STATE TRIBAL FILM FESTIVAL 

TAMENGLONG, MANIPUR

Behind every Instagram and social media post that leans towards these aesthetics and captioned "Roots" is, safe to say, a collective attempt by today's generation to reach into the past to find something more than what our everyday now offers. Behind that word that screams generic and has been meme fodder, are fragments of stories we inevitably carry. We put on our shawls on occasion and we're taken back to perhaps old, "vintage" photos in our parents albums of the good old days when people wore them with and more importantly, without occasion. In group photos of a casual hangout at someone's house, or at a picnic, there's often at least one of them wrapped cosily in one of these traditional shawls smugly smiling next to another one with an old guitar. They're all laughing out loud, dressed in comfortable clothes, a platter of snacks nearby, someone's barefoot. An everyday scene, an everyday shawl. And sometimes we remember like a distant memory the little recollections of our elders, our parents, friends or relatives from the village who came to live with us after having spent their early years there. We hear about the youth gathering after dinner under moonlit nights, everyone having stepped out of their homes in shawls to guard against the chills of the evening. Someone's strumming a guitar as they walk on the village roads singing old songs, making banter, laughing heartily at jokes, sharing shawls. So yes, the word "roots" that often tries to sum up these pieces that become us when we don our shawls today may be generic. But the stories behind them, not generic at all. And our shawls? Even more less so.