Doyir Ete Taipodia’s debut collection, The Dance of the Last Leaf, is a significant contribution to Arunachali poetry. The collection explores various themes, including indigenous cosmology, memory, religious transformation, and everyday life. Taipodia’s voice is distinctive due to her commitment to preserving and presenting the lived experiences of her people.
However, sometimes that tendency to document competes with the lyrical aspects of poetry, thereby hindering the realisation of the poems’ full poetic potentialities. The collection opens with the poem ‘Lost Words,’ which challenges the conventional historical approach that often overlooks the lived community memories of the people in the present times as secondary evidence. Taipodia emphasizes the significant role played by elders and shamans in forwarding cultural knowledge across generations.
The poem ‘Last Leaf’ is a reflective appropriation of O Henry’s popular story, reimagined within the narrative of indigenous framework. It makes a compelling reading when situated within the contemporary socio-political context marked by the division caused by the ongoing debate surrounding the APFRA in Arunachal. Taipodia’s poems also reflect on the cultural conflict that Arunachal Pradesh is facing.
In ‘Crossroad,’ she addresses how generations of inherited culture have been relinquished by her people for Sunday masses and prayer beads. ‘Native Tongue’ negotiates the tension between indigenous belief systems and Christianity, highlighting the paradox of conversion that creates a new kind of community that displaces ancestral traditions. Other notable poems in the collection include ‘The Youngest,’ based on a Galo folktale about a conjugal relationship between a girl and a python, and ‘Our Journey,’ which talks about ‘Golo-Yorbo,’ the ancestral place of origin according to the Galos. ‘December’ localizes Christianity in the City of Bricks, Itanagar, observing that faith seems to transcend economic inequality in the capital city. The collection also features poems that reflect on cultural tension caused by the tradition of hunting among tribals despite legal bans, such as ‘Squirrel.’ ‘Lady of the Meat Stall’ presents the harsh working condition of a meat-seller, with a powerful image of her chopping meat while breastfeeding her baby at the same time. ‘City of Bricks’ represents a people-centered view of the city, contrasting between new eateries and the dead-old clock-tower and squalid market area.
In conclusion, Doyir Ete Taipodia’s The Dance of the Last Leaf is an important contribution to Arunachali poetry, exploring varied themes and preserving the lived experiences of her people. Her voice is distinctive mainly because of her commitment to preserving and presenting the lived experiences of her people, but sometimes that tendency to document competes with the lyrical aspects of poetry, thereby hindering the realisation of the poems’ full poetic potentialities.
