(From the archives: An edited version of this story was translated into French and published in the now-defunct magazine Asies in 2011.) Pokhara & Kathmandu (Nepal): Offering a spectacular panorama of the Annapurna and Dhaulagiri mountain ranges, Pokhara airport can surely make into the list of the world’s most beautiful airports. Situated in one end…
Read more Of Four Rivers & Six Ranges: Khampa Warriors Recount Their Stories
I only remember snatches of the conversation. “Bora ma baandheko” – Tied inside a sack – our neighbour relayed what she had heard from somewhere else. I remember the expression of fear and disgust on her face and her hand gestures as she showed how the victim’s breasts had been sliced off. That was all I…
Read more A wave of bold new books on the Gorkhaland agitation
Giridih (Jharkhand): It was an unusually cold December night and the waxing moon shone faintly over Bandhabad, a village 15 km from the district headquarters of Giridih in eastern Jharkhand. Shanti Devi finally managed to sleep, her 10-year-old granddaughter Neetu by her side, their feet warm at last in each other’s company. Suddenly, a frantic…
“Mann ko kura man mai chha,” said Prem Kumari Lama, 62, in between selling lollipops to a toddler at her stall near Darjeeling’s Mirik Lake. “I’m holding my cards close to my chest.” At no cost will Prem Kumari drop any hints as to who she will be voting for in the assembly election. “Nobody…
Read more Relegated to a supporting role, will the TMC catamaran sink or sail in Darjeeling?
The news came as a surprise to Jyoti Weststrate even though she had been waiting for it for as long as she could remember. “I wasn’t expecting the Dutch government to go that far,” says Jyoti, 37, speaking from her home in Deventer in the Netherlands. On February 8, the Netherlands announced a total freeze…
Siliguri: She was 14 when her private tutor allegedly sexually assaulted her. He told her that it was her shame, that she was a bad girl, and that no one would believe her. She kept quiet. Growing up in a middle-class family, she believed its honour rested on her shoulders, and that she should not…
Read more How One Woman Broke The Silence Around Child Sexual Abuse In India
“Be watchful! This virus is even more dangerous. The only vaccine is awareness.” 53-year-old Raju Nepali ends his impromptu speech to a group of men with a flourish before proceeding to *Sunaina Oraon’s house in the labour lines of a tea estate in the Dooars region of India’s West Bengal state. A notebook in hand,…
Read more Meet the Pastor Who Became an Anti-Trafficking Activist
A major humanitarian crisis unfurled in India the moment Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the sudden and strict (perhaps the strictest and harshest in the world) coronavirus lockdown in end-March. Our highways were scenes of untold miseries of the migrant workers desperate to get home, of poor mothers desperate to access healthcare and sick kids…
Read more ‘Mein Leben soll geschützt werden, während deins riskiert wird’
Karimul Haque’s house in Jalpaiguri’s Dhalabari village was a flurry of activity when two men came looking for him one sunny June morning. Haque was busy overseeing breakfast preparations for some 200 people — a new normal for his family during the pandemic. The two brothers said their mother, Gyaneshwari Rai, an asthma patient, had…
A friend in the police department apologetically texted me with some “friendly” advice. “Don’t be extra active on social media over corona issues which may lead to panic and rumours. There may be legal issues over it,” he said. He wouldn’t elaborate further, but it didn’t take much to understand. A freelance journalist was arrested in Andaman…
Anuradha Sharma 