Chai Chalk Chatter

Our identities are invariably multi-faceted with varied loci and even though we would like to believe that a lot of our actions are influenced by a strong locus of control yet it is only a naive expression to deny the existence of an external locus of identity. I am no exception, I do need a similar recognition and acceptance of my existence. I grew up in a sleepy ‘90s Shillong that was at the time basking in its newly found neo-liberal prosperity yet drowned in its colonial hangover. My neighborhood is one that has Marwari families, a Manipuri family, a Garo family, and a Naga family among others. While one of my next-door neighbors’ is an Assamese, the other a Khasi. The 1990s was an interesting time when the transition from the analog to the digital was only beginning to take place. The complaints of kids being occupied with the virtual world were not as prominent as kids trespassing every property in the area were. It is probably this multi-cultural setup that has enabled me to inc...

I was reading an article on scroll.in, shared by a friend on Facebook. This small piece of writing was initially meant to be a comment on her post but when I started putting my thoughts to words, it became too long for a Facebook comment and in fact became a culmination of the thoughts that the respective article managed to congregate, in my mind. For the original article, please follow: http://bit.ly/2uaC8xp I grew up in the traumatic 90's and the early 2000's. Even as a kid, more importantly a non-tribal kid, being called a 'Dkhar' (an outsider) was a very normal thing in the beautiful Scotland of the East. Children tend to have their own quarrels but them being of the racist nature, at such a tender age speaks about a cultural conditioning drowned in hate. I remember the incident discussed in the article and I also remember the shattered glasses. It was like the Scotland of the East's very own 'kristallnacht', except that it was in broad da...