Indian Diaries of worldly and streetsmart travelers

dagmaraka wrote:

We are staying with Hillel's friend Sharon. She came to India as a Fulbright fellow - studying Indian dance. Then she stayed for another half a year, another year, two years, forever. She is one of the most famous of Indian traditional dancers, even though she's a Litvak from Detroit.

aah so you met Sharon Lowen.

she's quite famous....

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Excellent entries as usual. You have a wonderful writing style, Dasha.

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Region Philbis wrote:

awaiting the "out of it" photo

dag, i'm amazed at and impressed with people who travel a lot.
where do you find the energy to do it?
what's your secret?

who says i got energy to do it? that's why i always get sick and take weeks to recuperate after coming back. still worth it though, if you ask me.

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http://www.sharonlowen.com/images/big_p7.jpg

Yes, Sharon is quite something. Still as beautiful as ever, and a power to reckon with. Would never ever want to be on her bad side!

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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4297084.stm

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dayum! it's a mess. and this won't help. and people's lack of strategy and any sense of reality doesn't help. and closeness of bangladesh doesn't help. and heroin highway that goes through these areas doesn't help. and indian police surely doesn't seem to have helped. arrgh.

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yes indian police sure seems to have bungled up big time.

all the other reasons you gave are valid too.

bangladesh is a safe haven for the separatist groups - often made of students (i personally met ulfa separatist students trained in burma)

heroin and drugs are wreaking havoc in n.e. india. which is why india is not showing any interest to re-built the road from gwahati to rangoon which was made during the ww2. cos then drugs (and cheap chinese gods) will be smuggled in, in no time.

actually if the people of n.e. had any ANY demand other than breaking away from india, it would have been solved long back. but they want to get rid of the headache by cutting off the head !!

there's another huge problem too - not so much in meghalaya, as in manipur, mizoram and nagaland. but i wont mention it here.

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? why not? i am mui curious. my knowledge is limited only to nagaland and that only from a skewed perspective - the naga themselves. thus i am hungry to learn other perspectives and opinions.
ugh, i wish there were any more optimistic news to report from that region. it just seems so...hopeless.

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those mongoid tribals have their own culture. and we left them well alone all along. but someone didnt.

which is why i asked you long back in this thread why you come to n.e. india.

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dagmaraka wrote:

i wish there were any more optimistic news to report from that region. it just seems so...hopeless.

actually prosperity is theirs for the taking.

north east is very rich in natural resources.
mongoloids in general make for better workers than indians (which is why china beats india at blue collar work force but not white collar). manuf. sector jobs can be shifted there.
the areas are scenic. tourism could be big.
they also have decent basic education.

i have had mongoloid acquaintences in sikkim - they are doing very well.

if only nagas and mizos would emulate them instead of trying out separatist ideas !!

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oh crikey......

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4299690.stm

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nagas and meites are deadly enemies, it seems. plus nagas want about 90% of mizo territory, and that's not going down well with the meites, understandably.

tourism could be big, but they don't really want people in there. they seem to prefer to keep the restricted area status so as to preserve their traditional lands. there is some promise in oil mining - apparently there's lots of untapped oil fields. but with the rising price of oil companies will not mind the political instability so much. dunno. the bag of explosives is probably nothing major, since the NSCM-IM and NSCM-K are at each other's throats for years. The NSCM-K is the opposition faction that is hiding in the mountains of Burma and carries out a subversive act every now and then. They don't want peace with India, but full independence that would include all 'naga' territories (what is naga is defined by them, of course). we'll see how the cease fire holds in the first place...

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Keeping my fingers crossed.

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dagmaraka wrote:

there is some promise in oil mining - apparently there's lots of untapped oil fields.

yes.. the assam-burma oil field goes under the naga dominated lands as well.

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The NSCM-K is the opposition faction that is hiding in the mountains of Burma and carries out a subversive act every now and then. They don't want peace with India, but full independence that would include all 'naga' territories (what is naga is defined by them, of course). we'll see how the cease fire holds in the first place...

yes. and those are the problems.

1) the burma based activity you alluded to.

2) wanting to break away. anything else is negotiable.. this not.

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