Siliguri: “Twenty, or there shall be no festival,” yelled Rajani Bhushal, a 64-year-old tea worker from Darjeeling’s Longview tea estate. She was one of the loudest demonstrators outside Shramik Bhawan, the north Bengal zonal office of the state government’s labour department in Siliguri. Inside, a tripartite meeting was on to decide the rate of bonus for…
One recent day, colourful flags added cheer to the grey, pre-monsoon morning in the West Bengal hill station of Kurseong, 30 km from Darjeeling. With the football World Cup less than a fortnight away, the hills have come alive with the flags of Argentina, Germany and Brazil sticking out of shared cabs, decorating shop fronts…
An otherwise-quiet community centre of a Roman Catholic religious order, some 5 km from Siliguri, in North Bengal, has recently taken up a new role. From last Wednesday, it started functioning as an off-site school for students of Classes 10 and 12 of a reputed century-old school from Darjeeling, 62 km away, run by the…
On a damp monsoon afternoon in July, a clutch of children were playing cricket in a lane in a residential area in Siliguri. Usually fond of football, which is more popular in the Darjeeling hills from where they had come, they had just discovered the joys of gully cricket – one of the ways in…
Forty-six days after a general strike began in the Darjeeling hills in support of the demand for a separate state, leaders of the 14 party-strong Gorkhaland Movement Coordination Committee are meeting in New Delhi on Tuesday. But well before the meeting, on July 27, they had already declared that the strike will continue. Beyond extending…
Read more Gorkhaland agitation: Weak leadership looms large over a strong mass movement
Late night, sometime in the hours before dawn, Rajen Lama* of Kurseong, a town in the West Bengal’s mountainous Darjeeling district, drives down to Siliguri, about 35 km away in the foothills. The first thing he buys when the shops open is formula milk. Next, he picks up some vegetables and rations for his family…
Read more Food shortages intensify in Darjeeling hills but the statehood movement remains strong
Anuradha Sharma 