Pens and Pages

Below are the five questions I am tired of answering ever since I moved out of Assam :         “What’s with the fake British Accent?” or “Do people not speak Hindi in Assam?” OR “No matter what language you speak, it feels like you’re speaking Bengali” OR (The BAAP of all) “You have a Bangladeshi accent” And these comments just leave me with nothing but a jaw drop. :-/ For God’s sake,it’s not a fake accent and it’s definitely neither British nor Bangladeshi. If anything it should be, it would be Assamese or better – my own accent. And if I know Bengali, that’s an add-on; that doesn’t make me a Bengali person. And yes, in Assam most of the people do know and speak Hindi. Hmph!          Do you eat dogs?  And my dear, why did you leave snakes and cats and rats and anything that crawls or climbs? Well, the answer is a NO. I don’t eat dogs nor do most of the people I know (well, some may just do and it's ...

Published in the October 2013 issue of  Fried Eye “Punugulu,” she said and I considered it to be a joke. I asked her again the name of the food we were served for breakfast that day. And when my room-mate repeated the word, I realized she wasn’t kidding at all. I wasted no time to google up the word and find images of the food that looked exactly like what was on my plate. It’s been two weeks that I am in Hyderabad, yet I find it difficult to recognize the food I am served in my hostel. I was never a fan of South Indian cuisine and hence the ignorance. “Hyderabadi Biryani” is the first couple of words that come to one’s mind when one thinks of Hyderabad. Well, I don’t know of the adjective “Hyderabadi” but I sure had the Biryani in three or more places here and I can say that the Biryani served in Guwahati was different, if not better. These differ, everyone’s view points as well as everyone’s taste buds; and I, being a person who has a sweet tooth, have absolutely no...