# Of Follies and Frailties Of Wit and Wisdom

- Link: https://writersworkshopindia.com/2015/07/19/of-follies-and-frailties-of-wit-and-wisdom/
- Published: 2015-07-19T18:18:34+00:00
- Author: admin

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**Author:** Esther Syiem
 **Pages:** 86 **Year of Publication:** 2010 **Price:**
Rs 150 **ISBN:** HB 978-81-8157-999-7 (9788181579997)

_**About the Author:**_
 Esther Syiem is a professor in the Department of English
at North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong. Her books include a volume of poetry,_**
Oral Scriptings**_ (published by **Writers Workshop**, India, in 2005, 2nd edition,
2010), a Khasi play, _Ka Nam_ and a work of criticism, _The Idiom of the Allegorical
Mode: A Study of Six Novels_.

She has been researching and writing about Khasi oral literature for over a decade.

_**Teaser:**_

_of A Terrifying Glimpse from a Passing Taxi (mid 1960s)_

For “walking around” with _dkhars_ from the alien plains
 they were not cross-questioned;
simply stripped and paraded for their sexual preferences; two hill-women who chose
to look for spouses from other than their own kind

watched over by honest, upright, local demi-gods
 who balanced race on a tripod 
of communal justice, whose wrath they brought down

as if there was none from amongst these virile godlings
 potent enough to be had
as husbands.

I saw a blur of naked belly on naked moving legs
 followed by a disciplined line
of the virtue-minded subsidiary gods and a mesmerized rabble, hard-hit by the injustice
of the women’s choice,

that evening from within a passing taxi,

and heard the stifled storm
 of choking protests not knowing what had happened but
frightened by the rip that tore my innocence apart and shot me into sudden knowledge.

Much, much later…
 witnesses screamed, don’t they have mothers and sisters? to do
this thing, this unnatural thing?

What have they done?
 said mothers and sisters transfixed by godlings who carnivalised
the shame of their own mothers and sisters.

_**Contents:**_
 _of_ the Feud / 9 _of_ Kyllang / 11 _of_ Bemsynda / 13 _of_ Sohlyngngem’s
Dirge / 17 of the everyday thoughts of an ordinary woman / 19 from Mango Discard/
20 _of_ Ksuid Tynjang / 23 _of_ Mait Tyrut / 25 _of_ Him Whom We Visited that Afternoon/
27 _of_ A Terrifying Glimpse from a Passing Taxi (mid 1960s) / 29 _of_ that Night
in Shillong in the 1990s / 31 Accidents on National Highway 44 (Barik Point, Shillong)/
33 _of_ my neighbour / 35 _of_ Grandmother / 37 _of_ Pahsyntiew – 1 / 41 _of_ Pahsyntiew–
2 / 44 Memoirs of a Distracted Lover / 47 Road Signs / 50 _of_ Malki Church – 1 (
August 2006) / 52 _of_ Malki Church – 2 (August 2006) / 54 Only for the Bird-Brained(
the strange testimony of the late _Ekstanley lawphniaw_) / 56 _Kthang Kti_ (Bitter
Hands) (the strange testimony continued) / 58 When the bamboo talked / 61 _of_ My
Non-Urban Friends / 63 Retelling Nam’s Tale / 66 In the Words of a Grandmother: _“
The Lineage Must Continue”_ / 72 The Claim – 1 / 74 The Claim – 2 / 75 The Claim–
3 / 77 _of_ our Mawrymphiat Valley / 81