[Reader-list] 4th post: Conversations and Discussions

[Sadan]

Dear Renee,
I found your small posting quite promising and finished it wanting to 
know more about the discussion, kind of responses this screening 
generated. You also hinted to some specificity about Shilong regarding 
this discussion when you wrote,'...that discussion and that audience 
could happen only in Shillong'.
would you elaborate this statement? There is peculiarity about Assam 
Club and its colonial past that you have mentioned. would you also 
elaborate it a bit more? I have not read your earlier postings and it is 
possible that you might have written about all these issues. In such 
case, please ignore this posting. Will get back to you after going 
through your earlier postings too.
wishes,
sadan.


Renee Lulam wrote:
> The screening of Sanjay Kak's Jashn-E-Azadi. Here at Shillong. In 
> Assam Club at Laban. Laban was one of the first colonial settlements, 
> hence Laban, meaning White. Students, scholars, academicians, writers, 
> journalists, aspiring filmakers and documentarians abound. From 
> various communities in Shillong -- Khasi, Assamese, Bengali, Karbi, 
> Meitei, Adi, Mizo, Nepali, Malyali...to mention ONLY a few. All based 
> in Shillong. Post-screening discussions took on various colours -- 
> green, red, very very subtle shades of what could be saffron, grey, 
> black, white....all depending on personal backgrounds and political 
> persuasions. And paymasters.
> For a while, being there, recording the discussions, listening to the 
> questions asked and answered, even those that tended towards downright 
> vapid, conversing with people, it was tempting to accept all this at 
> face value, to leave the surface unscratched, to ignore the very real 
> complexities that make up the Shillong milieu. Almost too tempting to 
> oversimplify things -- to allow one's self that Shillong is indeed 
> cosmopolitan and leave it at that, that this variety is allowed free 
> equal expression in different forms in its democratic and public spaces.
> For a couple of hours there, it felt like it. Because at some level, 
> that discussion and that audience could happen only in Shillong.
> As we pack up, later, Jules comments -- Here we are, in Laban, at 
> Assam Club, with Bengalis, discussing politics (in Kashmir)
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
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