Abstract (Category : Fiction)
When the River Sleeps
Vilie, the protagonist of the novel, is the forest guardian who is paid by
the Forest department to look after the endangered bird, Blythe’s
tragopan. He lives in the thickly wooded areas close to the village of
Zuzie. He also looks after the majestic gwi, the domesticated bisons
that roam in the wild and feed on tree fern. Vilie has chosen the solitary
life of a forest dweller and remained unmarried. Despite repeated
requests by his female relatives for him to take a wife, he has resisted
them saying, ‘The forest is my wife.’
When the book begins, Vilie is about to set off on a journey to find the
mythical sleeping river, a story he has heard from other hunters which
he retells in turn. The legend goes that any man who can wrest a heart-
stone out of the Sleeping River can use it to gain wealth, grain, women,
and victory in battle. Having had repeated dreams about the river, Vilie
finally takes the decision to go on the journey.
The route he takes shows the readers the topography over which he
travels: wood paths lead him to the Nepali settlement where a few
families live and carry on logging as a livelihood. Beyond the Nepali
settlement the map that Vilie will follow goes thus: long rows of fields,
the nettle forest, groups of low hills, the unclean forest, country
markets and the border village which serves as the entrance to the
region of the sleeping river.
Vilie begins his travels and after being hosted by the Nepali family, he
next meets bark harvesters at the Nettle forest. But the journeying has
not all been smooth; Vilie, spending a night in a shed is attacked by a
weretiger. He repulses the attack by addressing the weretiger using the
name of its human owner. The following evening, he meets a group of
hunters and is happy to travel in their company, but in the dead of
night, an inebriated hunter shoots dead the leader of the group. Vilie is
also shot at when he discovers the murder, and he runs to safety only
to discover that he has become a murder suspect. This encounter
throws him off the path he was faithfully following to reach the
sleeping river.
Vilie shelters in the unclean forest, feverish from the gunshot wound,
recovers and eventually surrenders himself to the posse and is
interrogated; eventually they are convinced of his innocence, and he
continues on his way and meets women traders who guide him to the
border village. He is hosted by the wise couple Kani and Subale. Kani
accompanies him to the sleeping River where they find the river asleep
and the body of water lying as still as a painting. They have to wait until
the widow-spirits perform their strange ritual of fetching water and
return to their dwellings up the hill. After they have gone, Vilie rushes
in and the river awakens as he plucks a heart stone from it; the strong
currents of the awakened river threaten to overwhelm him but he
fights it and clings to his prize. When he climbs out of the river, the
frantic race begins as the two of them are chased by the widow-spirits
that jealously guard the territory of the river. The pair escape the
widow-spirits when Kani uses his spiritual authority to command them
to retreat.
Vilie discovers that getting hold of the heart-stone is only the beginning
of his adventures. Subale warns him that he was now in great danger
because now on, both humans and spirits would try to steal the heart
stone from him. The old couple impart their wise teachings to him so
that he can be guarded against spirit attacks.
Vilie leaves and traces his way back home with the heart-stone in his
bag. He comes across the Tuesday market where he is warned not to
linger after the market is over as spirits take over the marketplace. He
continues his journey the next day and comes to the strange village of
the Kirhupfümia, a group of women with spirit powers outcasted by
their ancestral villages. He is attacked on the second day by the bitter
and twisted Zote who steals the heart-stone in order to avenge herself
on her ancestral village. Vilie and his hostess Ate retrieve the stone only
after Zote has destroyed the village completely and been killed in the
process. When they find the village of the Kirhupfümia abandoned, they
leave for Vilie’s village.
Their path is fraught with danger and suffering as they first come to the
shed where the killing of the hunter occurred; Vilie has to be purged of
guilt for his failure to intervene when he had the chance to prevent the
killing. After that Ate is attacked by a spirit tiger that kills her. Vilie
engages fearsome spirit presences in a terrible spiritual combat until
Ate is revived again. All these experiences teach Vilie the
meaninglessness of wealth and treasures promised by the heart-stone;
the real treasure that it offers is spiritual. As they battle spirits
thwarting their progress, both Vilie and Ate continue to grow
spiritually.
There comes a point when Vilie realises it is not the heart-stone that is
to be valued but the spiritual wisdom that the creator-deity has
imparted to him during the course of his journey to the sleeping river
and back. He feels he is a very different man from the one who set off
on the quest for the sleeping river. He is more drawn to the spirit side
of life, and no longer attracted by the wealth the heart-stone promised
to secure for him. The heart-stone promised him untold wealth and
power but by the end of the quest, Vilie discovers for himself and for
the reader the fact that true wealth and true power lie in
understanding the spirit world and how to free oneself of all that the
flesh is so vulnerable to.
They continue to travel homeward, and arrive at the Nepali settlement,
only to be met by the tragedy Krishna and his wife murdered. The small
beacon of hope is that the infant boy has survived and they rescue him
effectively. Vilie, Ate and the baby head for Vilie’s ancestral village
where Ate finds a home for herself and her adopted baby with Vilie’s
aunts. Vilie returns to his forest home only to be attacked by the same
person who had killed the Nepali couple. He tries to force Vilie to give
him the heart-stone before he overpowers Vilie and stabs him
repeatedly. Even as all seems to be over for Vilie, a weretiger appears
on the scene, leaps at the killer and kills him. It is the killer’s mangled
body that is found by the village council after three days. They believe it
is Vilie who has been murdered as there is no trace of the forest
guardian. But the last chapter hints at the possibility that Vilie is still
alive somewhere.
When the River Sleeps has been described as an invitation ‘into the lives
of the people of Nagaland: the rituals and beliefs, their reverence for
the land, their close-knit communities – the rhythms of a life lived in
harmony with their natural surroundings.’