Avalok Langer studied political science at the University of Delhi. He worked for two years at NDTV, mostly on shows pertaining to youth affairs. He then spent a year on a fact-finding mission across India's conflict zones and border areas. For Tehelka, he reports largely on conflict, social and political issues, and the Northeast. He is based in New Delhi.
A sinking feeling spiralled through me as I stood in the tiny class room with a nervous smile. I had just been told that I had a learning disability. My Principal and English teacher tried to be reassuring, “Some of the greatest minds in the world have had dyslexia and [...]
My mother was seven months pregnant, carrying my elder sister, when the ’84 riots reached my grandmother’s door step in New Delhi’s, Defence Colony. As she described it many years later, a sense of fear gripped me as I looked out the grilled window from the first floor. The window, [...]
Eleven of us were packed into a shared-taxi and I found myself crushed in the last row of the bouncing yellow sumo. My legs numb, I looked out of the window as we climbed the mountain above the rain clouds. I tried to hold onto some semblance of will power, [...]
I hate to lose, but I had lost every race that day. My chance to compete in the Junior Olympics had gone and I sat by the pool, my eyes burning, skin dry, hungry and dejected, preparing to go home a loser. As I started my walk of shame, my [...]
There are few things more irritating than someone giving a running commentary during a movie or being trapped next to a crying baby on a plane. My editors not giving me enough pages for a story come a close second, but the most irritating has to be someone giving a [...]
Sequestered, Umaid and I stood alone. When the political science department gathered to debate if we should hold elections, the two of us, typically naive and self-righteous students of first year, decided to boycott elections. That year, I learnt an important lesson: if you oppose the system and choose to [...]
It is safe to say that the three and a half years I spent as a child in New York changed the course of my life. Though I was very young (class 3 to class 6), many memories remain vivid – swimming in the 50 metre butterfly finals of the [...]
I sat half asleep, doodling in my note book as the speaker rambled on about the country’s economic policy. I think he was someone famous, but for me it was just another boring college seminar. However, he said a line that has remained etched in my memory, “The economic trickledown [...]
Christen by the willow, I lay on the hospital bed in a pool of blood. Passing in and out of consciousness, every prick, every tug of the 19 stitches across my forehead reminded me that I didn’t belong. In a nation obsessed with ‘identity’, the growing pack of mongrels have [...]
