Am I Living It Right?: Navigating Quarterlife Crisis through Mayer’s discography

Ever since I was introduced to John Mayer's music at the age of 16 by one of my closest friends since school, the American singer's songs have been a huge and consistent part of my life. I wasn't a big fan of his voice at first, but gradually it became one that gave me immense...

‘Axone’: Casual Racism, Victim-blaming and where the f**k is Angaraag?

It's the year 2020 - a year of 'unprecedented times', which is probably why we finally have a Bollywood movie about Northeast Indian people with a largely Northeast Indian cast this year. Yay! Upon its release on Netflix, Nicholas Kharkongor's Axone (pronounced Akhuni) was heavily praised by national media for highlighting stories that had been wrapped...

An Axomiya Millennial’s Love Letter to the ‘Local Kung Fu’ series

We Assamese are a funny lot. We have an extremely lame sense of humour, but we are hilarious nonetheless. At last year's Northeast Festival in Delhi, Papon introduced his song 'Mou Mou Ke Dhaage' by saying something on the lines of "Since I am from the Northeast, I love Momos. So the music director gave...

‘Crossing Bridges’: Belonging and Un-belonging in Mainland India

Sange Dorjee Thongdok's 2013 Arunachali movie Crossing Bridges has been compared to the Hindi movie Swades by many "mainland" India news outlets, and in a self-aware/meta moment, the protagonist Tashi's dad is seen watching Swades on a TV set. Crossing Bridges indeed has a similar story arc to that of Swades - of a man...

The power of kindness in ‘Onaatah’

I have been scouting for movies from Northeast India on streaming platforms ever since I (impulsively) bought subscriptions to every streaming platform available in India. The 2016 National Award winning Khasi movie Onaatah, available on Netflix, was recommended to me by a friend whose taste in movies I blindly trust. It is the second movie...

Micro-examining ambition and (first) heartbreak through ‘Maj Rati Keteki’

Santwana Bordoloi's National Award winning movie Maj Rati Keteki is one of the few Assamese movies I can proudly recommend to my non-Assamese friends and colleagues. The cinematography, direction and the treatment of the many subjects in the story are at par with well-made movies from other regions of the country. The story is primarily...

Revisiting ‘Hiya Diya Niya’ as an Adult: Sunny isn’t so bad after all

I was barely 6 years old when I watched Hiya Diya Niya in a cramped theater of our tiny little town for the first time. I vaguely remember enjoying the movie and then re-watching it several times afterwards on television. But years later, when a few of my friends and I revisited the movie again...

‘Kanchanjangha’ and the Era of Ultra-Violent Assamese Commercial Cinema

There are two kinds of Assamese movies for moviegoers these days - the festival favourites (like Rima Das's Bulbul Can Sing and Bhaskar Hazarika's Aamis) and commercial entertainers stuck in 80s nostalgia (like Zubeen Garg's Mission China and Kanchanjangha). The former kind are characterised by authentic portrayal of human emotions and circumstances, while the latter are...

‘Sugarfree’ and Tasteless

There is a recent trend in the Assamese music industry of "modernising" Bihu songs, that I find extremely hard to understand. Bihu songs these days have a Honey Singh-esque rap in the middle about Sira-bhaat, doi-bhaat that makes zero sense to me. Do we really need Rap Bihu/Hip Hop Bihu? Or is it just an...

Bulbul Can Sing (and scream Patriarchy): On Growing Up

I recently had the opportunity to watch Rima Das’s critically acclaimed movie ‘Bulbul Can Sing’ in India Habitat Centre, Delhi. I had thoroughly enjoyed her last movie ‘Village Rockstars’, India’s official entry to the 2019 Oscars, and was eagerly looking forward to watching her use her abundance of talent to create another visually engaging experience....