‘Colour My Grave Purple’: This short story collection compromises on neither politics nor aesthetics

It won’t be an exaggeration to say that an extraordinary number of novels and short story collections from North-East India are being published. Some of these have been works in translation, but a fair amount has been written in English. Given this variety of literary offerings, one might suspect a repetition of themes and styles, and yet many novels and short story collections have surprised the readers.

Shehnab Sahin’s debut, a collection of stories titled Colour My Grave Purple and Other Stories, joins the ever-growing stack of diverse and compelling literature from the north-east, this time from the state of Assam. Sahin is a student of history – perhaps this could be the reason behind her adoption of a chronological arrangement for the ten stories that comprise this collection, starting in the mid-19th century and ending in 2019.

A new history

What this progressive arrangement therefore achieves is that it gives the reader a sense of Assam’s history, which becomes significant given its persistent erasure in mainstream history books. This narrativisation of history begins by situating the first story of the collection, “Two Leaves in a Bud,” in the context of the beginning of the tea industry in Assam by British colonisers following their discovery of soil conducive...

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