A great bonding in Nagaland, during Second World War

Vikrant Parmar

At first glance, the title of author Digonta Bordoloi’s book, ‘Second World War Sandwich’, comes across as frivolous, so one expects a comic tale. Yet, far from the initial response, it reads as an intense story of four men standing firm against the onslaught of the Imperial Japanese Army in Kohima, Nagaland, during the Second World War in 1944.

As the Japanese lay siege to a small British garrison, the strong bonding of the main characters, in the midst of an internecine battle, is what forms the heart of this power-packed story. An entire Japanese division is kept at bay by a few determined soldiers, who quell their onward march into the British India of those times; much due to their strategic advantage, but more through unrelenting courage.

Captain Timothy Hastings, a former tea estate manager-turned Army officer, with ‘long unwieldy limbs’, is at the helm of things although a little perturbed by the influx of senior officers, who had left him alone during peaceful times. Watching his back is cook-turned-soldier Raan, who gets enraged if his sahib faces even the slightest of danger. Unable to wield any weapons with finesse, he still displays remarkable courage as bullets and shells fly past his ear. Then there is Chatur Bahadur Chetri, a brave Nepalese Gorkha, who ‘what he lacked in height, he made for in physique’. He is a ‘typical Gorkha who never, under any circumstances, ‘lost his humour’. The quartet is completed by Mongseng, a native from a headhunting Konyak tribe, who unknowingly joins the war; a barely clad ‘Prince of Poilung’ who never ‘killed for fun, only when necessary’.

Blood, bodies, limbs, grenades, guns, shells, smoke; the atmosphere of war created by the author is commendable. He has indeed picked up strands from history and woven them well. Possessing sound knowledge of the area where the action takes place, he has juxtaposed overall destruction caused by warfare with the tribal way of life — where there is fierceness, but also a deeply embedded respect for nature. Human response in the wake of imminent death has been captured well, as also the indomitable instinct of survival. Existential reality, where bodies are reduced to mere ‘ragdolls’, stares in the face as each skirmish takes place.

The author’s vocabulary is rich and he has strewn it generously throughout the narrative. Barring the length, which could have been reined in to maintain the intensity of war sequences, this one is overall a good read — from both the historical and anthropological points of view.