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In her latest book, The Sky Husband, Easterine Kire explores the life of the Naga community through stories that meander through myth, history, and modern life, often silting its banks with the tension of what was, what remains, and what ends. This tension is the soil where identity germinates, often countering the “mainstream” gaze that turns the “periphery” into a seedless husk, lacking nuance.

Reflecting on everyday life, this collection of eight short stories ponders on the most ordinary affair of life – love – while exploring the varied issues that make and unmake the community.

At first glance, a book named “The Sky Husband”, dedicated to “girl readers”, feels like a stereotype. This dedicatory note, reminding of such practice among colonial Indian women writers aiming to awaken the “new woman”, is intended for that group of women who, standing at the threshold of childhood and womanhood, often feel confused about their lives. Kire, visualising love through community myth, history, social and cultural motifs, wants girls to think of love as a possibility, not as vulnerability, as they jostle with expectations from life and the world, both of which can be tremendously harsh.

In an unnamed, timeless village live three women – Hami, Mimi and...

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