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From the Room of Our Own to the Sky of Our Own, We Fight It All!

Panjab University has a 550 acre residential campus. Being a public funded institute, it gives a chance to many first learners in their families to join higher education. For many women, higher educational institutes are the ramp to take their flight to independence. Curfew rules, limited housing and institutional sexism inhibit the potential which a public infrastructure should otherwise nourish and produce. This further hardens the glass ceiling. These pictures are from a protest which started on 29th of october 2018 outside the main gate of the girls hostel and went on for 48 days.

Ideas Are Bullet Proof: A Hong Kong Campus Democracy Wall

This is a photograph taken from one of the university campus's democracy wall. These are walls on most campuses in Hong Kong where students (or anyone) can post stickers and messages to support freedom of speech, academia and so on. During the past years Freedom of speech and academia has become increasingly restricted and walls like these have been dissapearing. If we return now to many of these walls they will be empty and even if they are available certain messages are no longer allowed to be written.

Music for Harmony, Music for Peace

Despite “customary” restrictions, Naga women have successfully paved their way in various fields ranging from politics to literature. In the field of music, we have the Tetseo Sisters, a quartet of four siblings (Alunë or Lulu, Kuvelü or Kuku, Mütsevelü or Mercy and Azi Tetseo) who, through their music and storytelling, celebrate the beauty of the hills and valleys of their native place. Belonging to the Chakhesang tribe and based out of Kohima, the band was formed in 1994 and they strive to preserve the tradition of "Li", which in the Chokri Naga language means "folk songs".

Code-switching

I was about four and a half years old when my family moved down from the dunes to the shores of Gaaway – the name for the Niger River from Gao to Niamey. The distance itself happened to be very short, but it marked a shift in my life. It was the moment I stopped speaking Tamashek (Tuareg language) and picked up Songhay. Thus I changed landscape, language and worldview. Years later I would be reminded that I used the words for the wild plants of the grazing plains for the riverside crops.

Tradition in Print

Naga identity has been, in a major way, shaped by orality and Naga history. Its culture and literature have been handed down via the spoken word over generations and is still revered as a custodian of its customs, beliefs and way of life. In the present times however, with orality fast disappearing, there is an urgent need to preserve those narratives in print so that the younger generations too have access to their roots, and that tradition can meet modernity in some manner.

Surinamese Children's Songs Are a Reminder of Slavery

Faya Siton, meaning hot stone, is an old song from Suriname that is sung during a specific children’s game. Children sit in a circle and pass on a stone – in reality often a pit – and rub it on the ground so that it turns hot. While cheerful the song is about Master Jan from Holland who brands people and kills children. The lyrics go “Faya siton, no bron miso, no bron miso. Agen masra Jantji e kir sma pikin”, which means “Hot stone, do not burn me so, do not burn me so. Master Jan has killed someone’s child again.”

Orality

Nagaland is home to nearly two million people consisting of 16 constituent major tribes that speak over 89 dialects (mostly mutually unintelligible between two tribes) and are without a common language and script.

According to the most famous legend regarding the Naga script, it was given to the people on animal skin which, when nobody was looking, was eaten by a dog leading to the script being lost forever. Certain variations to the legend also claim that the Assamese script was given on stone for which it endured as against the Naga script on animal hide which perished.

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