Color My Grave Purple

Colour My Grave Purple is a powerful collection of ten short stories that reimagine the history of Assam and India’s Northeast through intimate, human narratives that span more than a century—from 1858 to 2019. Written with lyrical restraint and historical depth, the book moves away from the dominant trope of insurgency to foreground lived experiences, quiet resistance, memory, identity, and survival in a region too often relegated to the margins of national storytelling.

At its heart, this book is both deeply personal and profoundly political. Inspired by the author Shehnab Sahin’s relationship with her late father—himself a police officer and an Assamese writer—the stories examine dualities that define the region: authority and rebellion, tradition and change, belonging and displacement. The title itself, seemingly macabre, becomes a meditation on remembrance, inheritance, and the ways personal grief intertwines with collective history.

The stories traverse pivotal moments in Assam’s past: the arrival of the colonial plantation economy, the exploitation and resistance of tea garden labourers, the trauma of foreign invasions, the negotiations of identity during social and cultural movements, and the evolving relationship between humans and the region’s rich but vulnerable ecology. From British planters grappling with an unfamiliar land to indigenous communities navigating imposed systems of power, the narratives reveal how historical forces shape everyday lives.

One of the collection’s strengths lies in its range. Some stories are outward-looking, rooted in documented historical episodes—such as the life of Ursula Graham Bower, a British woman who forged deep alliances with the Zemi Nagas during World War II. Others are inward and intimate, exploring taboo, gender norms, queerness, and generational conflict, such as a young man grappling with his identity in 1970s Assam. There are also haunting stories that blur the line between the natural and the supernatural, capturing the region’s folklore, spiritual beliefs, and the ever-present tension between human ambition and nature’s will.

Despite their varied themes and time periods, the stories are bound together by geography and emotional continuity. Like the Brahmaputra itself—winding, forceful, and enduring—the narratives flow across decades, carrying with them the resilience of the Assamese people. The collection reflects how a pluralistic, syncretic society has been shaped through adaptation, loss, and quiet defiance.

Importantly, Colour My Grave Purple reclaims Assam’s place at the centre of Indian historical fiction. Rather than presenting the Northeast as an appendix to the mainland narrative, the book insists on its centrality—its histories, voices, and complexities. The prose is evocative yet grounded, making the collection accessible to both literary readers and those new to the region.

Ultimately, this book is a love letter to Assam: its landscapes, its people, its silences, and its stories. It invites readers across India to engage with a region not as an abstraction, but as a living, breathing space of memory, struggle, and enduring humanity.

Endorsements:

A remarkable debut by an author who holds great promise. This work reflects her acute observations and experiences set in the culturally rich Northeast, juxtaposing its troubled history against a backdrop of vivid human emotions and providing a fascinating opportunity to explore depths long obscured by routine surface familiarity.

SALMAN KHURSHID, former EAM and Hony
Fellow of St Edmund Hall, Oxford

Shehnab Sahin weaves fascinating fiction with truths drawn from historical accounts. These stories pull you towards a wild journey into the remote corners of mysterious, undiscovered Assam.

ADIL HUSSAIN, Actor

These tautly structured and masterfully told tales evoke the changing cultural and historical landscape of Assam with intensity, passion and veracity.

NAMITA GOKHALE, Author & Publisher