Apang releases Mamang Dai's 'The Legends of Pansam'

Itanagar, Aug 12 (UNI) Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Gegong Apang has launched author Mamang Dai's third literary work, 'The Legends of Pensam', published by New Delhi-based Penguin Books India.

Addressing a function here last evening, Mr Apang said that when Ms Mamang decided to quit IAS in 1980 to take writing as her career, he had persuaded her not to do so as she was the first woman IAS from the state.

''Today, I can say that the government did lose a very talented bureaucrat but it was a gain for the world of literature,'' he said.

Appreciating Ms Mamang for making the whole state proud by enriching the culture of the state, Mr Apang said this work of fiction would provide a glimpse of the rich cultural life of the Adis to the entire English speaking world.

Thanking Penguin Publisher Ravi Singh, Mr Apang said unlike other publishing houses, Penguin has global presence and the multi-national would provide a vast readership to the author.

In his address, Mr Singh said that he was excited on receiving the manuscript from Mamang one and half year ago. He was fascinated about Mamang as a poet but this manuscript convinced him about her potential as a prolific prose writer in lyrical style.

Penguin would showcase her talent in the 4th Frankfort Book Fair slated for October next. She is among the 30 selected Indian writers invited to the Fair, he said.

An overwhelmed Mamang said she tried to dispel the myth that people without script are not backward.

She said though the tribes in North-East have only rich oral traditions, her efforts were to document as an insider.

''We are perhaps the last generation in contact with oral traditions, rituals and folklores and unless it is documented the tribal values would be lost, she said.

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