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...

It’s been almost five to six long years since I had attended the second Brahmaputra beach festival which took place almost after two years after the first one. I had come home for my winter holidays and I got to know about then beach festival from my friends. I was really very excited to attend the festival as I had heard a lot about it from my friends and relatives. I kept insisting my father to take me to attend the beach festival and, therefore, my parents had to. After we reached the bank of the Brahamaputra we had to walk almost half a kilometre to reach the beach in question. Almost...

From the day I joined Cotton College I always encountered with a new young face who finally takes up the “begging profession”. This “profession” seems to be quite a common activity among those below the poverty-line here in Guwahati. Earlier, I used to find only old women or men begging. But nowadays young children are being pushed forward for begging because they can earn much more than the elders. Few months back I was walking down from my college towards the Panbazar area when a young girl, not more than five years old, followed me until I reached a bookshop. I was so overwhelmed by my...