I am in love with them because they know how to live life. Three things flow deep in the veins of each one of them – soccer, music and fashion. I have never known anyone from any part of the country, carrying different shades of denims with such panache. I saw a yellow and I knew I would find no one to don it so well. Trust the northeasterners for the best of music because theirs is a certified land of music.
I boast of many friends, 75% of which are from various parts of North-East India. I may not know which city do they exactly belong to, but I do know that if you have a guitar and a north-easterner in one room, then there is no stopping the symphony. You think their style is weird, I think they infuse the monotony of our urban fashion with a zeal that only a north-easterner can command. I can’t thank them enough for introducing me to their cuisine, had I not mingled with them I would have never come to know the delicacy of fiery chicken pickles, delicious pork momos and that maddening ‘titora’. God you can never get enough of those.
There was one particular incident that reinstated my belief in ‘no-one knows how to live it large better than a north easterner’. I walked into a small flat with eight occupants. Five of them had night shifts and the others a morning one. I asked them, thinking of my own apartment where three girls found it difficult to share one kitchen, that how did they manage in such a cramped place. One of the guy just smiled and passed me a chilled beer can, it was a gesture that meant; the space might be cramped but our hearts have got all the space you will ever need. The pseudo advocates of secularism and global society could learn much from an average north-easterner.
In my first year, I fled back home every weekend while I met people who told me they could only afford such a strenuous journey once a year. It was with them I learned how to make the best of worst. They don’t lament upon past or worry themselves sick about the future and that’s one thing we could totally learn from our brethren from north east.
I take this opportunity to thank all my friends from the beautiful north east; one of whom taught me guitar, basketball and soccer (much talent), another who made my farewell such a beautiful affair along with his black acoustic guitar. There was one who crooned late night in his balcony, which kind of soothed any pain the listener might be suffering from. The one who introduced me to her friends and with them I got to explore the charm of some areas in the Capital that are perhaps still unknown to native delhites.
As one of them joked, “we are like black light. Certain things come to life only when they come in contact with us. aapuni buji pain?”. Last but not the least I write this for my best friend who made me a part of her family and whenever I get a chance to meet her mother and eat her signature momos and thupkas or go caroling with her friends from the church I feel nothing but sheer pity for those who make themselves suffer by being such racists and missing on a culture which is so tolerating with love surpassing all man-made boundaries.