Mar 21
By Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih
Liaw was only a daily-wage labourer but was well-known throughout the locality because of his excessive fondness for praying before mealtimes, especially whenever there was a big audience. However, he was not a religious person in the conventional sense and did not even go to church.
By Lalnunsanga Ralte
For the young men though,
There was no escape.
They were lined up,
Hung upside down
And whipped like dogs.
By Nabina Das
the eyes
have trained in complete darkness in secret sojourns
and then came home with Radha's hair
in Krishna's loin
By Namrata Pathak
The teacups slant sideways
on the mahogany table,
unsteady
like grandmother's memoirs
of the partition.
By Rimi Nath
Uzanbazar and Brahmaputra narrate the age old tales
Of hatred and bloodshed
They recount tales of people who claim to love them
But fail to love one another.
By Robin S Ngangom
No one looks at dark memorials
standing through lonely rain, their heads
trusting the sky’s emaciated shoulders,
no one will stop to look at the dead.
By Shikhandin
Her granddaughter-in-law was quietly wiping her own eyes. Her grandson's face was set in that men-don’t-cry grimace she remembered so well. The car jerked forward. The sun slipped out of the sky, pulling down the light with it. And then she couldn't see them anymore.
By Sumana Roy
The plane kept circling the airport
like a monarch waiting for the throne.
Inside my eye was my mother’s hand –
mashed potatoes dried on it, from waiting.
It was news of home.
By Anand Sachin
Archery has been a favourite past-time for the Khasi tribe in Meghalaya. In the past, each village sent its best archers to the neighbouring village for a friendly competition called U Thingiong U Thingsaw. Then there were competitions that were held on festive days, while also in the memory of Meghalaya’s freedom fighters.
By Pfokrelo Kapesa
The general understanding of working women is so limited that only a tiny fraction is represented in our immediate perception of working women. This photo essay is an attempt at broadening the image and visuals of working women in Northeast India.
By Supromit Maiti
Shokpo Sherab Gyatso, a Mongolian astrologer is said to have built another monastery in 1850, which attracts your attention as you take the Hill Cart Road to Darjeeling. Once you stop at ‘Samten Choeling’, also known as Ghum Monastery, the number of tourists flocking the lawn would astonish you along with the visible absence of the locals.
By Binayak Dutta
While tales of violence and perceptions of security became the core concerns guiding displacement of the minorities from Sylhet, it is important to understand that the idea of violence itself in historical studies has undergone a transformation. Violence today is not understood as only an external act of physical harm and violation. It is to be understood in more subtle terms as encompassing both psychological and perceived acts of violence and violation.
By Rajashree Bargohain and Rohini Mokashi-Punekar
Writers from Northeast India are faced with the challenge of negotiating with both forms of unspeakability while producing testimonial accounts of the trauma undergone by women of the region. Yet, a third layer of silence is added to the experiences of these women by the underrepresentation of such traumatic stories from the Northeast. Scholarly and literary engagements with Partition have largely limited themselves to the experiences on the western frontier and the Bengal region to some extent.
Contents: Women’s Writing from North East India (Issue 36)
