“Excuse me, do you smoke?” A brawny guy wearing dark glasses – it was pitch dark even on the outside – and a shocking pink jacket asked me. “No, I quit.” I replied. “Of course you know I didn’t mean just cigarettes,” he said laughing and dipped into his pink pockets for a cigarette that looked like a forgotten soul from Alcatraz. This incident was the final day of the Hornbill Festival in a nutshell. Merry-crazy crowds. Berserk with joy. Swaying in union, with a joyful abandon. Fighting with a

Hornbill Rocks. Because any band worth its, well, rocks, has to earn its stripes from Hornbill. Preferably by winning. With screen days crowd of over 15,000 and close seven times that on the finals, the benchmark is well set. “When we started the Hornbill rockfest, there were only two small speakers…the sound seldom reaching till the entrance gates,” said Neingulie Nakhro, event director, Hornbill Rockfest. “But look at us now, we have the best acoustics in the country today and all the leaders of the industry want to join hands

(This is the fifth in the Hornbill series. Apologies for the delay in the uploading…several reasons, including the really, terrifically crazy rockfest finals the day before. And whatever afterwards…) Somebody akined cars to a tin box. By extension trains would be jolly rides with Tutankhamen and flights, plush cells. So, I decided to give the cultural fare a miss on the fifth day and explore Kohima town. On foot. “Which is the way to the Cathedral?” I asked the first pretty lady I met when I started from Naga Bazaar

(This is the update from day four of the Hornbill Festival, December 4, 2011) “It is not a very advisable thing to do,” a worried Dr Thorsie said. The pork eating competition was about to start in a few minutes. “But the participants are mostly members of the cultural troupes you know,” he added as a consolation. “Doing some dancing or sports all the time.” The Hornbill Festival is the biggest drain on pigs in pork-loving Nagaland. Since morning, I have been watching pork minced for momos, boiled for chowmein

(This update is from day three of Hornbill Festival. Dear reader, apologies for the delay in the update as businesses take a strict break in Christian-dominated Nagaland.) Petering out crowd is a challenge to any festival. Keeping the audience interest alive is a comment on the organisers’ ingenuity and imagination. Day three of the Hornbill was hence a test; the teasers had done their job, the flitters had left and the real festival junkies slouched around to check whether the varnish peeled. With the honeymoon over and the real business

(This is the third update from the Hornbill Festival, 2011.) In Nagaland there are no bad drivers; there are only good drivers and there are those who don’t drive. This is a terrain where simple manoeuvring calls for exceptional skill at the wheel. The adrenaline rush is everyday. For some, it is a living. For others, it is passing youth. For everybody, it becomes the cause de celebre during the Hornbill rally. This is probably the only rally where your steering skills rub shoulders with your punk quotient. Or your

The bull and the bolero became one. Colour charged the air. You could touch the permeating pride. The fine film of dust that hung about added to the surrealism of a whole culture played out over centuries compacted and capsulated in the confines of a fair ground. Each of the 16 tribes gathered from all over Nagaland put their best foot forward – with a war cry. Strings of tatiphe, the wordless houtho songs of the Angamis and the engrossing mooung songs by the elderly Changs…the first day of the

(This is the first in the regular series of updates from the Hornbill Festival, 2011. I am trying to make this daily for the 500 and counting subscribers of Wanderink.com. Did I say daily? Got to see if I can push my 8pm deadline…) The setting sun was sending out jagged rays through the cotton clouds floating in festival disarray. I could smell the gaiety in the air. And the rice wine, of course. My watch said two o’clock in the afternoon. With disbelief confounded by intoxication, I asked my