Jul 15, 2012 P2
1
POST script JULY 15, 2012 SEVEN SISTERS NELit review 2 FIFTH WALL UDDIPANA GOSWAMI Literary Editor T HE reason NELit review reaches out to a majority of its readers is the Internet. We were compelled to build our site, www.nelitreview.com, because so many publishers, writers and read- ers outside the Northeast com- plained that they do not have ac- cess to the review in print but would love to read more about the litera- ture being produced in the region. And NELit review was conceived as a showcase of the Northeast ethos through its writings, a means of bridging the gap between the ‘mainland’ and the ‘periphery’. There are many scattered web- sites, blogs, e-magazines and what have you on the Internet today. These do provide a taste of the lit- erature from the region for those who are interested enough. But the bottom line is that they are ‘scat- tered’ – there is hardly any com- mon platform, even for netizens from a single northeastern state or linguistic group to highlight their literary past and present. A few states are, of course, better off than most and have even adopted the Unicode standard for their scripts. Enterprising individuals have or- ganised themselves in say, Assam or Manipur, to highlight their lit- erary heritage. However, a lot still remains to be done even in these states which have a higher visibil- ity on the Internet. Other states like Arunachal Pradesh have very little literature available online – and it might very well be for the lack of written records in their respective cultures. The Internet, however, offers much scope for turning disadvantages into advantages. Oral literature, for instance, can thrive on the audio- visual platforms available on the Net. Similarly, the geographical re- moteness of many places in the Northeast from the centre or the ’mainland’ has often been the cause for the region lagging behind in many ways. The virtual world does not distinguish between the cen- tre and the periphery. Every little island in cyber world can be the centre of its own universe, because this universe has no spatial bound- aries. A few such islands have been created by committed individuals from the region. We need more such people to come forward. In the case of Assam, the diaspora has been very actively involved in mak- ing Axamiya literature available online and they have been able to do it because they do not have to face the same infrastructural bot- tlenecks that people back home might have to. Tech-savvy people from every state and every com- munity should come forward and help our peripheries cross over from the margins and create a Web of commonality. ❚ Northeast on the Net T HE Internet is becoming the town square for the global vil- lage of tomorrow,” said Bill Gates, and rightly so. The Net has over the last few years come to be accepted as an indispensable part of our lives; the information superhigh- way has opened up a wide array of pos- sibilities to educate and empower ne- tizens. With the rise of social media, more and more people, regardless of geographical boundary, are sharing in- formation on almost everything under the sun. With bloggers and online groups growing in numbers, the Web today is a valuable tool for performing and showcasing creative activity. In Northeast India too, people are join- ing hands, though not on a large scale, to promote and preserve the literature of the region through the medium of the Internet. Thanks to Internet access in towns and cities, there has been a significant rise in the number of e-zines, websites and blogs focusing on northeastern lit- erature and culture. Some of the pop- ular e-zines from and about the region are Enajori (enajori.com), Nila Charai (nilacharai.com), Fried Eye (friedeye.com), The Thumb Print (thethumbprintmag.com) and The Four Quarters Magazine (tfqmagazine.org). Founded by Himjyoti Talukdar in 2010, Enajori is a monthly bilingual e- zine that showcases the literature, eth- nicity and culture of Assam. Besides bringing out monthly issues, the Ena- jori team maintains a database of di- rectors, movies, books, songs, and dig- italises rare photos. “When I started the website, there was not much informa- tion on many famous Assamese per- sonalities. We provide short biographies of such personalities and also hope to catalogue 1000 books,” says Talukdar. Another e-zine dealing with As- samese literature is Nila Charai. Fried Eye and The Four Quarters Magazine, though not Northeast-centric, give a platform to talented writers to make it big at national and international lev- els. Fried Eye also highlights the North- east before its global readers. The mag- azine, with its varied content, experi- ments with the multidimensional slices of life through photography, dialogues and expositions. “The Four Quarters Magazine was started in 2011 as a non-profit pub- lishing venture by a few of us, friends and acquaintances, mostly from Delhi, Kolkata and Silchar,” says Arjun Choud- hury. Published in both digital and print formats, the magazine’s primary aim is to provide a platform for creative writ- ers from anywhere in the world. Con- tributors from all over the world con- tribute works of poetry, prose and trans- lations. The peer board of the e-zine comprises authors from the UK, the USA, Europe and South Asia. Another much-talked-about e-zine is sevendiary.com. Though the site is not online yet, its page is very active on Face- book with regular posts about the North- east. “It'll be a content-based website and interactive digital magazine pro- moting the unique cultures, lifestyles and tourist destinations in the region”, says founder and content head John Hingkung. The site will also feature northeastern literature with weekly book reviews and authors’ biographies. With- in a short time the page has attracted lots of interest. There are also a number of bloggers who are trying to popularise the regions’ literature online. One such person is Zualteii Poonte who maintains a blog called Mizo Writing in English (mi- zowritinginenglish.com). It contains Mizo literature translated into English as well as original English pieces. Other individuals and collectives have also come together to maintain websites like e-pao (e-pao.net), itsmynortheast.com and assam.org, which concentrate on literature and allied aspects of the cultures and so- cieties in the region. The most important factor boosting the online promotion of the language and literature of a particular commu- nity is, of course, Unicode. Designed by Unicode consortium, it covers almost all the scripts in the world, many of which are extinct. “Unicode provides a unique number for every character, no matter what the platform or language is. A standard for representing charac- ters as integers, unlike ASCII (Ameri- can Standard Code for Information In- terchange), which uses 7 bits for each character, Unicode can represent more than 65,000 unique characters,” says Chetan Deka, UK-based software de- veloper and webmaster at enajori.com. So Unicode has huge potential for pre- serving and promoting various scripts and even for creating a library for the future generation. Enajori and Nilacharai use Unicode to publish articles in Assamese, while websites such as e-pao publish in Meetei. Meetei Mayek is the first North- east language to be included in Uni- code Standard. This is a breakthrough in the fields of technology as well as lit- erature. With English becoming the medium of instruction in most institu- tions, regional languages and dialects are said to be under threat. It is here that Unicode can come into play, for it provides us with the scope to preserve our scripts, albeit in digital form. The e-book is another important im- provisation of the Internet age. It was conceived by Michael Hart in 1971. He went on to found Project Gutenberg (gutenberg.org), one of the oldest on- line literary projects. It has over 20,000 free texts and more than 100,000 books. Also, the site offers e-books in seven dif- ferent formats, including ePub, PDF and Kindle. E-books have revolutionised the way we read. Also, although tradi- tional institutions like libraries and uni- versities preserve old books, most of them have many drawbacks as com- pared to archiving e-books. In fact, at the AANK-BAAK Upanyax Bota (AANK- BAAK novel awards) function in April 2012 Kulendu Pathak, Assamese sci- ence fiction writer, talked about how the electronic media was slowly but surely taking over the print media. The debates whether e-books will re- place books in print has been raging for a long time now. Many believe that the Internet will supplant the print media someday. Retailers who deal in books also sell e-books for tablets and e-read- ers. Amazon, Kobo and Barnes & No- ble (B&N) are selling more download- able e-books than printed ones. Though e-books are not very popular in India, it could be a matter of time. In Europe and USA, almost every book sells both in print and digital format. Nowadays most aspiring writers publish their works online before approaching publishing houses. “Most people are comfortable with writing online,” says Pramathesh Borkotoky, publisher for Fried Eye. After all, by publishing online, the writer can reach a wider international audience without depending much on factors like logistics, marketing and big publishing names. Also, maintaining a blog or writing for an e-zine gives one quicker visibility. But this is the larger picture. Where does Northeast India, a region considered by many to be lag- ging behind when it comes to technol- ogy, stand vis a vis e-publishing? The first Assamese e-book was post- ed on miksijili.com in the early part of the last decade, previously maintained by Jatin Mipun. But the author passed away and the URL was not renewed. More recently, Mahapurush Madhab- dev’s Namghosha has been made avail- able on the Internet by Pratim Pratap Baruah, a member of the group ‘Asomiy- at Kotha-Botora’. Tezpur University has also undertaken a similar project. A group called Nirvana Sutra is planning to convert all the works of famous As- samese author Bhabendra Nath Saikia into e-books. “We will create e-books out of his (Saikia’s) short stories, plays, children’s books, humour books, col- lections of essays and autobiographies. The first e-book, The Cavern and Oth- er Stories, is available in the Kindle e- book store,” says Bikash Kalita from Nir- vana Sutra. The e-book includes 10 short stories of Bhabendra Nath Saikia, trans- lated and edited by Dhirendra Nath Bezboruah. The group is also working on the second and third e-books. They are planning to make the e-books avail- able in other e-book stores like B&N, Kobo and iTunes. So far, mostly only scattered pieces of Assamese literature were available online in scanned ver- sions. Sauravkumarchaliha.org is also worth mentioning here. A group of fans of noted Assamese writer Saurav Ku- mar Chaliha – the Saurav Kumar Chal- iha Anuragi Sanstha – have devoted themselves to translating the writer’s works into other languages and post- ing his original and translated works in PDF and doc formats on the Internet. Publishers from the Northeast, how- ever, are yet to explore the market for e-books. Universal concerns like pira- cy and Digital Rights Management laws are of course there. More than that, how- ever, one of the major reasons why e- publishing has not caught on in the re- gion is that many, particularly in the rural areas, are not computer literate. Nor do they have Internet access, which is mainly restricted to towns and cities. Talukdar feels lack of technical aware- ness is another contributing factor. Technical knowledge and research on the international e-book market are re- quired for publishing e-books. Mar- keting is another key factor. Groups such as Nirvana Sutra encourage writ- ers to publish e-books by providing them with technical support. Audio books have also made a sig- nificant development in Assam over the last few of years. A group of As- samese youth have produced online audible versions of some Assamese classics. They launched Lakshminath Bezbaruah’s play ‘Godadhor Roja’ in 2011. It received tremendous response from readers all over the world. Now, they have brought out an audio ver- sion of Padmanath Gohain Baruah’s ‘Tetun Tamuli’. The other northeastern states can boast of a rich cultural and literary her- itage, but they have not made best use of modern technology. Kalita says lit- erary circles from the other northeast- ern states are not as active online. According to LR Sailo, press secretary to the chief minister of Mizoram, there are not many online literary groups in that because of poor Internet connec- tivity. “BSNL is the only Internet provider in Mizoram,” he says and adds that Mizos are literate but due to the lack of technology, not much is being done on the Internet. Often, power shortage in the northeastern states makes it almost impossible to maintain a website. Robin Ngangom says that the Inter- net is not widespread in other north- eastern states as it is in Assam. Howev- er, Manipur and Meghalaya are catch- ing up. But e-books and audio books are still new concepts for these states. “Another reason for this lag is that in many states literature is still in its nascent stage,” argues Ngangom. “There has been little development of literature in Arunachal Pradesh,” says noted author Yeshe Dorjee Thongchi. He adds that Arunachal Pradesh, which doesn’t have its own script, still has a long way to go before it becomes active on the Internet. Every northeastern state has its own literary heritage which can be popu- larised through the Internet. Audio books, for instance, can go a long way in preserving the Northeast’s oral tra- ditions and bringing them closer to a wider audience. But sadly not many ef- forts have been seen in this direction. All said and done, however, the Inter- net is here to stay. And it has heralded a new chapter in the history of litera- ture of the region. Twenty years from now, the Northeast could well be part of a new digital world. ❚ ❘❘❘❘❘❘❚● AUDIO books can go a long way in preserving the Northeast’s oral traditions and bringing them closer to a wider audience. But sadly not many efforts have been seen in this direction Thingnam Anjulika Samom I FEEL the Internet is very useful for work purposes. But in Manipur, elec- tricity cannot be availed for more than four hours every day. Even with laptops, it is hard to access the Internet. Reading something online is very diffi- cult. But nowadays the youngsters are becoming aware of the need of the Net. There are a few people who write online but their writing is in English. No doubt the Meetei Mayek was included in Uni- code Standard. But there is a huge prob- lem when it comes to preserving the script. The ancient script is being pro- moted by some young people. But most of Manipuri literature is in Bengali. Even in Manipur, the rich Manipuri literature is not getting much exposure. When we were children, we had to study Manipuri in Bengali script. When it comes to pub- lishing e-books, Northeast publishers are not exploring this area; there are al- most no publishing houses in the re- gion. Most of the publishing houses are in Delhi and the marketing of the books is also done from there. There are no publishing houses in Manipur either. Most books published here are by the writers or groups of people committed to promoting literature. Even publish- ing 500 books is a huge burden. The few publishers that we have in Manipur are mostly interested in publishing schol- arly works. (Thingnam Anjulika Samom is a freelance journalist and writer based in Manipur) Tumter Riba T HE Internet can definitely play a pivotal role in popularising northeastern literature. In this modern, busy world switching on your computer seems to be much easier than going to a book shop. In- ternet access means that the world is just a click away. We can reach more people worldwide through the Net. In Arunachal Pradesh we don’t have any literature preserved by our forefathers. Even if we try to find out our history, there are no written records of that. It’s just folklore that has been passed down through gen- erations. Now some of our intellec- tual people are working to preserve it and some books in Tani Lipi have also been published. We are lagging behind others as the Internet arrived very late in our area, but I believe in a year or two we too will catch up with them. I hope pub- lishers from the Northeast will also use this medium to reach out to the rest of the world. Unicode is related to computer. It’s a computing indus- try standard for consistent encoding, representation and handling of texts in most of the world’s writing systems. I am sure it will bring about many good changes. I am planning to bring out e-books and pictorial books of the folk tales that I grew up listening to from my grandparents and parents. (Tumter Riba is the director of Arunachal News Network) Debarshi Prasad Nath T HERE are literary traditions in the Northeast that can be pop- ularised through the Internet. For this, we have to think in terms of translating these texts or of retaining these in original. But then we have to think of the target readers. If we en- courage a unidirectional flow of ideas into one global language, our own lit- eratures and languages will lose out on many fronts. There needs to be a balance. Assamese literature has the largest number of followers in the re- gion. However, all the communities of the Northeast have strong oral tra- ditions, but the focus has been so much on the written form. There is still a sense of distrust about e-books. There is a sense of romantic associa- tion with books that will continue for a long time. This is particularly true of literature. Unicode will bring about a lot of positive changes in our litera- ture and languages. It will help rekin- dle interest of young people in our lan- guages. I see that many prefer to com- municate in their mother tongues in social networking sites such as Face- book. We are planning to bring out an e-journal very soon. (Debarshi Prasad Nath teaches cultural stud- ies at Tezpur University. Earlier he was with Rajiv Gandhi University, Arunachal Pradesh) Mrinal Devburman T HE Internet is playing a lead- ing role in popularising lit- erature. Sites like musein- dia.com, poetrytranslation.org and many others are becoming popular. What the Net is doing for Indian languages, including Hin- di, is simply fantastic. It has opened up avenues for more than just Northeast literature in Eng- lish. It took 10 long years for As- sam to have e-zines, websites, blogs, etc., but it does now thanks to a group of young writers and netizens of the state. For other states of the Northeast, the main problem is language/dialect. The common belief that ‘English is the only Internet language’ is re- sponsible for this stagnation. But the number of Mizo bloggers/writ- ers is increasing. I am also hope- ful for Tripura. You can visit kok- borok.com for a taste of Kokborok poems or to learn the language. E-books, however, cannot replace the original texts. Books will al- ways have their own place and I have observed that the GenX is re- turning to books. Also, e-books are not free at all. Downloading is not cost-effective and it gives good returns only when you have your own site with dynamic uploading facilities. It may take some time in the Northeast, but publishers will prefer the Net for placing busi- ness orders at best. The Assamese script needs Unicode recognition to build a distinct identity. But 90% of the other northeastern lan- guages/dialects are in Roman script only! More work needs to be done for Unicode to change things drastically; in particular, emphasis has to be laid on shap- ing the fonts as per choice. (Mrinal Devburman is assistant direc- tor of programmes at the office of the additional director general of All India Radio, Northeastern Region) Web of writing: Internet and the Northeast Gitanjali Das takes a close look at the presence and potential of Northeast literature on the Internet. She also finds a few pitfalls along the way FRONTIS PIECE
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Transcript of Jul 15, 2012 P2
POSTscriptJ U L Y 1 5 , 2 0 1 2
SEVEN SISTERS
NELit review2
FIFTHWALL
UDDIPANAGOSWAMI
Literary Editor
THE reason NELit reviewreaches out to a majority ofits readers is the Internet. We
were compelled to build our site,www.nelitreview.com, because somany publishers, writers and read-ers outside the Northeast com-plained that they do not have ac-cess to the review in print but wouldlove to read more about the litera-ture being produced in the region.And NELit reviewwas conceived asa showcase of the Northeast ethosthrough its writings, a means ofbridging the gap between the‘mainland’ and the ‘periphery’. There are many scattered web-sites, blogs, e-magazines and whathave you on the Internet today.These do provide a taste of the lit-erature from the region for thosewho are interested enough. But thebottom line is that they are ‘scat-tered’ – there is hardly any com-mon platform, even for netizensfrom a single northeastern state orlinguistic group to highlight theirliterary past and present. A fewstates are, of course, better off thanmost and have even adopted theUnicode standard for their scripts.Enterprising individuals have or-ganised themselves in say, Assamor Manipur, to highlight their lit-erary heritage. However, a lot stillremains to be done even in thesestates which have a higher visibil-ity on the Internet. Other states like ArunachalPradesh have very little literatureavailable online – and it might verywell be for the lack of writtenrecords in their respective cultures.The Internet, however, offers muchscope for turning disadvantagesinto advantages. Oral literature, forinstance, can thrive on the audio-visual platforms available on theNet. Similarly, the geographical re-moteness of many places in theNortheast from the centre or the’mainland’ has often been the causefor the region lagging behind inmany ways. The virtual world doesnot distinguish between the cen-tre and the periphery. Every littleisland in cyber world can be thecentre of its own universe, becausethis universe has no spatial bound-aries. A few such islands have beencreated by committed individualsfrom the region. We need moresuch people to come forward. Inthe case of Assam, the diaspora hasbeen very actively involved in mak-ing Axamiya literature availableonline and they have been able todo it because they do not have toface the same infrastructural bot-tlenecks that people back homemight have to. Tech-savvy peoplefrom every state and every com-munity should come forward andhelp our peripheries cross overfrom the margins and create a Webof commonality. �
Northeaston the Net
THE Internet is becoming thetown square for the global vil-lage of tomorrow,” said BillGates, and rightly so. The Net
has over the last few years come to beaccepted as an indispensable part ofour lives; the information superhigh-way has opened up a wide array of pos-sibilities to educate and empower ne-tizens. With the rise of social media,more and more people, regardless ofgeographical boundary, are sharing in-formation on almost everything underthe sun. With bloggers and onlinegroups growing in numbers, the Webtoday is a valuable tool for performingand showcasing creative activity. InNortheast India too, people are join-ing hands, though not on a large scale,to promote and preserve the literatureof the region through the medium ofthe Internet.Thanks to Internet access in townsand cities, there has been a significantrise in the number of e-zines, websitesand blogs focusing on northeastern lit-erature and culture. Some of the pop-ular e-zines from and about the regionare Enajori (enajori.com), Nila Charai(nilacharai.com), Fried Eye(friedeye.com), The Thumb Print(thethumbprintmag.com) and The FourQuarters Magazine (tfqmagazine.org).Founded by Himjyoti Talukdar in2010, Enajori is a monthly bilingual e-zine that showcases the literature, eth-nicity and culture of Assam. Besidesbringing out monthly issues, the Ena-jori team maintains a database of di-rectors, movies, books, songs, and dig-italises rare photos. “When I started thewebsite, there was not much informa-tion on many famous Assamese per-sonalities. We provide short biographiesof such personalities and also hope tocatalogue 1000 books,” says Talukdar.Another e-zine dealing with As-samese literature is Nila Charai. FriedEye and The Four Quarters Magazine,though not Northeast-centric, give aplatform to talented writers to makeit big at national and international lev-els. Fried Eye also highlights the North-east before its global readers. The mag-azine, with its varied content, experi-ments with the multidimensional slicesof life through photography, dialoguesand expositions.“The Four Quarters Magazine wasstarted in 2011 as a non-profit pub-lishing venture by a few of us, friendsand acquaintances, mostly from Delhi,Kolkata and Silchar,” says Arjun Choud-hury. Published in both digital and printformats, the magazine’s primary aim isto provide a platform for creative writ-
ers from anywhere in the world. Con-tributors from all over the world con-tribute works of poetry, prose and trans-lations. The peer board of the e-zinecomprises authors from the UK, theUSA, Europe and South Asia. Another much-talked-about e-zine issevendiary.com. Though the site is notonline yet, its page is very active on Face-book with regular posts about the North-east. “It'll be a content-based websiteand interactive digital magazine pro-moting the unique cultures, lifestylesand tourist destinations in the region”,says founder and content head JohnHingkung. The site will also featurenortheastern literature with weekly bookreviews and authors’ biographies. With-in a short time the page has attractedlots of interest. There are also a number of bloggerswho are trying to popularise the regions’literature online. One such person isZualteii Poonte who maintains a blogcalled Mizo Writing in English (mi-zowritinginenglish.com). It containsMizo literature translated into Englishas well as original English pieces. Other individuals and collectiveshave also come together to maintainwebsites like e-pao (e-pao.net),itsmynortheast.com and assam.org,which concentrate on literature andallied aspects of the cultures and so-cieties in the region. The most important factor boostingthe online promotion of the languageand literature of a particular commu-nity is, of course, Unicode. Designed byUnicode consortium, it covers almostall the scripts in the world, many ofwhich are extinct. “Unicode provides aunique number for every character, nomatter what the platform or languageis. A standard for representing charac-ters as integers, unlike ASCII (Ameri-can Standard Code for Information In-terchange), which uses 7 bits for eachcharacter, Unicode can represent morethan 65,000 unique characters,” saysChetan Deka, UK-based software de-veloper and webmaster at enajori.com.So Unicode has huge potential for pre-serving and promoting various scriptsand even for creating a library for thefuture generation.
Enajori and Nilacharai use Unicodeto publish articles in Assamese, while
websites such as e-pao publish inMeetei. Meetei Mayek is the first North-east language to be included in Uni-code Standard. This is a breakthroughin the fields of technology as well as lit-erature. With English becoming themedium of instruction in most institu-tions, regional languages and dialectsare said to be under threat. It is herethat Unicode can come into play, for itprovides us with the scope to preserveour scripts, albeit in digital form.The e-book is another important im-provisation of the Internet age. It wasconceived by Michael Hart in 1971. Hewent on to found Project Gutenberg(gutenberg.org), one of the oldest on-line literary projects. It has over 20,000free texts and more than 100,000 books.Also, the site offers e-books in seven dif-ferent formats, including ePub, PDFand Kindle. E-books have revolutionisedthe way we read. Also, although tradi-tional institutions like libraries and uni-versities preserve old books, most ofthem have many drawbacks as com-pared to archiving e-books. In fact, atthe AANK-BAAK Upanyax Bota (AANK-BAAK novel awards) function in April2012 Kulendu Pathak, Assamese sci-ence fiction writer, talked about howthe electronic media was slowly butsurely taking over the print media. The debates whether e-books will re-place books in print has been raging fora long time now. Many believe that theInternet will supplant the print media
someday. Retailers who deal in booksalso sell e-books for tablets and e-read-ers. Amazon, Kobo and Barnes & No-ble (B&N) are selling more download-able e-books than printed ones. Thoughe-books are not very popular in India,it could be a matter of time. In Europeand USA, almost every book sells bothin print and digital format. Nowadaysmost aspiring writers publish their worksonline before approaching publishinghouses. “Most people are comfortablewith writing online,” says PramatheshBorkotoky, publisher for Fried Eye. After all, by publishing online, thewriter can reach a wider internationalaudience without depending much onfactors like logistics, marketing and bigpublishing names. Also, maintaining ablog or writing for an e-zine gives onequicker visibility. But this is the largerpicture. Where does Northeast India, aregion considered by many to be lag-ging behind when it comes to technol-ogy, stand vis a vis e-publishing?The first Assamese e-book was post-ed on miksijili.com in the early part ofthe last decade, previously maintainedby Jatin Mipun. But the author passedaway and the URL was not renewed.More recently, Mahapurush Madhab-dev’s Namghosha has been made avail-able on the Internet by Pratim PratapBaruah, a member of the group ‘Asomiy-at Kotha-Botora’. Tezpur University hasalso undertaken a similar project. Agroup called Nirvana Sutra is planningto convert all the works of famous As-samese author Bhabendra Nath Saikiainto e-books. “We will create e-booksout of his (Saikia’s) short stories, plays,children’s books, humour books, col-lections of essays and autobiographies.The first e-book, The Cavern and Oth-er Stories, is available in the Kindle e-book store,” says Bikash Kalita from Nir-vana Sutra. The e-book includes 10 shortstories of Bhabendra Nath Saikia, trans-lated and edited by Dhirendra NathBezboruah. The group is also workingon the second and third e-books. Theyare planning to make the e-books avail-able in other e-book stores like B&N,Kobo and iTunes. So far, mostly only
scattered pieces of Assamese literaturewere available online in scanned ver-sions. Sauravkumarchaliha.org is alsoworth mentioning here. A group of fansof noted Assamese writer Saurav Ku-mar Chaliha – the Saurav Kumar Chal-iha Anuragi Sanstha – have devotedthemselves to translating the writer’sworks into other languages and post-ing his original and translated works inPDF and doc formats on the Internet.Publishers from the Northeast, how-ever, are yet to explore the market fore-books. Universal concerns like pira-cy and Digital Rights Management lawsare of course there. More than that, how-ever, one of the major reasons why e-publishing has not caught on in the re-gion is that many, particularly in therural areas, are not computer literate.Nor do they have Internet access, whichis mainly restricted to towns and cities. Talukdar feels lack of technical aware-ness is another contributing factor.Technical knowledge and research onthe international e-book market are re-quired for publishing e-books. Mar-keting is another key factor. Groupssuch as Nirvana Sutra encourage writ-ers to publish e-books by providingthem with technical support.Audio books have also made a sig-nificant development in Assam overthe last few of years. A group of As-samese youth have produced onlineaudible versions of some Assameseclassics. They launched LakshminathBezbaruah’s play ‘Godadhor Roja’ in2011. It received tremendous responsefrom readers all over the world. Now,they have brought out an audio ver-sion of Padmanath Gohain Baruah’s‘Tetun Tamuli’. The other northeastern states canboast of a rich cultural and literary her-itage, but they have not made best useof modern technology. Kalita says lit-erary circles from the other northeast-ern states are not as active online. According to LR Sailo, press secretaryto the chief minister of Mizoram, thereare not many online literary groups inthat because of poor Internet connec-tivity. “BSNL is the only Internetprovider in Mizoram,” he says and addsthat Mizos are literate but due to thelack of technology, not much is beingdone on the Internet. Often, powershortage in the northeastern statesmakes it almost impossible to maintaina website.Robin Ngangom says that the Inter-net is not widespread in other north-eastern states as it is in Assam. Howev-er, Manipur and Meghalaya are catch-ing up. But e-books and audio booksare still new concepts for these states.“Another reason for this lag is that inmany states literature is still in itsnascent stage,” argues Ngangom.“There has been little development ofliterature in Arunachal Pradesh,” saysnoted author Yeshe Dorjee Thongchi.He adds that Arunachal Pradesh, whichdoesn’t have its own script, still has along way to go before it becomes activeon the Internet.Every northeastern state has its ownliterary heritage which can be popu-larised through the Internet. Audiobooks, for instance, can go a long wayin preserving the Northeast’s oral tra-ditions and bringing them closer to awider audience. But sadly not many ef-forts have been seen in this direction.All said and done, however, the Inter-net is here to stay. And it has heraldeda new chapter in the history of litera-ture of the region. Twenty years fromnow, the Northeast could well be partof a new digital world. �
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AUDIO books can go a longway in preserving the
Northeast’s oral traditionsand bringing them closer toa wider audience. But sadlynot many efforts have been
seen in this direction
Thingnam Anjulika Samom
IFEEL the Internet is very useful forwork purposes. But in Manipur, elec-tricity cannot be availed for more
than four hours every day. Even withlaptops, it is hard to access the Internet.Reading something online is very diffi-cult. But nowadays the youngsters arebecoming aware of the need of the Net.There are a few people who write onlinebut their writing is in English. No doubtthe Meetei Mayek was included in Uni-code Standard. But there is a huge prob-lem when it comes to preserving thescript. The ancient script is being pro-moted by some young people. But mostof Manipuri literature is in Bengali. Evenin Manipur, the rich Manipuri literatureis not getting much exposure. When wewere children, we had to study Manipuriin Bengali script. When it comes to pub-lishing e-books, Northeast publishersare not exploring this area; there are al-most no publishing houses in the re-gion. Most of the publishing houses arein Delhi and the marketing of the booksis also done from there. There are nopublishing houses in Manipur either.Most books published here are by thewriters or groups of people committedto promoting literature. Even publish-ing 500 books is a huge burden. The fewpublishers that we have in Manipur aremostly interested in publishing schol-arly works.
(Thingnam Anjulika Samom is a freelancejournalist and writer based in Manipur)
Tumter Riba
THE Internet can definitely playa pivotal role in popularisingnortheastern literature. In this
modern, busy world switching onyour computer seems to be mucheasier than going to a book shop. In-ternet access means that the worldis just a click away. We can reachmore people worldwide through theNet. In Arunachal Pradesh we don’thave any literature preserved by ourforefathers. Even if we try to find outour history, there are no writtenrecords of that. It’s just folklore thathas been passed down through gen-erations. Now some of our intellec-tual people are working to preserveit and some books in Tani Lipi havealso been published.
We are lagging behind others as theInternet arrived very late in our area,but I believe in a year or two we toowill catch up with them. I hope pub-lishers from the Northeast will alsouse this medium to reach out to therest of the world. Unicode is relatedto computer. It’s a computing indus-try standard for consistent encoding,representation and handling of textsin most of the world’s writing systems.I am sure it will bring about manygood changes. I am planning to bringout e-books and pictorial books of thefolk tales that I grew up listening tofrom my grandparents and parents.
(Tumter Riba is the director of ArunachalNews Network)
Debarshi Prasad NathTHERE are literary traditions in
the Northeast that can be pop-ularised through the Internet.
For this, we have to think in terms oftranslating these texts or of retainingthese in original. But then we have tothink of the target readers. If we en-courage a unidirectional flow of ideasinto one global language, our own lit-eratures and languages will lose outon many fronts. There needs to be abalance. Assamese literature has thelargest number of followers in the re-gion. However, all the communitiesof the Northeast have strong oral tra-ditions, but the focus has been somuch on the written form. There is
still a sense of distrust about e-books.There is a sense of romantic associa-tion with books that will continue fora long time. This is particularly trueof literature. Unicode will bring abouta lot of positive changes in our litera-ture and languages. It will help rekin-dle interest of young people in our lan-guages. I see that many prefer to com-municate in their mother tongues insocial networking sites such as Face-book. We are planning to bring out ane-journal very soon.
(Debarshi Prasad Nath teaches cultural stud-ies at Tezpur University. Earlier he was withRajiv Gandhi University, Arunachal Pradesh)
Mrinal Devburman
THEInternet is playing a lead-ing role in popularising lit-erature. Sites like musein-
dia.com, poetrytranslation.organd many others are becomingpopular. What the Net is doing forIndian languages, including Hin-di, is simply fantastic. It hasopened up avenues for more thanjust Northeast literature in Eng-lish. It took 10 long years for As-sam to have e-zines, websites,blogs, etc., but it does now thanksto a group of young writers andnetizens of the state. For other
states of the Northeast, the mainproblem is language/dialect. Thecommon belief that ‘English is theonly Internet language’ is re-sponsible for this stagnation. Butthe number of Mizo bloggers/writ-ers is increasing. I am also hope-ful for Tripura. You can visit kok-borok.com for a taste of Kokborokpoems or to learn the language.E-books, however, cannot replacethe original texts. Books will al-ways have their own place and Ihave observed that the GenX is re-turning to books. Also, e-booksare not free at all. Downloading isnot cost-effective and it gives goodreturns only when you have yourown site with dynamic uploadingfacilities. It may take some timein the Northeast, but publisherswill prefer the Net for placing busi-ness orders at best. The Assamesescript needs Unicode recognitionto build a distinct identity. But90% of the other northeastern lan-guages/dialects are in Romanscript only! More work needs tobe done for Unicode to changethings drastically; in particular,emphasis has to be laid on shap-ing the fonts as per choice.
(Mrinal Devburman is assistant direc-tor of programmes at the office of theadditional director general of All IndiaRadio, Northeastern Region)
Web of writing: Internetand the Northeast
Gitanjali Dastakes a close look
at the presenceand potential of
Northeastliterature on the
Internet. She alsofinds a few
pitfalls along the way
FRONTIS PIECE
