Revisiting Chowrasta Chatter

Hi
The other day I got this spam message via my long-lost blog. I had created it many years ago, wrote a few pieces and then things had just fallen by the way side. I had left journalism and the writing habit petered off subsequently.
Friends have always told me how they missed my writing. Especially when times got tough in hills. It still is tough out there, even after the change, which many had hung their hopes on. It has been nothing but one big disappointment.
Anyways, there will be lots to talk about that. Because yes I am returning to writing. Many of you would be knowing that I am no longer in Darjeeling, but on the other side of the world. But that does not mean I have abandoned the hills. Life for me had to expand to include all that it was offering. For me home is Darjeeling, and now, home is also the US. Home for me has come to mean this whole big world.
Because of the improved communications, distance now is but only psychological. I video-Skype my parents regularly and they see their grand-kids and talk to them. And indeed one can fly back to India in matter of 24 hours - a little less than a train ride from Siliguri to Delhi!
I follow Darjeeling news on the internet closely. And I still feel the angst.
But before I begin to blog actively, I will undertake a project I had been thinking about for a long time. Actually, it was a suggestion from some of my friends: to put together a collection of my articles that got published as Chowrasta Chatter on Fridays in The Statesman. What better way than to put it on the internet, so that everyone can have access to it.
As I scanned through my old pieces, I just thought how things have remained frustratingly the same, if not worse. Gorkhaland is not a dream anymore, it is a nightmare, if this is the political caliber we can manage.