The Anime Culture which comprises of people who follow anime mainly from Japan, Korea and China is a growing trend that can be seeing all over the world and slowly but surely touching even in this part of the world especially in Mizoram, Nagaland, Meghalaya, and Arunachal Pradesh. Different organisations like Project Z.E.R.O, Nagaland Anime Junkies, NEOtakus, etc are slowly spreading this new culture through different events such as Cosplay Competitions, Anime Meets, Anime Cons, Comic cons, etc. For those who are already keen followers of this new cultures must have had experiences where they are shunned by friends, society and even their own parents for simply spending too much time on these ‘kids’ show but I say why not? This is not a review of each anime or Director as that would take more than just one article to do justice to each of them but just a gist of what each has to offer to its viewers
Category: Culture
I kept wondering if the ISL match would have been possible in Guwahati even a decade ago. Would people have braved humid weather, dust, long lines and trudged to a stadium completely disconnected from the heart of the city? Would they have been as enthusiastic about the easy manner in which regional politics merged with national markets? Actually, I’m stretching the truth a bit. My colleagues and I skipped out of the stadium happy that we had won on the strength of a solitary goal, scored by a Japanese player and supported by a host of players of different nationalities.
The urge to do some writing
Is really quite exciting,
Till you sit down to write
And then reality begins to bite.
In 1963, Kanhailal Heisnam had been expelled from the National School of Drama on for having taken leave without official permission. The real problem, according to scholars like Rustom Bharucha was Kanhailal’s inability to cope with the pressure of being expected to speak, write and work in English and especially in Hindi. These were languages that were unfamiliar and alien to him, just as he was alien in the space where he had arrived, albeit with much hope and optimism, as a student of theatre. Having been expelled, after a period of aimlessness, Kanhailal returned to Imphal finally in 1969 to begin his own work and established his theatre group Kalakshetra Manipur. However, unlike the far-more spectacular Ratan Thiyam, who even went on briefly to become the director of NSD in 1987-1988, Kanhailal remained for a long time on the margins of what was accepted and celebrated as ‘Manipuri ‘theatre practice at the nation’s centre.
Some would argue that the Blues are a part and parcel of one’s life – like the cobras dancing. In it one’s politics, one’s commitment, passion and love churn. It is a position that keeps one constantly discontented and dissatisfied, but never cynical and bitter. So, it’s a pity for me that when The Blues Circus gets on stage this coming Friday, there won’t be a substantive documentary on Peter marking this occasion.
Maybe this will never be on the cards because it’s tough getting him to talk about himself. Because there’s much more to him than his many guitars, and the ritual he makes of polishing them with his ‘Mist and Wipe” spray specially made for Fenders.
Old Brahmadev probably has walked down most of the lanes of Shillong but not too many would know his name. He would only be recognized by the bell he rings and the green compartmentalized box he carries that we all so well recognize.
And I hope that you die
And your death’ll come soon
I will follow your casket
In the pale afternoon
And I’ll watch while you’re lowered
Down to your deathbed
And I’ll stand over your grave
‘Til I’m sure that you’re dead.
As a writer, Arun Kolatkar is no longer ‘missing’. His oeuvre is complete for those who care to look at it. But, all of Kolatkar’s covers need a second look. They no longer deserve to be ‘missing’.
Through Ianche, a Garo poet, the film tries to understand what it feels to be a poet without a written language. Once this saddening truth is felt and understood in its entirety can you write again? The Garos have their own language but no script to write and hence they have been using the English alphabet for centuries now. Ianche, an accomplished poet finds himself tormented and unable and unwilling to write anymore. He can see his people completely abandoning their rich culture and he believes that the only way to save himself and them is to author a script.
My father passed away almost 20 years ago but I remember him every day. I remember him as a loving and doting father, a jolly, generous, kind, often compulsive person, always ready to lend a helping hand to anyone in need. He would buy us gifts – clothes, toys and food whenever he felt like. I would always be so happy and glad just to be in his company. He had many names and identities you might say. He was known by his Muslim name as Abrar Hussain, his nickname was Khuku and Johnky, his Christian name was Peter.
The old cliché is “God is dead … And we have killed him”. When this statement was first uttered by Nietzsche’s Madman more than a century ago, I do not think that it was entirely depressing (even though the philosopher himself might have thought otherwise); perhaps because deep down people must have felt it was time to let the idea (of God) go. The zeitgeist had definitely changed direction.
There are 14 flights of stairs. Each one has 12 steps. That’s 168 to climb, because the lift is always out of order.
Drawing its name from the nearby police station, Police Bazaar was born in 1864, and is old as the ‘hill-station’ itself. It grew slowly with the arrival of Bengali and Marwari traders whose ‘general stores’ were initially patronized by British soldiers and officers. In 1874, Shillong became the capital of the new province of Assam. As the town grew into an important centre of colonial administration, the marketplace started to expand. Starting from the first decades of the 20th century, a string of different communities – Sindhis, Punjabis, Pathans, Chinese, and later, Tibetans – all arrived to start businesses in the area.
It was early July 2013 that we descended to a village in Raid Tyrso, looking for the remaining fragments of the Lakympong Dance in individual and collective memories of people.
Alice Cooper, “School’s Out” Cooper’s greatest hit “School’s been blown to pieces.” Having school kids join the taunting bridge of “No more pencils/No more books”…
Uneasiness and fear percolate from every pore of the visuals crafted by cinematographer Satya Rai Nagpaul and stay for uncomfortably long spans, making one feel as if the plot progression is happening in real time. There are other times when the camera wakes up as if from a manic dream and switches to fast pans. A good volume of the narrative is unfolded in what is not seen on screen. Violence and the bloodied armed strife is always a pervasive presence in its visible absence. Designed with minimalistic background music, Chauthi Koot carries forward these stylistic elements from Gurvinder Singh’s previous film Anhe Ghode Da Daan(Alms For A Blind Horse) that projected an unnervingly drab Punjab of the Dalits of Punjab’s Malwa who, till this day, work as seeri or bonded agricultural labourers on the fields of land- owning Jatt sikhs. In both films, the filmmaker is able to carve out a Punjab that is an antithesis of the vibrant and ever celebratory image of Punjab that one is used to witness in popular culture and Bollywood cinema.
Although I had seen both Chocolate and Goal, I never particularly cared to find out who had directed them. They were average films, displaying no trace of an auteur behind them, although they were enjoyable the way many Bollywood films are, but also, at the same time, completely and eminently forgettable. Both the films were set abroad, and had a mild nationalistic strain running through them which was also not very remarkable in that sense – Bollywood films shot abroad can rarely resist the temptation of a little flirtation with nationalism.
Buddha in a Traffic Jam, when seen in that context, is indeed a remarkable film as it purports to be a film of ideas, very glossily packaged – to be expected as Agnihotri cut his teeth in advertising.
If the distinction of being ‘Cleanest Village in Europe’ (also heartchecked by Our Supreme Leader) was not enough, Mawlynnong can now claim to be the host of the first proof of ant-gravity according to the scientists at Discover India facebook page.
I told you that there was something wrong with the way the beat of the drums sounded, something wrong with the way the trumpet was blown, something seems not right with the way people were shouting, I could feel that in the air, I could feel that on the ground, that it was not the vibration of triumph, neither of celebration.
The short narratives in ‘A Book of Light’ contribute to an essential conversation about mental illness within the family
When #Caste Is Not a Rumour – The Online Diary of Rohith Vemula hit the virtual bookshelves two weeks ago, it was an overnight sensation,…
Ha trai u wei u dieng,
Hapdeng u phlang jyrngam
Katno nga sngew ka phieng
Ban sngap ka sur ba tmang.
So it’s farewell, then, to Gawker. After 14 years of dancing on the edge of ethical probity and legal propriety, doing some good journalism as well as some less good, the New York-based website – an online blend of investigation, gossip, commentary and satire – has been forced out of business.
Another young man comes home from work on his scooter
He is an atm teller and Supports his large family
His brothers wedding is next week
He is found with 300 pellets in his body, every organ is ruptured
they had carried him to the side of the road, to pass it off as an accident
But blood leaves its trail
India, this is your democracy.
In 2008, I came across the word ‘bipolar’ again. It was in a letter my daughter Daniella had written to her psychiatrist, telling him how grateful she was for the one-day workshop he had conducted on the subject. She wanted me to publish her letter in The Shillong Times, a paper I edit, but I didn’t. I didn’t have the courage. It still sits in my inbox. For years I had criticized people for being in denial about drug addiction, alcoholism, HIV& AIDS, and now I found I was equally culpable.
But this realization came later.
Happy Independence Day India
May your flag flutter freely in the air
Like freely falling warm drops of tear
On a child’s cheek who lost his father
In your soldier’s bullets
For he was born in Kashmir.
Once More
Show me how you swim
Kick a Ball
Superstar
Your Hands and Legs
When you use them
Just like a slave who’s sold
Andrew Lyndem, 25, is nocturnal and starts his day at 3 pm ending it at the witching hour. Ratul Hajong, 24, is awake before him but in circulation around the same time. Together, they are Cryptographik Street Poets (CSP) a rap act in Shillong, Meghalaya. Touched by the civil rights/black power movements in intangible ways, their sigil is the raised fist of solidarity and revolution, the Black Panther Party logo. Although they live in separate homes with their parents, they are in constant society with each other.
River of flesh and other stories: the Prostituted Woman in Indian Short Fiction is a book that begins with an aim of prescribing an Indian prostitute’s problems through pity. The choice of the title, which is a title of one of the stories in the book, as a representation of the collection of stories, relegates the whole collection to a simplified, moralistic view. It is telling of the editor’s and publisher’s condescending attitude towards prostitutes. By appealing to pity and sensationalization, it reveals the patronising disregard they have towards the complex varieties of voices from prostitutes.
And yet the stories on the other hand portray the complexities of a prostitute’s life and experiences very effectively…
I first met RV Ramani, in Delhi, April 2015 and collected some DVDs of his films. Recently, I watched the film Hindustan Hamara (2014), and I decided to ask RV Ramani some questions about this, and his films My Camera and Tsunami (2011) and Nee Engey (2003).
So who’s a chinky anyway? Personally I think Saif Ali Khan is very chinky. Did he get that from his Afghani (fairly chinky people) forefathers or from his Bengali mother? And yes, Bengalis are quite chinky. Especially those from the East, which is why the Bengalis won’t discriminate against you based on your facial features. They will do it because of religion, language, culture but never on what sort of face you have. That’s just crude! What would Bollywood be today without the chinky RD Burman and his even more chinky father, SD Burman? What about the half-Burmese chinky, Helen ‘’Golden Girl’’ Richardson? This is a country of diversity we are told but to watch the nonsense of Bollywood today one would think otherwise.
Nita Ambani becomes the first Indian woman member of International Olympic Committee, and social media is outraging already, questioning her credentials. That is so not fair. She has been involved in promoting multiple sports in the country, and deserves a seat at the IOC for all the right reasons.
If you don’t believe me, this compilation should help.
In 1925, Survey of India as part of its Indian city map series published a guide map of Shillong – now Raiot offers it to you for free download
The Devil came to your home KHADC greeted.
In the form of a UCIL Limited, illegitimate – in every sense of the word & sentiment.
It’s evident they came for what’s rightfully yours,
Khasi council allowed, never cared to ensure…
The ecological consequence, it’s ok, then?
For water pollution to ruin the lives of fishermen?
And they at it again, seeking an NOC.
Stop ’em dead in their feet before they proceed.
I’m sicka than Lucifer bitch
I slick prick crucifix Lucifer’s dick
Wow, what is this?
Who sings this why do I sound dope in broken English
Well, I didn’t graduate but I know my way with words, I’m great!
How does it feel – Mr. Dylan?
To the surprise of many, Bob Dylan has become the first singer-songwriter to win the Nobel prize in literature.
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