosophy thrown in. When the woman decides to leave Sriman and become a Buddhist nun, his life seems to enter another blind alley. Eventually, taking inspiration from Ramen’s pronouncement that “everyone must figure out his or her own meaning, whether it is of life or of love”, he’s decides to return to Assam to make a fresh start.
The second half of the book, set in the Himalayas and narrated in the first person, is confessional, philosophical and deals with deep questions that a questioning individual encounters. Compared to it, the first half, set in and around Guwahati and narrated in the third person, is banal. However, it is more authentic as it focuses on how things get done under mafia rule, how real estate mobs run their empires and how people become inured to everyday violence. The author does not provide a historical or geographical context to the story and curiously, there are references both to “telephone connection (obtained) through some member of parliament” and cellphones. However, the secret killings and the general atmosphere of fear and tension evoke the 1990s when the violence between United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA) and Surrendered ex-ULFA factions roiled Assam, resulting in hundreds of deaths and disappearances. Some readers may find Sriman’s queasiness about violence contrived and overdone. Yet, the cycle of violence and the trauma that follows in its wake is real and still gets replicated throughout the Northeast. There is no end in sight.
My distant relative’s family fled a rampaging mob in Imphal on the night of 3 May, 2023. They relocated to Delhi with nothing but the clothes on their bodies. She recounts how her seven-year-old daughter used to panic at the swishing sound of the AC, hide when there was a sound at the door, covered her eyes at the sight of crowds of men, and screamed in her sleep. She still randomly tries to flee from home with her backpack. Many have seen and lived through worse. Others have not survived to tell their tales.
A recent article in The New Yorker quoted Ian Watt, whose The Rise of the Novel (1957), stated that the novel’s mission was to be “a full and authentic report of human existence.” Watt said that a novel should make the reader feel that facts have been put down even though the words are actually a record of the imagination. Otherwise, he states, the work is not a novel at all. Judged on this criterion, The Rainbow Runners falls short. Yet, as a reminder of the multiple unalleviated traumas that still haunt us, and of the high long-term cost of violence on the people of India’s northeast, this book serves a good and necessary purpose.
Thangkhanlal Ngaihte is assistant professor of Political Science at Churachandpur College, Manipur and PhD candidate at Mizoram University, Aizawl.
