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: Featured
Children of Assam’s NRC: ‘Will They Take Me Away?’
This article received a Special Mention at the RedInk Awards 2021, and was originally published in The Indian Express in February 2020. Assam National Register of Citizens list hangs in a limbo. So does the fate of children out of it. “Gaari, Gaas Gujali, fuler bagan (Cars, trees and flower gardens)!” says Fatima, 12, her face lighting […]
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. On a full-moon night, atop a hill in Manipur, Yumnam Rajeshwor Singh reads the names of the dead. They may have been gone from this earth for 76 years, but time is relative for Rajeshwor, […]
Four Kuki women recount brutal assaults they survived
This article recounts testimonies of sexual assault survivors of the 2023 ethnic conflict in Manipur. It was originally published on Scroll.in in July 2023, and won the Laadli Media Award 2024 for gender sensitive reporting as well as a special jury appreciation by the International Press Institute India Award for Excellence in Journalism 2024. [*Trigger […]
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 […]
The Girls March In
50 years after they were set up, Sainik Schools have opened doors to girls. We meet the six 12-year-olds making history in a Mizoram village, dreaming to be soldiers, sailors and pilots, and barely sweating about it. The boys, they are catching up. 6:154 is a number Zonunpuii Lalnunpuia barely understands. Ten per cent is […]
Feminist icons or violent vigilantes? The contentious role of Meira Paibis in Manipur’s conflict
This article won the Laadli Media Award 2024 for gender sensitive reporting, and was originally published on Scroll.in in August 2023. Celebrated for long as the torchbearers of Manipur, Meitei women groups now stand accused of blocking the army and egging on violence against Kuki-Zo women. On an overcast July afternoon, a line of military […]