Kangleimaichou

    The look she gives you makes you think of a furious school teacher who is accustomed to dealing with unruly kids. Her eyes are on you and then she literally turns her head and stays where she has been standing for hours without giving you a word. This makes you thinks she is trying to say “I don’t give a damn. You wait till I’m done, boy.”    With “excuse me” you try to excuse yourself through the trolley and the armrest brushing against one passenger. The passenger moves side way thinking you should pass, the     attendant remains unmoved. Of what use  you have braved the blockade to get into one of two toilets? To stand in a line with my back leaning against the armrest of one passenger, disturbing another passenger with you being pushed each time more and more attendants stroll down the aisle with broad trays on their palms over the glistening oiled heads.    After several hours you are...

         In front of the opulent airport, where you are materialistically belittled, your are able to see the  pictured-exit door and  the world on the other side. You're prepared for the world which very soon you will be experiencing.          The lady at the check-in counter presents herself as a generous person smiling atyou and yet quite meticulous with her work.   But the warm comfort you receive from her is soon wasted in the long immigration line; the male official’s meticulous observation of each and every passport seems like an inevitable self-torture he has to put up with and therefore transferring it to us. Yours is stamped and soon you saunter down the carpeted floor with some relief but it is spent on the “padded down” security check -in which every individual has to take off almost everything except trousers and shirt. There...

Home was now close and I wish I could make the driver take off his vehicle right away and had dropped me on our courtyard. I looked at each thing, in which I saw my past, and recalled how they were like and in my mind I strove to re-enact what I had done there as a child. But each thing that I saw had changed and the changes were not the good ones. It was simply dilapidated and rotting, what was dreadful was the fact that people were still in those rotting places, that means they had been conditioned and now had become a different people. Rotting as the buildings and simply living out a rotting life. The bridge over the creek leading towards my village was now dismantled and I saw people crossing a three-pole bamboo footbridge with a frail railing. From the distance one could discern the sound of bamboo poles creaking and some ladies trying to cross yelling out of fear at the tops of their voices. Yes, they were the frightened people trying to cross a makeshift   three-po...

All that I craved for after the long queue and being exposed to the trivial conversations was a window seat and if possible all alone. But India is one such place where solitude is an expensive thing except on top of a mountain or perhaps in a safe forest. Mine was along the aisle beside the couple. Soon much to my satisfaction a young flight attendant walked to me to ask if I could take a window seat across the aisle. The couple was also given a proposal for unknown reason and they complied with it. With the clouds all around and the knowing that I would soon be there I began going through a list of things that I thought I should do. The flight landed in Agartala for a while and another horde of passengers, not a tribal looking person among them, streamed in. They stood in the aisle and began disturbing verbal altercation with the crews.   One among the staff came to me to check my boarding pass and then with a frown on her face she said “ this isn’t your place!” Of course it wasn...

I was on my way home after a long time and this time it was for a serious reason.   I packed light and boarded the place with an anxious mind full of queries. But I had to go home anyhow and there was no escaping from that trip. The first night was full of anxieties and the following morning my mind was rather willing to reconcile with the anxieties. I was able to do so and that occurred when I was at the airport much earlier than the departure time. Finally I had arrived at a point in which I could vividly sit down and recall the mental picture that I had long been nurturing and sharpening in my mind. It’s the picture that can make anybody call one place home and without that picture one would also become empty person, who could easily be consumed in a diverse environment. It has been with me though it was something I had ignored in some remote past. Upon my arrival in a different setting and   in the beginning of the certainty that I was going to be in that setting for somet...

This is the story of myself and people of my kind. My name is Roypuri Ranjit Singh from Joypur another name is “The land of jewels.” My father, the most educated man in our town, calls himself Joypur Dorjut Singh, when I ask him the meaning of his name he just shrugs his shoulders and when I further question he says I ask too much. You see people like my old man believe that when someone dies the person goes to the Land of  The Ganges so they always go about chanting some Aryan texts of which not even a word they understand. But they were given that so they just keep it close to their heart, like a monkey holding close some coconut. Everybody is like that and everyone sticks to what they are and no one wants to go beyond what we are. My grandfather, when he was alive, would go to some grand feast all dressed up like some Bengali man yet without knowing he looked really like one. At the feast place he and the respected elders would sit and listen to songs sang in...