Vishü Rita Krocha
Avinuo Kire’s latest book, ‘Where the Cobbled Path Leads’ has been a true source of comfort and escape for me. Even as avid readers, you rarely come across a book that continues to stay with you long after you have read it. I sat with this book for days, not because it wasn’t engrossing enough, but only because I was worried it was getting over. I would then, no longer live in this completely new world that Avinuo has created by interlacing alluring elements of Naga folklore.
For someone like myself, who has been completely enamoured of all of her works since her debut book—‘The Power to Forgive’, this folk fantasy novel, I think is her best work yet. She has recently said in an interview that— “My Christian faith, my fascination for what may be defined as nativised Christianity, Naga folklore, my imagination and ever ceaseless wonder over how marvelously strange life is and what lies beyond — all this came together and inspired me to write this book.”
I was drawn to the book from the very first sentence- “In these sleepy little hill towns, there is a secret path every child knows, a trail every nostalgic adult remembers.” ‘Where the Cobbled Path Leads’ traces the journey of eleven-year-old Vime, who lost her beloved mother, and rediscovers the cobbled footpath that had been her favourite escape even when her mother was alive. Her frequent solitary walks through the cobbled footpath eventually leads her to encounter spirits that are both bad and good.
Grief can be a lonely experience for children and adults alike. But perhaps, children feel even more deeply. I recently attended a funeral of a young mother and I thought to myself, there is nothing more heart-breaking than helplessly watching inconsolable children crying over the loss of their beloved mother.
Vime’s unspoken grief over the loss of her mother coupled with the news of her father remarrying, drives her to explore deeper into the forest. Through all her encounters in “the in between”, she finally understands what it is to embrace and survive grief.
“Love is Kepenuopfü’s greatest gift to man. Spirits envy humans because they cannot love. And certainly, grief is a beautiful child of love undying, borne out of love after all.” For me, these words spoken by Kijübode in the book, seems to be the essence of the book even as Vime comes out with a better understanding of life after all her experiences in the spirit world.
The 184-page book, ‘Where the Cobbled Path Leads’, an imprint of India Hamish Hamilton under Penguin Random House, offers everything that you look for in a fantasy novel—magic, compelling characters, a completely new world—perhaps the spirit world that we are all oddly familiar with, and that, actually makes it even more fascinating. To discover a world that seems remote from our everyday life, and that, even in that parallel universe, there are undiscovered joys and endless adventures.
Needless to say, Avinuo Kire is an enormously gifted author, whose every new book gives a new meaning to life and the world we live in.
