We have seen two, virtually spontaneous, bandhs in the Northeast in the days just gone by. One was a relatively-short 12-hour Assam bandh called in protest against the letting off of the accused in the botched-up Parag Das murder case. The other was a much more gruelling 48-hour bandh called in Manipur over the cold-blooded, fake encounter of a former militant. Bandhs have been so rampant in the Northeast in the last 20 or so years that people have become inured to them. And bandhs, more often than not, are a success without the advocates of the bandhs having to drum up much support for them...

I always looked forward to visiting a green place within Guwahati city limits. But there was no such area which I could easily think of and locate it. We were a group of thirtyfive students from my college and we were taken to Basistha for our environmental studies project work. I had heard a lot about the Basistha temple from my parents and was wondering what exactly our teachers were going to show us in Basistha beside the age-old temple. Nevertheless, we all were excited to visit the place. Even though I had been staying in Guwahati for more than ten years, I never got the opportunity to go...

I still remember that I had my first mobile phone connection done in just one rupee. Reliance had offered connections at one rupee to lure customers. That time all my friends, relatives, neighbours had a Reliance connection. Today, Reliance Communications, or RCOM as it is known now, probably has the largest network coverage area in the Northeast. But as far as the service is concerned it will be wise not to comment anything because the customer care people here are always busy attending calls. Few months back I was using the Bol India Bol plan of Reliance because the outgoing calls were free...