‘Myth is a carrier of history, trauma, resistance’: Subi Taba on writing about Arunachal Pradesh

Tales from the Dawn-lit Mountains is a debut collection of short stories by Subi Taba, who gracefully divides her time between writing and being an Agriculture Development Officer. The hills of Arunachal and their varied rhythms come alive in Taba’s storytelling.

Taba won the New Asian Writing Short Story Prize in 2020, and was shortlisted for the Twist and Twain Short Story Prize in 2021. She is also a South Asia Speaks fellow of the 2021 cohort, and the winner of the inaugural “The Perfect Pitch” contest organised by Penguin Random House India.

I caught up with the writer over text messages and asked her about her writing life. Excerpts from the conversation.

What was your intention behind writing these stories? How did these stories come about?
My intention and vision with Tales from the Dawn-lit Mountains was to create stories from diverse communities of Arunachal Pradesh. I wanted to write a book that entertains people while educating and informing them about the landscapes, culture, myths, and quiet philosophies embedded in the lives of the people from Arunachal Pradesh.

These stories emerged from a place of memory and longing – for the landscape, the voices of elders, and the sacred silences of the mountains. Some stories came from anecdotes I heard in the villages about a man turning into a tiger, a village disappearing after disturbing a certain serpent, a family having unnatural deaths and sickness after being cursed by a priest for thievery. Such speculative stories are a part of small villages, and as a child, I used to revel in the excitement of hearing these stories.

Most of the stories in this collection are set in rural villages, and the reason for setting them in rural landscapes is that they constitute some of the purest remnants of a tribe’s pulse and identity. So, my aim was to present a slice of Arunachal Pradesh through its villages.

Each story has an incisive element of poetry. Does it come naturally to you? How do you think poetically?
I started my literary journey as a poet first, perhaps, due to that, my first instinct as a writer is shaped by poetry. Perhaps it comes naturally to me because I like to think about my story scenes in images, in sounds, and in sensory rhythms. I enjoy the art of fashioning words in different forms and styles. I think being a sensitive and emotional person helps me think poetically. I like to associate the emotions of the characters of my stories to a certain musicality. And I believe the landscapes I write about – lush, haunting, untamed – demand a poetic response.

The stories are rooted in the socio-cultural and geo-political ethos of Arunachali society. One often finds that the characters move within the constraints defined by external forces beyond their existence. Tell me about the process of writing about people whose fates are often pre-determined, provided you are writing in a time when individualism rules supreme.
That tension between destiny and agency fascinated me. Many of the characters I write about exist within tightly woven webs – of tradition, community, ancestry, and political imposition. Yet within those constraints, they find small but powerful moments of resistance, introspection, and even transformation. Writing these characters involved a kind of listening – not just to what they say, but to what their silences mean. In a time of radical individualism, these collective, inherited struggles remind us that identity is often a negotiation, not a declaration.

Your stories blend myth and folklore (fantasy) with realism. How difficult is it to make such stories believable?
The key lies in treating the fantastical with the same emotional seriousness as the real. In many Indigenous worldviews, the mythic is not a separate realm – it coexists with the tangible. For me, believability comes when the story honours the logic of its own world. I never try to explain the supernatural – I allow it to be, as it is for many in Arunachali communities, part of everyday life. If I believe it as a writer, the reader can too.

AN: The stories in the collection have political undertones. I wonder how you decided on the insertion of politics – both current and historical, in the narrative? How extensive and frequent was your research?
Politics is never absent in a place like Arunachal Pradesh – it’s written into the land, the rivers, even the silence. The insertion wasn’t deliberate in a didactic sense; it was organic. These stories grew from questions I carried – about displacement, loss of religion, and ecological degradation. I did a fair amount of observation and listening to the other person’s points of view for my research, but I also relied on lived experience. For every story, I studied articles related to the story, read thesis books in the libraries for some stories and referred to historical accounts, photographs and online sources. I visited some of the villages to study the landscape, the shape of the clouds and the hills, and the vegetation. The research acted more like a compass than a map.

Do you believe in the paranormal world? How far is your writing influenced by your own beliefs?
I don’t believe in ghosts as such but I do believe in energies – whether it’s spirits, ancestral voices, or the sentience of a forest. My writing is certainly influenced by the possibility of this openness. It allows me to write about the supernatural not as an “other” world, but as an extension of this one.

For a writer starting out to write about myths and realism, what would you suggest would be some prerequisites?
Begin by listening – to stories, to landscapes, to silences. Immerse yourself in the source material – oral histories, folktales, rituals, language. But also ask: Why am I telling this story now? Your writing should not only honour the past but also speak to the present. And above all, write with humility. You are not inventing the myth – you are entering into a conversation with it.

It is often seen that the Northeast is known mostly for its folklore and myths as against, say, the more “serious” forms of writing from the subcontinent. The political nuances are often layered with mysticism rather than straightforward realism. Do you think such a discourse is true? Are writers from the region more focused on storytelling based on myth and folktales? What can be done to make literature more subversive in the sense that literature from the region is seen as “serious” as the rest of it?
There is some truth to that discourse, though I believe it comes more from how literature from the Northeast is perceived than how it is actually written. Folklore is often seen as decorative or exotic, rather than politically potent. But for us, myth is a carrier of history, trauma, resistance. Writers from the region are reclaiming these stories and using them as subversive tools. What’s needed is not a shift in content, but a shift in critical lenses – we must expand our definitions of “serious” literature to include indigenous epistemologies and narrative forms.

AN: You also work full-time as a government official. How do you juggle between your duties and writing?
With great difficulty. My writing for this book happened mostly in my early mornings and the researching part, which I actually enjoyed, happened at all the in-between times of my busy life.

My job actually helped in the creation and inspiration for some stories in the book like “Spirit of the Forest”, “Love and Longing in Seijosa” and “The Lost Village”, all set in a district Pakke Kessang, where I was posted for my duties. The influence of the landscape and the people I met in these small towns reflects in these stories. So, in a way, my job also helped me feed on unlikely circumstances and situations that birthed some stories that might not have happened inside my four walled room.

What are you writing next?
I’m thinking of creating a novel that continues to explore the intersection of folklore, shamanism, and oral traditions – but on a much larger canvas. I wish to include more cultural and historical elements from lesser known tribes and regions of the state.

Also read:

‘Tales from the Dawn-lit Mountains’: Observant and deeply empathetic stories from Arunachal Pradesh