There are some books that inform you. And then there are books that make you feel something you cannot quite put into words. Hoihnu Hauzel's Stories the Fire Could Not Burn falls firmly in the second category.
This is not a comfortable read. It is not meant to be. The book is Hauzel's deeply personal account of the ethnic violence that tore through Manipur in 2023. This conflict displaced thousands, burned homes, and left entire communities with nothing but grief and memories. Hauzel, a journalist and author herself, writes not just as a reporter observing from the outside but as a daughter, a woman, and a member of the Kuki-Zo community that bore the brunt of this violence.
The name Manipur literally means “the city or land of jewels.” It is a small state in northeast India, bordered by Nagaland, Mizoram, Assam, and Myanmar. The state has long been a geopolitical hotspot. Over the decades, this unique “hills-versus-valley” geography has shaped the lives of its people. What used to be a symbiotic relationship between different ethnic groups has, over time, been strained by competition for land, political representation, and the shadows of insurgency. This historical tension reached a breaking point in May 2023, and it is from the ashes of this specific crisis that Hoihnu Hauzel’s stories emerge.
Hauzel doesn't just write about a conflict; she writes about the loss of home. She invites you into a world that feels both deeply personal and universally relatable.
There is a sense of “home” that breathes through every page. Hauzel captures the small details: the playground, her father's library, the way families talk to each other, and the weight of history that every household carries.
This book is a raw, non-fiction account that focuses on the “fire” that swept through Manipur; both the literal flames that destroyed neighbourhoods and the symbolic fire that tested the spirit of the Kuki-Zomi/Mizo community. As a reader, you aren’t just observing a news report; you are sitting inside a living room as the world outside begins to shift.
The book subtly asks: What survives when everything else is lost? Hauzel suggests it’s our stories.
She uses simple, grounded language to show that dignity isn't lost just because life gets hard. There is a moment where she describes her parents’ home, the books, the rose garden, and the gazebo. When these are lost to the fire, it isn’t just property damage; it’s the erasure of a family’s history.
She finds herself sitting helplessly in Gurgaon, far away from the chaos, and yet not far enough. All she can do is sob on her son's couch, scrolling through pictures of a hometown that is being destroyed in real time. The kind of helplessness where you cannot do anything except watch. And then she sees it: her father’s library, a place where he spent years reading, writing, and finding himself in books, was reduced to ash. Not because of war in any grand political sense, but because of plain, senseless hatred.
That scene alone says everything about what this book is really about. It is not just about the politics of Manipur, though the politics are very much present. It is about what violence actually costs; not in numbers or statistics, but in the small, irreplaceable things that make a life meaningful.
But the book is not only about loss. Before the violence, there is life; warm, full, and deeply rooted. One of the most tender parts of the book is when Hauzel writes about lengkhom, a tradition of her community that roughly translates to “flying together”. It is the practice of coming together in song and fellowship; people gathering, voices rising, a traditional drum called the khuang setting the rhythm. Singing, in her community, was never just entertainment. It was a collective balm.
What makes this book stand out is that Hauzel does not write with rage, at least not only with rage. There is grief here that runs much deeper than anger. It is the grief of someone who loved her home completely; its people, its songs, its rhythms, its traditions; and had all of it ripped away. That grief is what makes this book impossible to put down and equally impossible to forget.
In the middle of all this chaos, Hauzel also introduces us to Ching, her sister-in-law, someone who, by her own nature, was not a particularly brave person. But a crisis has a way of demanding things from people they never knew they had. Ching quietly became the pillar of the family during the worst of it. She held everyone together: the children, the elders, the fear wearing a mask of strength even when she must have been falling apart inside. It is one of those small portraits in the book that stays with you, because it is so deeply human.
She writes about the viral video of two women from her community being paraded naked, assaulted, and humiliated in public view. It is deeply disturbing to read about. But Hauzel makes an important point: had that footage not been leaked, the world would have never known. It was that video which finally forced government institutions to confront a humanitarian tragedy they had been conveniently ignoring. She also recounts the beheading of David Thiek, whose severed head was put on public display. It is brutal. There is no other word for it. She lets the horror sit with the reader as it should.
The final chapter is perhaps the most tender. Hauzel is back in her Gurgaon apartment with her son and her husband, in comfort and safety. And yet she misses home. Not the idea of it, but the small details: the specific sounds, the familiar smells, the faces, the feeling of belonging somewhere completely. She arrives at something quietly profound: that home is not a place. It is a feeling. And that feeling, once lost, is not something you can simply find again in a new city or a new house.
Stories the Fire Could Not Burn is a revelatory book not just for what it documents but for how it makes you feel the human cost of something that many people in India either ignored or watched from a comfortable distance. If someone wants to understand what happened in Manipur, not the political headlines, but the actual, lived reality of it, this is where you start.
Stories The Fire Could Not Burn
Published by Speaking Tiger
Pages: 232 pages
Cost: ₹499.00
