A few days ago, I left the unfinished final draft of my research synopsis presentation, which I had to submit the next day, on my desk and left campus in Delhi on a small errand. I had planned to return as soon as possible to complete the draft, but it was not to be. Savouring a feeling of freedom after weeks of the coronavirus pandemic lockdown, I took a detour into a bookshop. I scanned all the books and settled upon A Respectable Woman, only the second Nagamese fiction book I have read, and the first in English. I sat down at a corner table near the window to read Easterine Kire’s book, as the rain poured outside. Kire’s book is a story woven out of oral tales, the kind you might come across in your localities and villages, where memories and history merge like streams.