We know the past can be changed. We can choose what we should believe, we can choose what we should remember. This is what frees us, this choice frees us to hope…. Amy Tan in The Opposite Of Fate (cited in page (i) of the Memoir.
I have never read any book by Temsula Ao. She has several novels and poetry collections to her credit which I have not stumbled upon. What I have read over the last few days is A Memoir, a poignant account of her days from the time she was a little girl to the present where she resides, resting around a long lifetime of hard won achievements and deserved success and ease.
Born in a Naga household, the author lost both parents, the most significant anchors in a child’s life, as a young girl. Her father succumbed to a mysterious tooth ailment all of a sudden and grieving for him, her mother too died shortly thereafter. Orphaned and poor, young Temsula Ao is sent off to a distant residential school for education. Her early childhood and years at school unfold in Part I and Part II of the memoir. Part III details her life as an adult.