The blurb on Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih’s Funeral Nights tantalises me. It reads, ‘This is the Moby Dick of Meghalaya ...’ Why did the novelist Jerry Pinto describe the novel thus? Intrigued, I tried reading the book from Pinto’s point of view.

Readers have usually identified some difficulties in reading Moby Dick. These include the book’s length, at 822 pages; its format, considered odd; its allusions to western classics, and its many symbols and metaphors that don’t easily explain themselves. The timeframe and the fact that Moby Dick is ‘not only an adventure story’, add up to make the book a very dense one indeed.

Kynpham’s debut novel is of epic length at 1,024 pages and its format is quite unlike that of a conventional novel.

As the blurb reveals, its narrative frame was inspired by Boccaccio’s The Decameron and The Arabian Nights: a group of academics and writers from Shillong journey to a remote part of West Khasi Hills to witness 'Ka Phor Sohrat', the feast of the dead, a unique six-day-long funeral ceremony of the Lyngngams, a Khasi sub-tribe.

By mistake, however, the group ends up reaching the secluded hamlet of Nongshyrkon seven days early. ‘Stuck in the jungle for eleven days, they spend their nights around a fire in the middle of a spacious hut built especially for them, sharing stories and debating issues in what turns out to be a journey of discovery for all of them.’

The novel begins with the narrator introducing himself, ‘My name is Ap Jutang...’ (‘Call me Ishmael,’ in Moby Dick). But what an introduction it turns out to be! Ap Jutang weaves into the narrative about himself and his birthplace, Sohra, so many exciting accounts about his people and the land steeped in stories, legends and folk memories, that a whole new world is immediately opened to me.

The book has 12 fat chapters, each with a title. Most of the chapters are divided into ‘Root Stories’ and ‘Little Stories’, depending upon what the characters share on a particular night. In the first chapter, the narrator explains why he wants to write a book about his people, the Khasis — to clear their wounded name. But he would not do it in a manner that would make him sound ‘like one of those wearying pedants’ whom he dislikes so much and from whom he ‘ran away in such a hurry?’ He would tell us the story of his people through an account of his journey to the jungle village of Nongshyrkon. He would tell us of the grave and funny things he and his friends talked about, and of the light-hearted self-examination they indulged in, the illumination they sought, and most of all, the stories they exchanged.

Also read: Book Review: Ian Patel Essays a Relentless Timeline of Britain’s Struggle To Keep Itself White

And nothing is as simple as it seems. In the second chapter entitled ‘The Journey’, for instance, we not only get a vivid and reflective description of the difficult journey from Shillong into the deep jungles of West Khasi Hills but much, much more. We come across the Torajans of Indonesia and their fascinating death rituals; we listen to the equally fascinating funeral rites of the Lyngngams; we hear about Khasi name stories, colonial and pre-colonial histories, the English and their mini-Englands, Rabindranath Tagore and the local philistines, Nobel laureates and their reminiscences, politicians and political shenanigans, tales of corruption and government neglect, the Supreme Court and the strange narratives wrapped around its twin bans on coal and timber, rat-hole mining and dead rivers, pristine forests and their frightful decimation, deprivation and tales of woe, coal barons and criminals, militants and extortionists, the police and the protection racket, philanderers and gangsters, Christian missionaries and earthquakes, seismic history and Khasi uncharity, and hundreds of anecdotes and stories, songs and poetry, parables and fairy tales.

And all this, in just one chapter. As we journey along with the characters — on a road that is no road, but a twisting dirt track cut into a steep hillside, disfigured by craters and deep ruts and obstructed by stones the size of tables and watermelons — we can never predict what is coming next.

This dizzying diversity is replicated everywhere in the novel. We encounter in it ‘stories big and small, not so much about death, but about life, past, present and future, rural and urban, high and low; about admirable men and women, raconteurs and pranksters, lovers and fools, politicians and conmen, drunks and taxi drivers; about culture and history, religion and God, myth and legend.’

Besides the stories and anecdotes in prose and poetry, there are memoirs, travelogues, history — oral, colonial and postcolonial — true-life incidents, monographs and treatises. All of them are woven into a sequence of narratives that provide us a profound insight into a world where ‘the real and the surreal get blurred, spirits and deities become part of what is human and the imaginary is ever in conversation with the everyday.’

And these do not merely suggest dilettantism and variety, but immense depth and complexity. If Moby Dick can be seen as ‘more than just a novel of adventure, more than an encyclopedia of whaling lore and legend,’ and as a book that is ‘part of its author’s lifelong meditation on America,’ then the same thing can be said about Funeral Nights. It is indeed ‘intimate access to a whole world, spectacular in its documentation of a tribe’s life and culture such as has never been attempted before’. But more than that, it is essentially about what it means to be human in a world increasingly precarious.

There are indeed strange resemblances between the two massive books. The language of Melville is said to mirror ‘the discursive tics of Ahab and Ishmael’s modes of thought — nautical, theological, political, sociological, mythic, historic, naturalist, symbolist’. Kynpham’s prose is lucid and engaging and often lyrical and poetic, even though he has adapted the language of experience in telling his stories. There is a kind of tongue-in-cheek and boisterous humour in it, which is a joy to read. But it is also amazingly similar to the language of Moby Dick. And this similarity is specifically in those sections which discuss Khasi religious philosophy, traditional political and social systems and present-day psychological, sociological and environmental realities with illustrations from myths, history and symbols drawn not only from Khasi culture but from the greatest ‘classics of western civilisation.’

Also read: Book Review: Discovering Indigenous Modernity in the Words of Kabir

If it is ‘nearly impossible to place, to categorise, to hold without feeling the vertiginous swell’ of Moby Dick’s creation, the same difficulty is experienced with Funeral Nights. That is why Pinto’s blurb says ‘This is the Moby Dick of Meghalaya, a novel of huge ambition and tremendous appetite. Or is it a novel at all?’

D.H. Lawrence said that Moby Dick ‘is one of the strangest ... books in the world.’ Funeral Nights is, without doubt, the strangest book I have read in recent times. Its stories, long and short, ‘about diverting incidents and characters,’ fascinate me. Its rich variety and nebulous depths fill me with awe.

Its serious conversation on race, ethnic identity, culture and religious philosophy has prompted Satchidanandan to describe it as ‘Here is a book of rare scholarship that Mircea Eliade or Claude Levi Strauss would have read with admiration.’ But since everything is presented in the form of Socratic dialogues and illustrated at every turn with illuminating examples and stories, the novel very much ‘remains as accessible as fiction to the lay reader.’ Despite its length and its strangeness, Funeral Nights is a voyage worth taking.

Kanchan Verma is a writer and translator. She translates fiction from English to Hindi and vice versa. She currently teaches at Lady Shri Ram College for Women, Delhi University. 

The Wire is now on WhatsApp. Follow our channel for sharp analysis and opinions on the latest developments.