Wari: A Collection of Manipuri Short Stories - Linthoi Chanu - ★★★.¾

AUTHOR: Linthoi Chanu

GENRE: Indian Short Story Collection

PUBLICATION DATE: September 4, 2019

RATING: 3.7 stars.

In a Nutshell: A collection of stories set in the N-E Indian state of Manipur. Excellent representation of the legends and the ethos of the location and its people. There are a few too many typos, but the beauty of the stories still makes me recommend this collection.

My quest to read more books from all parts of my country led me to this lovely story collection. The North-East part of India is quite distinct from the rest of the nation in its lore and culture, and this book shows how beautifully the unique setting lends itself to stories.

‘Wari’ means ‘story’ in Manipuri. Through the ups and downs of life, what keeps our traditions and culture alive are stories. This intriguing collection that juxtaposes the rich lore of Manipur with modern-day situations and incidents offers a refreshingly authentic depiction of the place. As this is an OwnVoices work, there is a strong aura of honesty surrounding each of the tales. Even without ever having visited Manipur, I felt like I have been on a journey through the state and shown around by a local.

There is no author’s note, but the blurb refers to the book as a “cauldron of contemporary Manipuri fiction seasoned with age-old tales of magic, black art, and deep cultural beliefs unique to the state and its people.” This represents the book well, I say!

The eight stories in this collection comes from varied themes, not all of them being fantastical. A couple of them highlight the struggles of daily living in Manipur, but most of the stories have a strong infusion of the local legends and the socio-cultural traditions of the people. The stories aren’t necessarily happy stories. Many are bittersweet. Some are sad. Most are introspective. But despite the lack of a joyous tone, the charm of the stories isn’t affected.

There is a great representation of the language, superstitions, lore, geography, and nature of Manipur. The language part goes a teeny bit overboard, as there were too many Manipuri words, especially the multitude of relationship words that seem to be the hallmark of every part of India. There is a glossary at the end, which was very helpful, but referring to it again and again broke my flow. Thankfully, I had the physical copy of this book, so I simply stuck another bookmark at the glossary page to make the flipping around easier. The vocabulary level is quite simple, making this a good collection even for teen readers.

As always, I read the stories individually. Of the eight stories, four reached or crossed the 4-star mark for me. Most of the remaining tales were between 3-3.5 stars, so they were also good enough. The only dud for me was a story that was supposedly a shortened version of a novella written by the author. Just as micro fiction doesn’t work when padded out to turn into short fiction, novellas don’t click when bits and pieces are culled to make them short fiction. Both these actions result in a jumpy narrative. Better to rewrite the whole story afresh.

These were my favourites:

🦋 Near Immortal - Based on the legend of the Khoidouwa black magic. Quite a dark story, and though partly guessable, it is gripping. - ⭐⭐⭐⭐

🦋 Amity in Queue - Doesn't match the core theme but still a powerful story. This showed me an aspect of Manipur I never knew about. I won't ever complain about the queues at petrol pumps here. - ⭐⭐⭐⭐✨

🦋 The Scarlet Haophi [traditional winter shawl] –Feels almost like a fable. The strongest tale in terms of traditional Manipuri beliefs. - ⭐⭐⭐⭐

🦋 Floating Dreams - Such a beautiful but sad tale! The ending broke my heart. - ⭐⭐⭐⭐✨

As is evident, I enjoyed the stories. However, there were two things that bugged me.

🚩 While I try to ignore typos by indie authors if they aren’t too obvious, this book has too many typos to be ignored. Luckily the stories were gripping enough to keep my attention, but the grammar Nazi in me found these errors distracting. There are two editors mentioned in the acknowledgements, but considering how numerous the typos were, it’s quite possible that these two “editors” were just friends of the author who did the best they could with their untrained eyes. I wish authors realised the importance of professional editing.

(I must also add: Amazon shows that there's a second edition of this book available now. The picture of the blurb on the product page of this new edition doesn’t contain the grammatical errors that my book blurb does. So I presume, or rather, I hope, that the book has been re-edited and finetuned.)

🚩 There are some B&W illustrations in the book, about 2-3 graphics per story. While these *appear* to be intricate, the printing makes them look quite blurry, like a small-sized picture was dragged out to make a bigger graphic. This looks quite cheap in print.

The points of disgruntlement don’t impact the actual stories. Hence I won’t dock off stars for these issues, all the more as this is an indie work from a relatively ignored part of the country.

In short, this indie story collection serves its purpose well, giving us a beautiful glimpse of magical Manipur and its citizens and its way of thinking.

Highly recommended to all short fiction and lore lovers.

3.7 stars, based on the average of my ratings for each story.

This book is a 2019 publication, so obviously, there is nothing about the present ethnic violence in Manipur. I’ll just say… Here's wishing for peace in Manipur. May national unity prevail over religious divisions, in Manipur and the rest of our beloved motherland.