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BOOKS
AUTHORSPEAK
NIGEL JENKINS
Wizard
of Wales
A druid. Of all
things one might expect of an award-winning Welsh gentleman, author, journalist,
poet, and writer of HarperCollins' Encyclopedia of Wales, swanning around
in white bedsheets is probably the last. Then again, a man who is so many
things can hardly be perfectly square. Nigel Jenkins, whose book Gwalia
in Khasia set in the Khasi hills of Meghalaya won the Arts Council of
Wales award, is an elected member of the Gorsedd of Bards of the Island
of Britain. The book has recently been released in India under the title
Through The Green Door (Penguin).
 There
are three main stories intertwined in the book: the adventures of Thomas
Jones, the first Calvinist Methodist missionary in the field, the tale
of the mission itself, and the account of Jenkins' own travels in the
Khasi hills. It happened one evening that the writer, after a hard day's
work, settled down to watch a TV documentary on the Indian monsoon, and
for the first time saw the wet wilderness of the Khasi hills. He also
heard of Welshman Jones, the "father of Khasi literature". Intrigued,
he set about researching Jones. Then a writing award came by and thus,
by a chain of karmic connections, the author found himself in Shillong.
He landed there in the middle of a curfew; communal
violence had left 50 dead. The eventful beginning was to lead the author
to a series of experiences that included dining atop a cromlech, discussing
UFO landings in Cherrapunjee with old Bah Bling (a serious matter) and
eating kwai, the betel nut-leaf-lime concoction everyone in the Khasi
hills chews. Jenkins calls it a dry taste akin to "gobbling through
the Sahara". For this he may well receive a Khasi fatwa in addition
to the one an anonymous reviewer of the book has issued against him. Jenkins
is unimpressed: "This will probably condemn me to an eternity drinking
cups of oversweet tea in Presbyterian vestries," he says. Incorrigible.
And from someone who has addressed a Sunday school gathering at Police
Bazar Presbyterian Church of "bright-eyed believers, indulgent of
someone they surely construed as one of God's quirkier messengers".
-Samrat Choudhury
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