The Mighty Brahmaputra

While many parts of Northern Britain have also been hit by severe weather and flooding, the headlines of all the local papers here in Assam have been about one thing the past week: the massive flooding happening all over the Brahmaputra valley which has displaced thousands and killed more than a dozen people.

Floods sweep more areas (Seven Sisters Post, 24/09/2012)

Flood scene worsens in State, 18 dead  (The Assam Tribune, 25/09/2012)

Note that severe flooding in July already displaced more than a million people and killed more than 100 people (as mentioned in this BBC article about the current flooding situation ). Most of Majuli Island, the world's largest 'river island' (which used to have an area almost twice that of Singapore) is underwater as well.

Up till the past few days, the situation was mostly in Upper Assam, but now the flood waters have started to enter parts of Guwahati:

Flood situation turns critical in central, lower Assam (The Hindu, 25/09/2012)

Brahmaputra crosses danger mark, situation in Guwahati grim (The Sentinel, 25/09/2012)

I'm thankful that the part of town I'm staying at isn't at immediate risk of flooding, although I will have trouble commuting to the university if water levels don't recede soon. The part of town I took these photos just a month ago is also underwater, with houses in nearby Pandu inundated and people not wanting to leave their homes for fear that thieves will enter in their absence.





Not surprisingly here, one of the first things that came to mind for many local people is that China is somehow responsible, what with the construction of the Zangmu Dam further upstream. The papers immediately addressed this with articles like this one:
Water from China not to blame (The Assam Tribune, 23/09/2012)

Of course, the conspiracy theorists will still believe what they want to believe.

What we do know is that in spite of everything, the Chief Minister of Assam still decided it was important to leave the state to go to Japan to "study Goods and Services Tax (GST) and related matters."

Patisserie Operaa, Guwahati

About three weeks into my current stay in Guwahati, I discovered an absolute gem on GS Road, just two bus stops away from where I'm staying in Paltan Bazar. It's a little patisserie in Lachit Nagar (opposite the KFC) called "Patisserie Operaa". It's named for the famous 'opera cake'. I can only assume the double 'a' in Opera is to prevent any confusion as the pronunciation of the last vowel (since a single 'a' is often used in transliterations of Assamese for the vowel /ɔ/, similar to the vowel in English 'hot', not /a/.)



I'd seen the patisserie each time I'd gone down GS Road, and I was immediately attracted by the interior decor. It's one of the few places here I'd actually feel comfortable sitting around in for hours.




Of course, I've been to places here with nice interiors, but simply awful food (which I tend to put up with anyway just so I have somewhere to sit and read or do work). But the pastry chef at Patisserie Operaa trained at Le Cordon Bleu Institute in London, and it really shows in the cakes and pastries. I'm still blown away each time I go and try their cake - part of me can't believe that I'm in Guwahati!

So far, I've avoided the cakes with white cream on them, only because they remind me of the ubiquitous cakes with 'cream' toppings you find in bakeries all over this part of the world. But judging from the other cakes that I've tried, there's no reason to be worried.

Here's the eponymous Opera cake. The sponge had been soaked in coffee, and was moist without becoming soggy.



The fudge in the chocolate cake was rich and smooth, and not too sweet.



And the tiramisu had the right balance of coffee and cream. My friend L. from Germany agreed it was very good, but reckoned it could've had a bit more sponge in it.



I don't have any good photos of the rum balls, but they are simply amazing! Chocolate-y, rich, smooth. My friend L. bought about 9 to take with her to give to friends.

Also, the place does wonderful pastries (and quiche!) as well. I've only tried a few of them with my friend L., who left on the train the other day. When she was in town, we were at Patisserie Opera every day...



I'm really glad I waited 3 weeks before entering the patisserie, because I'd have put on a lot more weight during my first month in Guwahati! This is where I'm going to when I feel homesick (and not KFC across the street). Ironically, I don't think I'll be able to get cake as good as this when I move to Canberra next year.

Patisserie Operaa is located on GS Road, opposite the KFC in Lachit Nagar. The patisserie is open 7 days a week from 10.30am to 10.30pm.

A short trip to Varanasi

Apologies if posting hasn't been very frequent. I just spent the week in the Varanasi attending the 18th Himalayan Languages Symposium which was hosted by Banaras Hindu University.



 And here are some obligatory shots of the Ganges.

And more photos from the obligatory boat ride on the Ganges.




Popping over to Varanasi from Assam presented a mild cultural shock to me. While in Assam, I can usually go about my day-to-day activities generally unnoticed (people do look at me, but they just assume I'm from somewhere in NE India like Nagaland), the instant I arrived in Varanasi, I was instantly given the 'foreigner treatment'. Everywhere I went, people would say, "Hello!" or  "How are you?" or "Where are you from?" as I walked past them, and I'd get touts and beggars coming up to me.

The other thing I had to get used to, was that when I'm in Assam and show any trouble understanding Assamese, almost everyone immediately swaps to Hindi, which other people from India are more likely to understand, but which I have even more difficulty understanding because I've had more exposure to Assamese. It's similar to how Sumi speakers often switch to Nagamese when I look like I'm having trouble, even though I understand more Sumi than Nagamese. Of course, in Varanasi, people usually just spoke to me in English from the outset (if they could), since they assumed that as a foreigner I would know English.

Now,  if I was actually from NE India, this sort of treatment would be supremely annoying and probably insulting, being treated -and charged prices- like a foreigner in my own country. It's no wonder everyone here calls the rest of India 'the mainland'.

Lightning bandh

While Assam is considering banning bandhs for the rest of the month, following violence during Tuesday's bandh (including some incidents here in Guwahati), Nagaland hasn't quite reached that stage yet. I arrived on Saturday in Dimapur to what was called a 'lightning bandh', a term I had never heard before. Note that is also spelled 'lightening bandh', although this is certainly a common misspelling of 'lightning', as there is nothing about this sort of bandh that 'lightens' / is 'lightening'.

The term was used in relation a bandh that was called on Saturday in Dimapur. You can see it reported here in the Nagaland Post: Aug 31 incident sparks inter-tribal clash in Dimapur and also in the Eastern Mirror: Clashes erupt in Dimapur. From what I gather, the term refers to a bandh that's called very suddenly and often violently, since business owners aren't given enough notice, bandh supporters go to them and forcefully make them shut their doors.

As you can read in the articles, on Friday 31 Aug, a Sumi man, Kivika Assümi, was arrested by a Kohima Village Youth Organisation 'Quick Response Team' (which as far as I can tell acted as a kind of local vigilante group). Kivika was accused of bike theft, and died while in this group's custody. Whether he was guilty or not of the crimes he was accused for, his death was clearly not acceptable. A Sumi student organisation in Dimapur called for a bandh to protest his death. This eventually led to some terrible acts of violence between groups of Sumi and Angamis, and eventually the complete shut down of a section of NH 29, the highway that runs from Dimapur to Kohima.

The part of town where I was staying (close to Supermarket) wasn't really affected, and when I came out of the train station in Dimapur, I also hadn't really noticed anything unusual, apart from the lack of pre-paid taxis going to Kohima. Unfortunately, I had a few Sumi friends trying to come into Dimapur that afternoon, and they were forced to spend the night at a church in a village off the main highway. Thankfully, they did make it into Dimapur safely on Sunday.

It doesn't take much to realise that the term 'lightning' is quite appropriate for this sort of situation. A flash of lightning is enough to set off a wild fire, if there's been enough fuel around. And sadly, there is a lot of 'fuel' building up all over this part of the world, whether it's tension between rival tribes or between migrants and long-established communities.

Hiyo Cafe, Dimapur

(I was meant to post this months ago, but only just remembered to do it after my weekend in Dimapur.)

One of my favourite places to hang out at when I'm in Dimapur is Hiyo Cafe. I like it because it's pretty quiet (being separated from the main road by a building), it's close to the hotel I usually stay at, and it's run by Sumis.


In case you can't see, the name Hiyo (hi: yɔ - someone's even written it in IPA) is a "versatile Sumi word that is usually associated with the Satakha Region of the Zunheboto District in Nagaland, India." According to the explanation, it can be used an adjective, an exclamation or a pronoun. As an adjective, it expresses "satisfaction or fulfillment", but it does seem to have a wider range of meanings which aren't listed here (more linguistic investigation needed!).

The cafe has a nice interior with comfortable couches and tables, far nicer than most places you'd find in Dimapur. They serve mostly drinks here: coffee, tea, juices and cocktails too. My friends enjoy the cocktails here while I enjoy the coffee. They also have snacks like french fries and chicken fry.

It's a nice place if you're catching up with friends, or if you need a place to sit and work on a laptop.

Also, you might catch a glimpse of Alobo Naga & the Band whenever they're in town.

Hiyo Cafe is located at 1, Basement, Aiko Building, Opp Town Hall, Dimapur Nagaland.
(If you're coming on the road from the Railway Station heading towards Supermarket, it's on the left side. Look out for Furtado's Music Store, the cafe's right behind it.)

Social Bondage

I was reading one of the local papers here in Guwahati the other day, and this headline caught my eye.

Most English speakers outside of India (and quite a few in India) would probably be wondering what on earth 'social bondage' refers to, and why on earth some students would even want it.

I think the word they're actually looking for here is 'bonding' and not 'bondage'. In standard English, bondage refers to 'slavery', or 'the act of being tied up'. On the other hand, bonding refers to 'the establishment and development of a close friendship / relationship'. The related verbs are also somewhat different: you bind someone by tying them up, but you bond with someone by develop a relationship with them.

Now the reason I thought this was something to write about wasn't to poke fun at the writer, though I can imagine a few of you gagging over the picture. It reminded me of one time I was proofreading a report written by a non-native English speaker. While her written expression was good, in my mind it seemed like she was overusing gerunds, those non-finite verb forms like swimming that also behave somewhat like nouns. For example, she would write something like "their investigating of the causes ...", where it would sound more natural for me to say "their investigation of the causes ...". Similarly, she'd write something like "the failing of the report to demonstrate ..." where I would say "the failure of the report to demonstrate ...".

She wanted to know why I had suggested these changes. To be honest, I should have just said, "I don't know. It just sounds better." Instead, I made up some grammatical rule (based on this handful of examples) that it was better to avoid the gerund forms (those -ing forms) if there was already a noun that had been derived from the verb. I mean, would you say "the starting of the race" or "my loving of dogs"?

But of course the rule doesn't quite stand up to scrutiny. Gerunds and other nominals can co-exist quite happily in some contexts, e.g. the ending of the novel and the end of the novel are pretty much the same thing. And non-finite verb forms can also be lexicalised, e.g. beginning and opening - these are the words you'd find listed as their own entries in a dictionary, unlike words like fainting which would be treated as an entry under the verb faint.

In the end, I guess the choice between 'gerund' and 'other lexical nominal' just depends on what is used more frequently in that context or in an analogous context.

Of course, looking at the headline above, I can't help but think that someone had been told something similar, and was just trying to avoid the gerund without realising the full effect of their final word choosing. Um, choice.

Assam Conflict: Not Against Muslims

Just saw this making the rounds on Facebook.

As I mentioned in my last post, the current conflict between Bodos and Bengalis isn't about religion, but it's being perceived by Muslims in other parts of the country as that. (Note that I'm not a supporter of xenophobia or the discourse that's currently surrounding Bengalis, but I do understand the anxieties people in this state have and continue to have about immigrants, and that little is being done by the government to manage those anxieties.)