Silent Lips, Murmuring Hearts

After independence, India sets out to bring administration to the remote hill country then called NEFA, and since labour cannot be brought in from outside, local people are hired to build the road linking Bomdila to the plains. On one hard stretch above Chaku, gangs of Sherdukpen, Nyishi and Monpa workers who have long regarded each other with suspicion and some contempt must live and work side by side under the eye of clerks, officers and engineers. As they mix, old prejudices loosen. Rinchin, head of the Sherdukpen gang, and Yama, a young Nyishi woman, grow close, but a bride price has already been paid for her to another family, and her brother Tadak, who leads the Nyishi gang, cannot bring himself to defy custom.

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About the book

Form

Novel

Length

175 pages in the original

Genres

Love (assigned by AI)

Set in

India, 1950s–1960s

First published

2001 by Banalata

Author's age

49 when first published

ISBN

9788173393105 (original)