This article was originally published in Mint Lounge in October 2025. Below is a longer version. Zubeen Garg sang thousands of songs but his legacy extended far beyond the music he made. Answering to absolutely no one, Garg’s irreverence gave him god-like status in a community starved of icons. One February night in 2023, Zubeen […]
Category: Culture
Once derided as ‘stinky’, Naga food now fuels entrepreneurship
This article was originally published on Live Mint in February 2025. Enterprising Nagas have spotted a market opportunity away from their homeland. Delhi, today, has about 40 Naga food businesses, including restaurants, cloud kitchens and delivery services; Bengaluru about 15, and Mumbai at least 5. DIMAPUR/NEW DELHI: Sanulu Lohe shaped and styled nails for […]
The north-east Indian YouTubers challenging cultural stereotypes through mukbang
This article was originally published on Rest of World in July 2024. Below is a longer version. Creators from tribes in north-east India hope these YouTube videos will help break down harmful stereotypes that have kept them isolated from the rest of the country. In the video that made him famous, Apollos Kent is barefoot, […]
Tastes Like Home: In Indian metros, the birth of the ‘northeast shop’
Shops packed with little known ingredients from the seven sister states are feeding not just its people, but the curiosity of Bangaloreans He calls it the Frankenstein sauce — a fiery red chutney that “packs a goddamn wallop”, with a touch of Korean Gochujang and an abundance of fermented Naga chillies. When last December, chef […]
Nights out, closed in: Guwahati is a city where the old and new collide
Guwahati is a city of malls, nightclubs and pride parades as much as leaf-fringed sleepy neighbourhoods where the traditional middle-class once led contained lives. It is also a city where personal freedoms come up against the moral police on TV. Two years ago, on an ordinary Sunday morning in February, a corner of Dighalipukhuri, a […]
Assam’s little-known feminist collective which pushed for fixed meal times, women’s leisure
Northeast Lightbox shines the light on Assam’s little-known feminist history by documenting the story of the Tezpur Mahila Samiti One morning in July 1948, a group of women convened somewhere in the quaint riverside town of Tezpur in central Assam. They met often but the outcome of this meeting was unlike any other: a stream […]
A village, a girl and the road to Oscars
Dohgaon Kalardiya is just another village in Assam, with a cast of dreamers and doers. Now, one filmmaker and a band of children are telling its story to the world. When they first saw the boys from the neighbouring village “make music” with a guitar made of thermocol at a school function, Manabendra Das and […]
A group of Nagas is leading India’s first overseas ancestral remains repatriation efforts
Comes after Pitt Rivers Museum in England engaged in an “ethical review” of their permanent displays, with a bid to “decolonise” their collections On September 14, 2020, the Pitt Rivers Museum in England’s Oxford made a landmark announcement. In a post-pandemic overhaul of its collection, the iconic museum — one of the best-known in the […]