By Chitra Ahanthem That Manipur has many things to offer to travelers and tourists alike in terms of places to see or as destination points is no secret. So when a team from the state taking part in a tourism mart came back with the tag of the state being an upcoming tourism destination, it [...]
By Chitra Ahanthem It was 1997, the year India was marking her 50th year of Independence. There would have been many celebrations of this momentous occasion but only one unique observation of this historical timeline stays on with me: a NGO based in Mumbai was taking about 250 young people from India and across [...]
By Chitra Ahanthem Missing out two Sun day pages of the IFP is no fun at all for when one gets to writing, there is a sudden backlog of thought strands trampling on one another to be written down. Two weeks is a long time and more so the past 14 days, which has seen [...]
By Chitra Ahanthem Once upon a time, a trip to a doctor meant a pretty decent time interval where the doctor would take patient history and then follow it up only with required medication instructions. Looking at those times, it is also a matter of great irony that though there were lesser doctors then and [...]
Chitra Ahanthem The rains it seems are good only in films. The languorous pitter-patter of rains over the past week in Imphal has led to the inundation of small lanes and many roads across town. On a happier note, the rains have not spared anyone but merrily mired people in slush and mud, regardless of [...]
By Chitra Ahanthem Ah well! Imphal now has a cinema theatre showing the latest English films after a more than decade long break. But the news does nothing for me bent on my own personal revolt of watching Hindi films. Heck, it was that ban way back in 2000 that made me so stark raving [...]
By Chitra Ahanthem “Is Manipur tourist friendly?” happens to be a very popular question doing the rounds in the virtual sphere(read internet, and particularly social networking sites). Those saying “Aye” point towards the emergence of a fancy hotel in Imphal that looks like a 3 star hotel and even has a behind the scenes bar [...]
By Chitra Ahanthem Two Sundays have gone by without this column making it to the pages of Imphal Free Press or on the web page of www.kanglaonline.net, a popular web site that has for some years been carrying news, features and photos from IFP. Mostly, it is the erratic power supply that makes writing difficult: [...]
Chitra Ahanthem One wise saying has this for people to ponder over: you fear what you don’t know. And if there is one stage of life where fear plays a central part, it is the world of childhood where in each one of us try to make sense of the outer world. The growing up [...]
Chitra Ahanthem Ever thought of doing a simple head counting of school going children stuffed in Omni Vans? It doesn’t take too much to see school vans packed to capacity going about their business: they are fast becoming a familiar sight in Imphal. Toddlers get ferried in them for play school or kindergarten class, no [...]