Amidst all hassles, at one corner of the waiting lounge of Lokopriya Gopinath Bordoloi International Airport, Guwahati sat this young guy with a blue travel back. To an average individual he is just another passenger waiting for his flight, but a true sports enthusiast would identify him as the youngest Indian to win a gold medal at the Asian Confederation Boxing Championship in 2013, the youngest Indian to qualify for London Olympics 2012 and one of the first Indians to get a World Series of Boxing Contract. And he is none other than, our very own Olympian Shiva Thapa. Contrary to his resume which induces the tag of being an Asian Champion and a silver medallist at the 2010 Singapore Youth Olympics, Shiva is probably one humble athlete you will ever come across. He is very soft spoken and well articulated. Hence when this so called sports enthusiast or rather an unknown stranger approached him, he treated me more like a friend than a fan. This is the account of an in...

If you are someone, who prefers reading a review before watching a movie, then please don’t do so for Priyanka Chopra starrer  Mary Kom. This is not a movie review, but rather a feature/opinion piece on this brilliant attempt by debutant director Omung Kumar. Why I refrain from calling this a review is because reviews should be analytical and factual, not biased. And what our media houses do is marketing. To be honest, I will be very biased when I write about it, and I have every reason to be. One, I am a sports fanatic; second I am from North East. I guess that explains it all. The best thing about the movie is definitely the optimism it portrays (at least for me). Manipur is a region which in a way is very troubled for quite some time now. From AFSPA to local insurgent problems, the state has seen it all. So when we depict a story of someone from such a region, who beating all odds made a name in their own fields; it becomes very important to highlight the negativ...