But, sometimes -- if not all the times -- you are compelled to believe that we indeed live in a jungle, if not worse. last sunday i and dileep chandan, editor of asam bani, were travelling from guwahati to nalbari, and were confronted by a group of teenage girls beyond hajo, who had blocked the main road and were demanding money for some puja they said they were organising. when we refused, they abused us, asking what kind of assamese we were that we were unwilling to help them organise a puja! this is a regular scene in this jungle, where people block even highways to collect donations (extortion!!!!!) for various purposes including organising bihu - our jatiya utsav -. and those who do not pay may be beaten up, detained, hurled with the richest of assamese abuses, and may be even kidnapped if the 'volunteers' are a bit more energetic.
i work in the media, and that too for the so-called national media, and it often becomes difficult to paint a rosy picture of the state because such a situation does not exist in reality. every assamese like me, wo work for outside media, including mrinal talukdar of united news of india, enaxi saikia barua of press trust of india, sushanta talukdar of the hindu, bijoy shankar bora of the statesman, digambar patowari or rahul karmakar of hindustan times, or prabin kalita or oinal sunil of the times of india face the same problem. believe me, there are intellectuals in assam who think and strongly believe that the outside media in assam do not have a single 'local' assamese reporter, and when such intellectuals issue statements with such unfounded allegations, there is a section of the local media which publishes them without bothering to verify the facts. god bless this state.++ On Tue, 21 Nov 2006 Debojyoti Bordoloi wrote : http://groups.yahoo.com/group/assamonline/message/2799
