Our continued obsession with fair skin

A  symposium that I  recently attended in Guwahati was a good illustration of our continued obession with fair skin, which is bad twice over not only because it makes us behave abnormally with fair skinned people, but also because it prevents us from valuing and giving due respect to the great ones among our own brown-skinned locals. Read on to find out more...

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Going to Assam again

Yet another year has begun, time once more to go on another trip to Assam, but this time the errands are somewhat different, and very many, and my programme is very tight -- that is why I am not too sure what I will be able to get done in the time I have... will report back in April when I am back in Germany again. Can only say now that I plan to take a break from Tangsa work on this trip and concentrate on my parents, and things around them. The next prize giving meeting  of the Trust is coming up in March. Then there are various things around Baba's centenary year that need to be done. Sometimes I am tired of all this rushing around, but then there is no way out...

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O mor aponar desh -- English-German-translation

To mark the 150th birth anniversary of Lakshminath Bezboruah a project is underway to translate 'O mor aponar desh' into other languages. Here is our contribution to the project. Comments and suggestions for improvement are welcome. For more details look in the Facebook site 'O mor aponar desh' where many translations are already available. It would be great to have translations in as many languages as possible -- please help if you can.

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The forgotten state of Tripura: a whiff of Bengal in the north-east

An account of a short first trip to Agartala and its neighbouring areas in December 2012

When we decided to go to Tripura for a short holiday, neither my husband nor I knew what to expect.  Our combined knowledge of Tripura was negligible. Of course, I knew we were not the only ones with such an abysmal level of ignorance of the state -- I was sure many main-land Indians have never even heard of it. But we were keen to find out more. Moreover, a trip to Tripura seemed easy to arrange; we also knew at least one person there; so we decided to go.

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Not your idea of sightseeing

Some thoughts on what sightseeing means to different people in different parts of the world...

‘This is not the western idea of sightseeing’, Katrin told me recently, ‘just to sit in cars and look out of the window while being taken from point A to point B. Western people like to walk, to trek, to look at the plants and the trees, to take in the air....’ 

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Another year comes to an end

Today is the last day of 2012 -- what should one do on such a day? Look back at the year that has gone by -- anniversaries, special events, trips to new places, small pleasures at home and at work, with family, friends and colleagues, ...well...many memories of many events and experiences...almost all of them nice... therefore a day to say thank you to whoever it is who is in charge of these things...

But many others were not so lucky --

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Munin Barkotoki Award 2012

Guwahati Dec 24, 2012. The Munin Barkotoki Memorial Trust has decided to confer the Munin Barkotoki Award, 2012 to Sanjibpaul Deka for his story collection Ei Pine Ki Aase and Sharmistha Pritam for her autobiography Aatmakatha, stated a press release. The award carries Rs 30,000 in cash. The award will be given at a function to be held on March 2, 2013 at the Vivekananda Kendra auditorium.

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All within a weekend

The weekend I want to tell you about had many lovely ingredients:  we made this trip to Bremen mainly because  our annual Asamiya-get-together was scheduled to be held in Worpswede, the picturesque artists' village just outside Bremen. The idea sounded exciting, but I had no idea that it would turn out to be such an extraordinary outing in the end.

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Remembering Ledo in Russia

9288 kms. from/to Moscow, says the milepost on the main platform at Vladivostock train station. It was erected in 1996 to mark the centenary of the Trans-Siberian Railway, connecting the capital Moscow to the eastern-most part of Russia. In the initial years, this railway was the life-line connecting the vast stretches of the Siberian no-man’s land  to the rest of the world. Possibly nowhere else in the world can one find a train terminus located so far away from the capital. And this is perhaps also Vladivostock’s greatest claim to glory. In any case, that was the only thing I knew about the city till we landed here last week.

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Four months later

As I write this I realise that I have not written anything in my blog for almost five months now. And this is because these last four months, since we got back from Chile in mid April, I have done very little else but write! And believe it or not, we have not travelled further than Munich and Goettingen in these months. Very unusual for us. But we have had quite a few guests, and a few 'big'  events have kept us happily occupied. 

But the recent developments in the Bodoland areas have given no cause for cheer. And the subsequent exodus of north-easterners from the rest of India left me completely dazed. Could this really be happening in India today? But then in India everything is possible, as long as the country is in the hands of unscrupulous politicians who think nothing of inviting foreingers to settle in the country for the sake of their votes. And even more tragic scenarios are possibly in store for us in Assam as long as we Assamese cannot stop being just sentimental and emotional about everything, and learn to insist that 'Accords' need to be implemented and that some implementable and just method has to be put in place to determine who is a genuine citizen of India and who is not. Is this asking for too much?

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