Banamallika Choudhury

Saturday was the football match between Chulalongkorn and Thamasat University, Bangkok. This was the 68 th time they played each other. Naturally the stadium was packed. There were a few firsts there too for me A pink football team The revelry outdid the rivalry For a football crowd it was so polite, it made me feel like I am sitting in a kindergarten school annual function. No one pushed, shoved or shouted any ones eardrums burst. Combining football and carnival, this is Thailand’s answer to Brazil! For every day of the week, there is a colour in Thai culture. Sunday – Red, Monday –Yellow, Tuesday – Pink, Wednesday –Green, Thursday – Orange, Friday – Light Blue and Saturday –Purple. Because they do not have such notions as pink is for girls and blue is for boys, you see people of all gender wearing all colours. Yes, you also see people of all gender, wearing all colours, in all directions, doing all kinds of things. Rather nice. This all gender thing and those boys in pink. Remind...

I am in university again. For the first time in one with good food! Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok has a co-operative canteen that sells an amazing range of yummy Thai food at dart cheap price. Although this is the best thing about Chula, I have been told the university is also famous for being one of the oldest and best educational institutions in South-East Asia etc. It seems some people (read Thamasad University, Chula’s soccer rivals) also insist they are just the oldest but those are unimportant details. And thankfully there is very little of this big university comes between the canteen and me. It is less than 2 minutes away from my room. My first few days went into taking photos of all the food that I have been eating. I am taking pictures so that I do not repeat the same dish. Before I leave Thailand, I want to taste everything that they have. But after about 10 days of doing this, I realised, no matter how many photos I take or how many ever things I eat, I will never be ...

Amuk’s Tamuk has been unwell. I can take a writer’s liberty right now and turn this into another horror story of the health care system in India. This time private and expensive. But I will be kind…. Amuk’s Tamuk has been unwell. He is being given blood. Quite a lot. At least more than any amount of blood being given, I have heard so far about. Ke garne ! (What to do - in Nepali). So Amuk has been mobilising people, sometimes with enticements like beer-after-blood, sometimes plain emotional blackmail. Whiskey, fruit juice and KFC treats also feature in the list. The whole process of blood collection has taken the proportion and logistics of an organised underground gang. Such efficient planning and innovations have been executed that Amuk and another friend were actually comtemplating starting a blood bank, as a business enterprise, after collection from one batch of donors. ‘How much will it cost to start a blood bank?’ ‘Can we get a bank loan? Will it run?’ 'Of course,...

It is uncanny that last night we decided to watch Tere Bin Laden out of sheer lack of other activities to do. It is a nice film. Intelligently funny. I particularly loved some odd bits like the inability of the Khabri ’s assistant to close the umbrella. So there is nothing uncanny in the film itself. What is however is super uncanny is the fact that I got woken up, early in the morning, by my friends’ daughter with whom we watched the movie last night, to be told that Osama Bin Laden is dead. At first I thought they were joking. I mean the television people were joking. (My friends won’t wake me up to joke, I am sure about that). The friends daughter and I were convinced it is some another hoax and I decided to go back to sleep. My disbelief however turned soon into annoyance as I opened my facebook page few hours later. Why are all these people reacting to Osama’s death? There is a non-muslim Indian, living somewhere in Africa who is saying Allh-hu-Akbar – Allah is Great. America...

:This story was removed from the blog as it was to be printed elsewhere. Last year, Chimurenga, an African journal (print and online) from Cape Town, South Africa, published the story. Since then I have received a few request to put it up on the blog. This time, it is for Aruni the lovely young writer. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ “He is such a typical black man!” – My friends often told me about my lover. My black women friends. Thandile would not be amused if I told him that. He is not the kind who takes criticism well, even teasing. So I did not tell him. He especially did not like non-blacks talking about black people. Only blacks could make jokes or observations about blacks. Non-blacks commenting on black people are racists. He and his friends referred to non-blacks as whites, Indians and coloureds. And they often told me Indian jokes. Why do Indians not play soccer? Because, if you give them a penalty...

Writing about Manipur, I have said it before, has the risk of unleashing some of your own Frankenstein. Also capturing the whole story would require as much time as Vyas took to write his world famous piece, even when computer aided. But Manipur throws so many stories at you per second that it makes you feel laziness would be waste of resources. The last time I was here in the middle of the economic blockade that benefited every legal and illegal entrepreneur including the state, the oil companies and the airlines. Flight tickets from Imphal to Guwahati were at a ridiculous twenty two thousand, or so which is more than what I intend to spend in my impending South-East Asia holiday, airfare included. Due to the blockade, supposedly nothing was coming into the state. But you could see hundreds of enthusiastic local business people selling petrol and diesel in mineral water bottles outside every petrol pump. At its peak, petrol was being sold at Rs.120/lit and diesel at Rs.80. Needless to...

There was a little girl who did not know how to read or write. She was completely illiterate. Com-plete-ly il-lite-rates are people who can not read and write. Now, the little girl could talk perfectly of course. And on top of that she could sing, dance, scream her head off, ski, swim, climb trees and do many other things. She could even stand on her hands, hang her head upside down and walk around like that. If you show her a picture of a Blue Whale and ask her what it is, she would jump with joy and while she is still jumping she would tell you it is a Blue Whale! That little girl was a handful her mother said. Her name was a mouthful her father said. Her father like many fathers was away while she was born. So her mother named her mouthful because she screamed a lot when she was just born a baby. So, the girl with the mouthful name could do many things and could not read or write. Although she had fun most of the time there were times when she could no...