Rhizomatic Entanglements

Abstract

Assamese fiction written by janajatiya writers (writers from indigenous, “tribal” communities) can be read productively via a deployment of various standpoints from the “nonhuman turn.” This chapter reads the triangulation of three nonhuman entities—bamboo, rats, and fire—in Arunachali author Yeshe Dorje Thongchi’s short story “Baah Phulor Gundho” (“The Smell of Bamboo Blossoms”). While stories by janajatiya writers such as Thongchi are usually read via “tradition” versus “modernity” and social reform perspectives, this chapter argues that nonhuman entities play a vitalist and agential role in their fictional universes. Thongchi’s short story demonstrates this through a unique event that occurs in Northeast India—the periodic flowering of bamboo that leads to an exponential increase in rat populations—which becomes the fulcrum for an exploration of social change and the passage of time in the lifeworlds of the Nyishi tribespeople in Arunachal Pradesh.