Issue Editor’s Note
The current issue of Yendai is conceived around the theme of discrimination, specifically narrated in the context of political and humane experiences of discrimination of Northeast India and its people. Discrimination is a frequent occurrence in everyday living, and one can talk about it at various levels of human interactions. It can be an outcome of things as complex as fraudulent democracy, geopolitical trappings, and things as intimate as one’s rituals and habits. Frequent occurrences many tend to dismiss acts of discrimination in the garb of intimacy and harmless jokes, leading to silence and passive acceptance on the part of the one that is discriminated against. It is when discrimination acquires a discernible political tone that it is contested and debated. Read more
— Rubani Yumkhaibam
Poetry:
Ei Shor Amare Ki Dise
by Kazi Neel
I came home
by Yuimi Vashum
No Nation for atheist
Homeless
Tree-owner
by Kamal Kumar Tanti
Review:
“Should we undress these graves”: Review of Tarun Bhartiya’s Unaddressed postcards from Khasi-Jaintia Hills, 2021
by Soibam Haripriya
Drawing from the picture postcards tradition, Tarun Bhartiya’s Unaddressed Postcards from Khasi-Jaintia Hills (2021) is a rich tapestry of texts and images. The juxtaposition of black and white images works on the trope of timelessness, a colonial construction of tribes as people without/outside of time, residing in a so-called mythical times and yet every text-image is a palimpsest —the present is always present as a way to see the sepia tinted past in a better light. To comment on Unaddressed postcards as a whole is difficult as the array of visuals is astounding. The images juxtapose many layers of encounters and intimacies — Gwalia, Khasi, India that are framed through the genre of picture postcards...
Visual:
Essay:
Learnings of Culture from the Northeast
by Aparna Sharma
Two broad temperaments towards culture can be discerned in our times. One temperament manifests in the form of cultural self-assertion (including intensifying fundamentalisms), which is quite often rooted in whole systems of belief, race or religion. At the heart of self-assertive tendency is a will to claim visibility in the public sphere and secure increased access to shared resources. The self-assertive tendency often mobilises a sense of injury: present or past, actual or imagined on which to build its claims for assertion. Cultural self-assertion can yield productive outcomes as was seen in the Indian subcontinent when a certain introspection in the face of colonialism generated a sense of cultural self-confidence that in turn strengthened both the desire for Indian independence as well as the means to achieve it...
A Northeasterner’s Reflection on India’s Equation
by Shanthalembi Lisam
The question of how one perceives India’s Northeast as a single geopolitical entity – as frontier or border, or as a diverse constituent of different communities. The narratives of constructing or understanding this space called the Northeast are multidimensional depending on from which quarter it emerges and they are undoubtedly contesting narratives. Increasingly the academia is also frequently asking how we research India’s Northeast which perhaps draws the methodological attention. Often a politics of difference, different from the political and cultural identity of India is what identifies politics in the Northeast. The politico-cultural complexities of the region in the presence of a such differential perception; the differences between ethnicities...
Interview:
Conversation with Robin Ngangom
In a conversation with the Editorial, Robin Ngangom offers his heartfelt opinion on various issues that matter to human lives today – from the dangers of climate change to the decadence of poetry and poetic audience. The following is a moderated version of the conversation...
Cover art by Robin Wahengbam