Review: Rough Streets by Ankush Saikia

Hindustan Times

22-05-2025

Ankush Saikia's Rough Streets begins in 1984 in Shillong in the Nongrim hills with Chandan, aged nine, returning from school to hear of the news of prime minister Indira Gandhi's assassination. His parents, Bengali migrants originally villagers from Sylhet who came up the Khasi hills, are no strangers to communal violence and they are worried. Chandan is seemingly well integrated into the local community with his best friend being Donny Rymbai. It is a friendship that plays out throughout his formative years bringing with it several dividends as well as its share of political repercussions, especially when Chandan gets unwittingly involved in a murder plot.
Saikia's portrayal of an adolescence set amidst the picturesque hills of the north east is punctuated by simmering tensions linked to identity, something that accompanies Indians of all sorts no matter where they go. Chandan is in class 6 when he is first assaulted for being a 'Dkhar', a derogatory term used for non-Khasi people. After Donny rescues him, he realises, for the first time, what it means to be an outsider. On another ordinary day, as Chandan and his mother are walking home, they witness the public stabbing of another outsider. Chandan's mother is shaken and he hears her tell his father about going to Calcutta as they would never be accepted here. Chandan's father reminisces about his own father witnessing similar incidents during the Partition. The Sen family is never the same after this incident.
To represent the diverse political, cultural and social aspects of north eastern society is a feat in itself and Saikia's ability to weave in historical narratives and events as Chandan grows older gives this work of fiction a solid context. The reader begins to see the long history of injustice in the area through this multi-generational chronicle that not only talks about the ethnicities and cultural traditions of the many peoples of the North East but also delves into the region's propensity for violence. In Chandan's history professor father, Saikia finds the perfect voice to expound on the area's complex past. Each of his classmates and their families are also a representation of this. The consequences of crossing lines are severe as Sumit, Chandan's Bengali friend finds out when he is beaten up for sending a love letter to a Khasi girl. The slow simmering hate and revenge wreaks havoc as these boys grow into men.
Other things are happening too within this outwardly idyllic setting tinged with violence: children are learning about their parents' infidelities, watching other young malnourished children working in the coal mines, and joining radical groups to be trained as guerrillas. The events around them slowly chip away at Chandan and his teenaged friends. One boy's father, the manager of a tea estate, is shot in broad daylight for refusing to pay extortion money; Adolf waves a gun in Donny's face, and Manoj is tortured on suspicion of being an ULFA member. It all proves to be too much for Chandan, who turns to drinking and smoking, cheating on tests, and forging his parents' signatures. The young people find that both, their present and their future, are threatened. Years later, when Chandan returns, he sees the plight of the captain of his school football team, a career ended prematurely by a stabbing.
is the story of growing up in a part of India that is often exoticized but rarely understood. At one level, it may be about school fights, teenage love and rebellion with a murder plot thrown in but it is also much more. Violence, political instability, and a looming crisis of the future shadows these characters. This is a world where innocent, childish mistakes have very real consequences and often end in death.
In Chandan the reader sees a lost boy who doesn't want to leave his town but is forced to; in Donny, we see those whose lives are tied to the mines. In all of Saikia's characters, we see children who have to come to grips with an identity that is forced upon them by a society that never lets them forget or change who they are. Who they grow up to be is but a response to what is done to them and to those they love.
At over 350 pages, Rough Streets is not a quick read. It can be hard to keep track of the extensive cast of characters and its pace is occasionally erratic. However, this chronicle of boyhood definitely does not disappoint.
Percy Bharucha is a freelance writer and illustrator. Instagram: @percybharucha