Hechuya Magh: A Journey Through Naga Literature and Identity

Shillong, India Aug 26, 2026 ALN: Kohima, Nagaland: At just 23, a member of the Rengma community and a recent master’s graduate of Tetso College, Hechuya Magh has come to understand reading less as an exercise in accumulation and more as a way of locating herself within the world. What began as a simple interest slowly became, in her words, “a way of understanding both myself and the world around me.” Books, she says, “have been my companions through quiet moments, difficult days, and new beginnings,” offering not only comfort and perspective, but also “the reassurance that every emotion we experience has already been felt and beautifully expressed by someone else.”

For Magh, the number 66 was never meant to become a literary achievement. It was simply the number of books she happened to check out while moving through the familiar rhythm of academic reading, curiosity, pleasure, and leisure. Yet, much later, the same reader would return to the library as a special guest to launch a new wing—an almost fitting continuation to a relationship that had begun with nothing more deliberate than the impulse to pick up another book.

Perhaps that is why the story of the 66 books is more meaningful when the number itself is taken out of the equation. According to Maonglemla Jamir, Assistant Librarian/Information Scientist at Tetso Library, who has been working at the college for six years, the library has, during that time, grown into a collection of approximately 16,000 books, alongside print journals, magazines, newspapers, and electronic resources including NDLI, DSpace, and Shodhgangotri. The newer facility now adds a dedicated reading room, an Indigenous Study Centre, and technology-enabled services such as RFID circulation and biometric monitoring of library footfall.

It is against this institutional backdrop that Hechuya’s 66 checkouts become significant. Jamir describes her as “an exemplary library user” who demonstrated “consistency, responsibility, curiosity, and a genuine passion for learning” throughout her master’s programme. She was not simply using the library to complete academic requirements, but also to “broaden her knowledge and explore diverse areas of interest.” That also explains why the library chose Magh to inaugurate its new facility. Rather than treating the occasion as one requiring an external dignitary, the library placed a reader at the centre of a space created for readers. As Jamir puts it, the intention was to remind students that “a library is not defined merely by its books, infrastructure, or facilities, but by the readers who use and value it.”

“I never consciously set out to check out 66 books as a TBR challenge,” Magh says, explaining that the reading grew naturally through her research studies, personal interest, and leisure. As a major, much of the academic reading came with the territory, but she remained someone who “wanders beyond the prescribed reading list.” A title could catch her attention from a library shelf and find its way into the next reading list before she had much reason to justify the choice.

“The number is less about how many books I checked out and more about the kind of relationship I developed with the library during my time as a student.”

It factors in what many would say are “books to read instead of doomscrolling,” which feels daunting because what we experience now is an odd psychotic state of mind—I need to grow followers, create my voice, but also flaunt what is fed into your system. Let alone amidst all the happening Substack essayists who garner an audience—“so I took the much-needed break,” or “that new hobby to pick to be less around the internet”—but which of us really succeeds in terms of the metrics that are being talked about.

The Books Market size is expected to grow from USD 131.23 billion in 2025 to USD 135.49 billion in 2026 and is forecast to reach USD 157.88 billion by 2031, with a 3.11% CAGR over 2026–2031. Continued demand for printed titles, rapid adoption of audiobooks, and the rise of subscription reading platforms are shaping revenue prospects. Format preferences are fragmenting as commuters favour audio, younger readers adopt e-books, and collectors seek premium hardbacks. Publishers are sharpening omnichannel distribution, expanding direct-to-consumer storefronts, and experimenting with AI-enabled production to offset shrinking brick-and-mortar shelf space. Regionally, Asia-Pacific leads sales, the Middle East and Africa post the fastest growth, and Latin America benefits from government literacy drives. Across every region, piracy, paper shortages, and VAT inconsistencies temper momentum but also drive operational innovation.

The Asia-Pacific alone is estimated to grow at the highest CAGR over the forecast period (2026–2031) at 4.13%, with the Asia-Pacific accounting for the largest market share in the Books Market in 2025 at 36.66%.

So when someone says, “Books feel like a waste of time,” it helps to hear what else they might mean. Also, it is wrong to blame the reducing metrics as a thing about a generation, as Huy Nguyen wrote in his essay The Disappearing Habit of Reading Books: On Reading Stamina, Excerpt Culture, and the New Embarrassment of Being Slow, and how Nguyen justifies it:

“If we want books to matter again, we can’t only say ‘you should read.’ That line has been said for centuries. It has never been enough. We have to make reading feel like a reasonable way to live. We have to give it social permission and build real time around it and not limit it to moral of it.

For Magh, the beginning of a reading experience is often instinctive. “I think the cover is only the first invitation,” she says. “What ultimately makes me stay is the writing, the subject, and whether the book speaks to me in some way.” She confidently admits to having “developed a kind of instinct over time,” and, “I have learned to trust mine.”

She particularly finds poetry the place where the same poem can appear distant at one stage of life and deeply personal at another. Magh confesses before arriving at one of the more quietly perceptive observations in her interview: “we often change more than books do.”

It is perhaps this belief that makes rereading such an important part of her literary life. To return to a book is not merely to revisit its words, but to test what has changed in the person reading them.

The most meaningful books in Magh’s collection are not always the most pristine, as she would say. Rithvik Singh’s Warmth is the book she has annotated the most, with several lines and passages marked because they resonated with her at different points in her life. Another book she frequently revisits is Elongshila Jamir’s It Ends to Begin Again, whose pages also carry the traces of her reading through annotations and folded corners, further stating, “A well-loved copy of my favourite books is slowly becoming worn out from all the page-turning and revisiting,” she says. And rather than seeing this as a sign of neglect, she regards those worn pages as a kind of record.

Many readers would relate to it aptly as “material intimacy” here, which speaks to the deep connection forged between a reader and their books.