Hmar FC Outlast Thadou, Enter Quarters

New Delhi, Dec 9 : A player of Thadou FC vies for the ball during their match against Hmar Fc at the Ambedkar Stadium on Wednesday.

Despite having found the net first, Thadou FC were taken to task by experienced campaigners Hmar FC as they clinched a 3-2 win in the 4th North East Tamchon football tournament at the Ambedkar Stadium on Wednesday.

With this win, Hmar have stormed in to the quarter-finals. More than the inexperience that was on display in their performance, some major goof ups in the penalty area among the defenders and goalkeeper proved costly to the Thadou team.

Thadou stepped on the gas from the word go and incessantly played an attacking game, targetting the Hmar FC goal early in the match. Their consistent penetrations meant that Hmar had to switch tactics to stop one of the Thadou strikers from being successful. The change in plan saw Hmar players indulge in some physical aggression on the field.

A slight nudge here, a steep push there started to gain prominence until referee warnings to various Hmar players awarded advantages to Thadou. The only way Hmar avoided conceding to the Thadou attack was thanks to the spectacular saves by Hmar custodian, Kenneth Malsawmthang.

But before Hmar could manage to initiate and work on a strategy, Thadou sneaked in through their defense without giving their opposition any more time to think, and upped the score in the 14th minute.

Thoudou striker Gouminlun Kipgen footed home an aerial ball that ricocheted off the Hmar defender. The goal raised the spirits of Thadou camp but perhaps their celebrations gave way to complacence, letting Hmar dominate them.

Waiting for their chances like wounded tigers after the first goal against them, Hmar produced a series of counters worth giving Thadou FC jitters.

Once Hmar gained some momentum, Thadou were pushed to the backfoot before Zawl Thanglien equalised in the 28th minute to bring some excitement back in the game. Thanglien had also been their saviour in the last match they played against Asud FC where he ended up scoring a brace.

And fortunately the match didn’t take a dull turn after the equaliser, rather both teams displayed some telling football that reflected their desperation to book a quarter-final spot. But in the battle of aggressions, Hmar strengthened their charge and ticked the second in the 50th minute through David Jonte who directed a cross to perfection.

They savoured their third just ten minutes later with Stephen seemed to make a mockery of the Thadou defence. He scored when the rival goalie along side a defender were fiddling with the ball rather than clearing it. Taking charge, he left footed the ball leaving both of them in a heated argument.

With 3-1, the goal difference made Hmar sit back and play a defensive game, giving Thadou a weak link to score in the 87 th minute to complete formalities, if nothing else.

The match between Sikkim FC and A’chik Thunder resolved to a 2-2 draw while Dimasa registered a 3-1 win over Tahamzam FC earlier in the day.

Away From Home And Hurting

By Patricia Mukhim

It took the high decibels of a BJP protest in Parliament against the gangrape of a 30-year-old call centre employee from the North-east for the Delhi police to get its act together.

Even then it took all of 300 cops to follow every suspicious trail and track down all serial offenders out on bail before they could lay their hands on three of the rapists who committed the heinous crime on the night of 24 November. At the time of writing, one of the suspects apparently surrendered before the Haryana police.

The rapists, we are told, come from Mewat in Haryana.

Considering that the victim was not alone and that her colleague escaped and immediately called up the police helpline should, in a situation where the cops are alert, have led to quick arrests. Unfortunately, that’s not how our policing system works. At the lower rung, it is manned by pathetically insensitive, insouciant, unresponsive and unprofessional constables.

We are told the cops could not understand English so the complainant had to use sign language. If the police had acted swiftly that very day, perhaps the gangrape could have been averted. But they took their time. And this is really the bane of the policing system.

Seldom, if ever, will you find a humane cop ready to assist you. One wonders when the cops will ever reform their behaviour in a country whose policing laws are so archaic and embedded in corruption that it cannot but fail the test repeatedly.

The term “home and dry” is an alien phrase in today’s context when home is not where the heart is but where the job takes you. For young men and women of the North-east, where jobs are hard to come by, the metros of India provide livelihood opportunities.

Strangely, while North-east youth, particularly women, have tried to adapt to the somewhat alien environs of Delhi, it is Delhi that makes it difficult for them to breathe easy. There are too many untold stories of sexual harassment at the workplace because to speak would be to lose a hard-earned job. Many of those who are working in Delhi, Mumbai, etc, are supporting themselves and educating their siblings as well.

Many rape cases on trial face the forensic tests; again, because police bungle while collecting evidence. This is why so many accused rapists are walking out free and commit similar acts repeatedly. Delhi Police Commissioner BK Gupta made an interesting point. He said the police could not be omnipresent, which is true.

He also said employers could not drop their employees some distance away from their place of stay. It should be incumbent on them to drop them to their doorstep. This also is a valid point. Companies that require the services of their employees until the unearthly hours cannot simply get away by dropping them “somewhere” from where they can walk home. This cannot be allowed to happen and more stringent rules should be put in place.

There is a sizeable workforce from the North-east in a good number of leading call centres in the National Capital Region (like Gurgaon and Noida). If they are on a night shift, they come home in the wee hours. BK Gupta says thousands of call centre workers are dropped between 1 and 5 am. This makes them easy targets for rapists and molesters who seem to prey on a hugely unguarded social space in Delhi.

The fact that these criminals are hardly ever arrested and that the Delhi police do not inspire confidence among the female gender only compounds the problem. A speedy arrest followed by a trial in a fast track court and, finally, the conviction of a rapist would have perhaps deterred others from following the same route.

But our justice system is so weak that the offender always has the last laugh. According to Gupta, there are about 300 rapists who are out on bail, so we can well imagine how the justice delivery system works.

Yet the public continues to depend on this sloppy institution because those at the helm of affairs see no merit in bringing the desired changes.

So each time a woman’s modesty is violated, there will be a similar hue and cry; politicians and civil society will make a noise and demand the arrest of the culprits. But compassion fatigue sets in and people get back to their routines and it’s business as usual for the cops.

In creating a furore, we are simply addressing the symptoms while the primary cause remains grave and unaddressed. Yet the fact that the matter reached Parliament and activated the policing system suggests this would not have happened otherwise. Delhi chief minister Sheila Dikshit does have a major role to play in lighting up dark spaces and placing CCTV cameras in some of the vulnerable areas.


Some areas of Delhi have been identified as highly unsafe for North-east women. These include Munirka, Mahipalpur, Nanakpura, Motibagh, Mohammadpur, Khanpur, Sarojini Nagar, New Friends Colony, Defence Colony, North Campus, Nehru Vihar, Gandhi Vihar and Sikanderpur in Gurgaon. Certainly there may not be enough cops to man these areas in a desirable manner, but a system certainly needs to be put in place.

While good policing is part of the solution and could deter crime, there are other serious social concerns that need to be addressed. Rape is becoming too commonplace an occurrence in Delhi and its suburbs. N

ot enough studies have gone into identifying the root causes for such misogynistic behaviour, which is hatred, hostility and contempt for women. It is hard to think of anyone else doing what a rapist does, which is to defile the woman to such a degree that she could even begin to hate herself for being a woman. That is the long-term impact that rape has on a victim.

But how does such an act affect the rapist? Or does it affect him at all? What is behind the mindset of a rapist? Are there underlying reasons that drive the male to violate a woman’s sanctity? Rape is not about sexual fulfillment.

It is about the assertion of male power and dominance and the need to subordinate, suppress, subjugate and ultimately defile a woman because of some unaddressed or unexpressed adolescent maladjustment.  

Undoubtedly, we have several such maladjusted youth or even elderly men in our society. And just to set the record straight, rapes do occur in the North-east also; after all, rape is a universal crime.

But more often than not, the rapist is arrested by law enforcers on complaint from the victim. Sometimes the traditional institutions deliver summary justice and the rapist is socially ostracised and excommunicated from a particular village.

It is not a good idea for North-east youth to suffer the victim-hood syndrome and live in perpetual fear. There are some actions that need to be taken and these must be carefully discussed and an action plan chalked out.

One reason why women are attacked is because they are weaker and can be overpowered. This needs to be reversed and can be reversed. North-east women must learn self-defence tactics even if this means taking time off their packed schedules.

One would even advocate that the call centres they work for compulsorily organise a one-hour martial arts class. It is both an exercise and a stress remover and could profit the company as well.

Girls working at call centres should demand these facilities. Alternatively, the government should make it incumbent upon all BPOs to have training lessons for women in self-defence. However, call centres ought to shoulder greater responsibility to safeguard the interests of their employees.

About rapes happening because of racial profiling, one would prefer to reserve one’s judgment since no woman is safe in Delhi. Girls from the North-east become more vulnerable because they make up a good chunk of the workforce and live solitary lives in some of the not-so-posh areas of the capital.

Having said that, I would advocate that all such unsafe areas be reclaimed from the forces of darkness and this can be done through good policing, which is what should be the demand of the North-east MPs Forum.

The writer is editor, The Shillong Times, and can be contacted at
patricia 17 @rediffmail.com

Bangalore Band Wins Hornbill National Rock Contest

Kohima, Dec 8 : ''Slain,'' a band from Bengaluru, won the 2010 Airtel Hornbill National Rock Contest here and bagged a cash award of Rs 5 lakh.

Nine bands were vying for the top award in the grand finale of the contest last night where 21 rock groups from various cities of the country took part. The event was part of the annual week-long Hornbill Festival which concluded here yesterday.

''Guillotine'' from Delhi and ''Incipit'' from Nagaland took away the first and second runners-up respectively.

Organized by Music Task Force under sports and youth resources department and Bharti Airtel, the rock concert has been elevated to a national level competition since 2008.

Meghalaya chief minister Mukul Sanga, who was chief guest at the closing function of the Hornbill festival at Kisama Heritage Village near here, gave away prizes to the winners at I G stadium.

Interacting with media persons, Sangma said he was impressed by the very idea of the Hornbill festival which not only showcased the rich culture of the Nagas but also provided a platform to different Naga tribes to come together.

Sanmga said he was also toying with the idea of bringing the whole NorthEast together on the line of Hornbill festival in his state Meghalaya to make the region a cultural tourist destination.

The Meghalaya chief minister also lauded the Nagaland government for adding more colours to this year''s festival such as Naga Chilli eating competition, WW-II Jeep rally, car rally etc.

CBI Raids Spectrum Raja’s Residence

New Delhi, Dec 8 : The CBI on Wednesday morning carried out raids on the residences of former Telecom Minister A Raja in Delhi, Chennai and Coimbatore along with the residences of four Telecom officials.

The raids are being carried out at the residences of former Telecom Secretary Siddharth Behura, Raja's personal secretary R K Chandolia, Telecom (member) K Sridhar and Deputy Director General (DoT) A K Srivastava.

The raids that began at 7 am, was still going on. The CBI remained mum on the raids.

The disgraced former Telecom minister was in the midst of another controversy after the Madras High Court on Tuesday suspended from the Bar a top lawyer allegedly involved in an attempt to influence a judge by taking the minister's name.

A division Bench of the Madras High Court suspended the Tamil Nadu and Pondicherry Bar Council chairman R K Chandramohan who tried to act as the conduit between Raja, then the IT and Communications Minister, and the judge to ensure that the anticipatory bail petition of a father-son duo close to Raja was considered favourably by the court.

Chandramohan was the counsel representing Dr C Krishnamurthy and his son Kiruba Sridhar, an MBBS student of the Pondicherry University, who faced charges of fudging his marksheets. The Minister, advocate and the doctor hail from Perambalur district with several years -- and layers -- of relationship between them.

Last week, the Supreme Court had come down heavily on Raja for "bypassing" and even "overruling" Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's advice to defer the allocation of 2G spectrum by a few days.

The apex court also took strong exception to the tone and tenor of Raja's letter to the Prime Minister, saying it amounted to showing "disrespect" to the highest authority in the country.

47-year-old Raja was forced to resign as Telecom minister on November 14 in the wake of the CAG's report that the rates at which 2G spectrum was allotted resulted in a loss to the exchequer to the tune of Rs 1.76 lakh crore.

Source: The Indian Express

Lexicon For Tiwa Community

Linguist hopes to document words, phrases of the language in 2-4 years

By Anup Sharma

Author-linguist U.V. Jose receives the highest honour of the Tiwa society after the release of the book.

Guwahati, Dec 8 : The Tiwa language is set to have its first lexicon.

If all goes as planned, the community, which mainly inhabits the hills of Karbi Anglong and the plains of Morigaon and Kamrup districts, will have its first dictionary in the next two to four years.

U.V. Jose, a linguist and former principal of Don Bosco School in Karbi Anglong’s Umswai village, is taking up the Herculean task of documenting the language.

Jose, who hails from Kerala and has spent more than three decades spreading education in various parts of the Northeast, has just completed translating the New Testament into Tiwa. The book is titled Khubil Kodal, meaning good news in the language.

A French missionary, Rev. Fr. Michael Balawan, had first translated New Testament in Tiwa in 1982. He had learnt the language during his regular visits to Umswai from Nongphoh in Meghalaya’s Ri Bhoi district where he was the parish priest.

Jose says “Khubil Kodal is different as I have incorporated a lot of footnotes describing the historical background.”

The Tiwa community has about 1,70,000 members according to the 2001 census but experts believe that only 25,000 to 30,000 of them speak the language. Many of the community have adopted Assamese as their mother tongue and use it more than Tiwa.

“It is very important to document the language as Tiwa is a small community and most of its members have adopted Assamese as their mother tongue,” Jose said.

“There is a possibility that Tiwa might become an endangered language after a few years,” Jose told The Telegraph today.

He said he had started translating the New Testament about three years ago and took a sabbatical last year to complete it.

“I felt great working on Khubil Kodal. Tiwa is a rich language and little has been done to document it. Only a few books have been published in the language. The dictionary will document all the words and expressions of the language,” he said.

“Now I am planning to start the dictionary and will concentrate only on it till it is completed. I hope to complete it in two to four years. I have started the initial work and expect to compile about 10,000 words,” Jose said.

The community had made headlines in May this year when a Tiwa youth, Narayan Konwar, from remote Chamkata village in Assam’s Morigaon district, secured 119th position in the civil service examination conducted by the UPSC, becoming the first from the community to clear the exam.

via Telegraph

Hunt For Yeti, The Snowman

Kiwi adventurer leading international Yeti hunt

Wellington, Dec 8 : Kiwi adventurer Mike Allsop, who conquered Mt Everest three years ago, is leading an international Yeti hunt.

e team is searching for the skull and skeletal hand of what was said to be a mythical 'Abominable Snowman', which were stolen from a monastery in the tiny Nepalese village of Pangboche, in the 1990s, reports The New Zealand Herald.

"I am hoping that the person who has them wants to give them back," said Allsop.

"I hope they will have an alert set up on their computer for whenever the artefacts are mentioned on the Internet," he added.

"I am offering... to go and reclaim them. I will go anywhere in the world in person, free of charge, no questions asked and I will also buy them a beer, " said Allsop.

Weta Workshops has created life-sized replicas of the skull and hand to help searchers find the real things.

Allsop, 41, is an Air New Zealand pilot and was introduced to Weta boss Sir Richard Taylor by Air NZ chief executive Rob Fyfe.

Allsop will hand-deliver the replicas to the monastery when he and 17 Air NZ co-workers travel to Pangboche in April.

The original Pangboche hand and skull came to international prominence in the 1950s when Texan adventurer and oil magnate Tom Slick photographed the items during one of his early missions to find the Yeti in 1957.

Two years later, one of Slick's team returned to the Pangboche monastery. e reportedly drank Scotch with a monk until the local passed out, before stealing bone fragments from the hand. He then supposedly replaced the bones with those from a human hand, before rewrapping the Pangboche hand to disguise his theft.

The stolen fragments were allegedly smuggled back to America by a Hollywood star.

In 1999, the skull and what remained of the skeletal hand were stolen from the monastery.

Allsop, who scaled Mt Everest in 2007, was intrigued when he learned of the artefacts and determined to reclaim them for the monastery.

"These were very treasured artefacts. There was a huge outrage when they were stolen. The monks initially wouldn't show them to anyone, then slowly they showed them... unfortunately they showed them to one person too many," he said.

Asked whether he believed in the existence of the 'Abominable Snowman', Allsop said: "A big part of me says, 'Yes, the Yeti does exist'. Then the logical side goes, 'Maybe it is a breed of bear or other type of animal which is yet to be discovered'." (ANI)

Google Unveils First Chrome OS Computer

Google Inc. is postponing the market debut of the first computers running on its highly anticipated operating system by about six months to give its engineers more time to fine-tune the software.

Under a new timetable announced Tuesday, Google expects the first machines powered by the operating system to go on sale in the middle of next year. The company previously promised to have its Chrome operating system ready by the end of this year.

Google is recruiting consumers and a handful of businesses to test a "very limited" number of laptops using the operating system, which revolves around the company's 2-year-old Chrome Web browser. The unbranded computers, called Cr-48, will be shipped out to people chosen to participate in the pilot program by the end of January (Apply here).

The first Chrome OS laptops will be made by Acer Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co. Google said the manufacturers will determine the prices of the first Chrome OS machines next year.

The Chrome OS computers will have a 12.1 inch display screen and standard-sized keyboard, but no hard drive. That means the Chrome OS computers will need online access to run more programs. Google is teaming up with Verizon Communications to sell Internet access over Verizon's wireless network when there is no other way to connect to the Web. The data plans will cost as little as $9.99 per month and won't require a long-term commitment.

Google also unveiled a new store for selling applications that run on the Web, the Chrome Web Store. That store opened Monday with about 500 applications, hitting the end-of-the-year deadline Google set when it announced the idea in May.

See pictures of the Cr-48 Chrome netbook and Chrome OS below, via Google.

Dolce & Gabbana's Photoshop Flop

From Photoshop Disasters comes a true retouching flop: the advertisement for Dolce & Gabbana's light blue fragrance.

Released over the summer, it took us all until the harsh winter months to take a hard look at this gem...and we have no idea what is going on here. Specifically with the lady model's legs.

Maybe she's just super flexible. But we're not sure that accounts for whatever's happening with her right leg by her hip behind those perfume bottles. Or is that the guy's leg? We thought he was sitting up with both legs in front of him. Er, we'll stop analyzing now.