Blogs

From the day I joined Cotton College I always encountered with a new young face who finally takes up the “begging profession”. This “profession” seems to be quite a common activity among those below the poverty-line here in Guwahati. Earlier, I used to find only old women or men begging. But nowadays young children are being pushed forward for begging because they can earn much more than the elders. Few months back I was walking down from my college towards the Panbazar area when a young girl, not more than five years old, followed me until I reached a bookshop. I was so overwhelmed by my...

Cellphones had always fascinated me as a teenager. So I wanted one the day I finished with my Class XII board exams. My father took me to a Nokia Priority Dealer and asked me to choose a handset. But there was none of my choice and therefore I decided to opt for a Samsung mobile. And I landed up buying a stylish sliding Samsung mobile (D840). My father was not very happy with my choice for he prefers only Nokia phones, as though others are not very trendy. A month after I got my cell I left for Delhi with my parents on a vacation. One fine day while we were on our way to Haridwar I found that...

The three-day SMILE Film Festival came to an eventful end on April 26 with an aim of taking some new steps for the development of the youth in the near future. The audience and former members of the SMILE organisation formed a Smile Movie Club at the end of the festival. The Smile Movie Club will be screening various documentary films by conducting youth related events in Northeast to generate social awareness. Students Mobilization Initiative for Learning through Exposure (SMILE) is a youth programme under the aegis of the Indo Global Social Service Society (IGSSS). The film festival was...

As responsible citizens of India, a group of people who were constantly worried about the underprivileged sections of our society founded the Student’s Mobilisation Initiative for Learning through Exposure (SMILE) in New Delhi in 1986. The main objective was to sensitise young people on various social issues. SMILE began its operations in the Northeast in 1995. Since then SMILE has been playing a leading role towards serving the youth specially street children, handicapped children, downtrodden girls, and orphans. With this vision in mind, the founders of SMILE set out to accomplish a mission...

Fond of playing the pepa with the bihu orchestra group, Dhiran Kalita never thought that one day he would have to move away from his village Raha and settle in Guwahati city. Performing bihu dance and playing the pepa still excites him. But he finds a tremendous change occurring among the young children today. He sees that his own children are not interested in enjoying the traditional bihu dance and the music. Today for many young boys and girls like Kalita’s children bihu is just a ‘local holiday’ to relax and reconcile at home and play computer games. Bihu is the most integral part of the...