virtually everything. I found a calendar with garam masala sachets hanging from the month of December in a rundown tea shop which had Che Guevara images. Badges with Che's face are available in the most unlikely places, such as an HIV drop-in centre," Bhattacharjee writes.
"Even Fat James' restaurant in Churachandpur has a Che face painted on the guitar standing in one corner for anyone to pick up and strum."
A fictional character named Eshei is the storyteller in the book. Eshei is there through all the travails and tribulations of a generation caught between the apathy as well as the evolution of a society at crossroads.
"She embodies the various experiences of growing up, navigating through youth, love and loss in the backdrop of conflict but is also faced with the universal trials of everyday reality.
"To represent the people as they are, their cuisine, their music, their history or even their biases, I have used the interplay of text and personal correspondence, a mixture of genres which do not follow a linear style," the author says.
For him, the book is an attempt to make the readers interact with real people and not "imagined communities". There are issues and subjects which would otherwise be avoided for obvious reasons, he says.
"For example, polygamy in urban Manipur or the genocide by terror groups fighting in the name of identity or even the lighter side of a very emotive students' agitation in Assam.
