Author: Tora Agarwala

Call Me By My Name: How ‘Miyas’ in Assam are reappropriating the slur

They are young, full of dreams, and are calling themselves the ‘Miyas’ of Assam. What does poetry, identity and the NRC offer them? For three years every day at 5 pm, Mirza Lutfar Rahman’s voice would crackle on radios across Assam: “Nomoskar, Yuvabani’loi xokolu srotak’e moi Mirza Lutfar Rehman’e swagatam jonaisu” (Greetings, I am Mirza […]

The Girl Who Chases Time

This article won the PoleStar Foundation’s Excellence in Journalism Award 2019, and was originally published in The Indian Express in July 2018. For most of her life, Hima Das has faced life’s challenges by running. She has run in rage and joy, after brawls and victories, and as if her life depended on it. The story of […]

Find Me On a Hill in Imphal

This article won the Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism Award 2020, and was originally published in The Indian Express in August 2020. Several British and Japanese soldiers died in the hills of Manipur during some of the fiercest battles of WWII. They do not lie there forgotten. A team of “battlefield diggers” has been scouring this terrain […]