It is the season for bambooshoot in Northeast India. Hundreds of women venture into the forests during these months to forage for the tender shoots. Some are consumed fresh, and a large quantity are fermented and preserved. As condiments, fermented bambooshoot (dried or wet) are generously added to meat, fish, and vegetables.
Tag: Photoessay
In these series of photographs, Akash Basumatari, a film-maker, and photographer based out of Assam captures this lived reality of the people in Matia and Simlitola areas of the Goalpara district.
The pandemic has opened up a whole new, yet familiar backdrop of self speculation through my lens. The images chronicle the mundane setting around my own domestic space, featuring my family of six members and the choices I make to freeze moments for eternity. They have been created alongside many thoughts running through my restless mind during the lockdown appending my state of mind, my political stance, my privileges, my body image, my space, my relationships, my priorities, my future and how we would turn out after all this is over.
“The Ken is considered to be one of India’s cleaner rivers. It is part of the Ganga basin and meets the Yamuna at Chilla Ghat in Banda District, Uttar Pradesh. To closely understand the Ken, this walk along the Ken was organised by SANDRP – South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People from Delhi and Veditum India Foundation from Kolkata. The difficult terrain of the Ken River and the harsh weather required this journey to be undertaken in multiple parts (June 2017, October 2017 and April 2018) and took 33 days to complete this over 600 km journey on foot, where they discussed issues of the river, water, agriculture, the proposed Ken Betwa project and other socio-environmental topics with villagers in over 60 villages.”
Here is a place where it is a matter of pride to be casteist and a matter of pride to be against people who are not your own creed or clan. With relation to the current election, one thing I heard repeated over and over again by the people I met (privileged upper caste) was that Congress is a “Muslim” party and will bring back the riots of the 80s and we have already shown them their place on the other side of the river and we don’t want them back.
Young men and women mainly from rural Nagaland come in for short-term training courses to learn basic soft skills: to present themselves, stand, sit, communicate, dress and apply make-up, all essential requirements for a job in the service sector. Many of them find placements in hotels, spas, restaurants, airlines or security companies.
Anthropologists Dolly Kikon and Bengt G. Karlsson collaborated with photographer Andrzej Markiewicz to trace the lives and lifeworlds of indigenous migrants who have travelled from the Northeastern frontier of India to the expanding cities of South India.
Blood pressure is rising across the country. It is caused by a new viral fever called patriotic nationalism. Here are a few images of mild and not so everyday symptoms of Patriotic Lovearia we are suffering from.
Ronny Sen, winner of Getty Images Instagram Grant, photoessays those ‘ruined’ by Nobel Laureate Bob Dylan
The children in Nayanagarh Primary School, Jambani Primary School, Belpahari, Jangalmahal, West Bengal are all under the age of 10. But already they “know” that some languages are “worth” more than others and the one they speak at home is “worth least”.
Termite Eaten Memories
Since the past couple of months I have been thinking a lot about home and ways in which it archives the passage of time. In one such afternoon of sluggish enquiry, I learnt about my great-aunt for the first time some forty years after her death when I discovered an old trunk in my house. The trunk was brought by her when she migrated from Sylhet to India (Assam) because of the partition of 1947. Coincidentally, the day I discovered this relic of the inglorious history turned out to be the anniversary of the country’s independence. It was on the 15th August 2018.
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