Meiaishan Eliezer Lyngdoh

Firstly, congratulations to Nicholas Kharkongor, the Director of the movie. He did made the wonderful achievement of creating a mainstream, Bollywood style movie. That in itself is something to applaud and celebrate for us and especially for me, being that he is from Shillong as I am. The movie, in short, had a wonderful cast, a beautiful yet slow paced story, a great score, weak sounding, great editing and pictures and an above average acting. I love the title "Axone": which,although can be very condescending as it assumes all people from the Northeast are "northeast", is however the brute reality of the situation in mainland India because that is how they think of us there. The title of the movie shows the connection brought by the dish between the different tribes and communities, but also brought the prejudice that made everyone else around us blind to our diversity. The inclusion of a strong female character of Chanbi, with a strong spoken Hindi and confident demeanor, is a wonderful contrast to the silly, simple Upsana who felt outcast because she is not NE enough. The powerful twist of making Bendang, a clear mirror of Nido Tania, survive the atrocity he endured and face the world through his broken eyes is a thought provoking plot in the story. And finally, all the subtle, "casual" racism the other characters throw at them: from the landlady's remarks on short dresses, the man commenting on their similar faces and Hyper's disgusting fetishes with Northeastern girls. Sure, the movie didn't answer these issues nor offered a utopian solution to this systemic disease in the country. But I didn't think that was the aim. What it clearly did was that it laid bare the nasty reality of how different we are from them and how indifferent they are to us because of our differences, the difficulty and helplessness of the Northeast people who lived in mainland India face amisdt the majority who look at us with disgust or hatred, the people who try to be friendly with us but fail to truly understand us but we bear with them anyway and finally, the unity we need to create among the 200 tribes in a hostile world to feel safe and at home. This movie isn't perfect but it's still a wonderful attempt to display the emotions, the people and the reality of this one great sin of India. Thanks!!