One of the first piece of art I bought when I moved to Gangtok after joining Sikkim University was the painting of a Rong Lee (Lepcha house). There was an art exhibition in MG Marg and I was drawn to this piece because I wanted to hang it in my new place. I had recently moved to a small studio near my office and thought this would be a perfect fit to the otherwise bare pink walls. After all, everyone was saying I was “settled” now with a job and should probably try making myself “home” in Gangtok.

Home had otherwise been a distant affair as I grew up. Boarding school life coupled with distant college and postgraduate destinations with PhD research far from the familiar allowed me to be at home everywhere and nowhere. Of course the memories of our childhood playground in Bom Busty fields was the comfort of home I always knew. The early morning football in khalegara with vacationing cousins during winter break and finding a spot in the fig tree to read my detective novels was the home I always knew. But as time passed, even that place felt more of a longing than a belonging.

While away, I learned not to crave for the familiar tastes, senses and sounds. I had automatically adjusted and adapted to wherever I lived for the time being. In college, most of my friends’ circle felt the same way and we even joked “home is where our toothbrush was”. We found comfort in knowing that we were together for our time in college and we were each other’s home. But at some point when friends dropped out or moved to other cities, it was a reminder that this too was temporary. We didn’t know what was home anymore as we had to leave sooner or later. Once a friend even asked if I felt sad to leave places and I remember answering, “one cannot have too many feelings when you leave too many places”. And maybe I was home in all these departures.

I didn’t mind leaving. I looked forward to making new homes in new places. I was home at these arrivals.

Ten years ago, I started teaching at the Department of Anthropology, Sikkim University and moved to Gangtok. First few years, I wasn’t sure I would be here for long. I knew I eventually I had to leave as that itch persisted. After three years in Gangtok, I actually left for a two-year stint to Shimla. But I returned within a year and “settled” in the most conventional sense of the word. Perhaps I was home now.

Every now and then I get to leave Gangtok for both longer or shorter assignments. But there is a toddler now, who sometimes travels with me and sometimes stays behind. Whenever we travel together outside Gangtok and he is hassled by the sights or the sounds of the unfamiliar, he says he wants to “go Gangtok home”. Gangtok is his home and just like that, for me too, Gangtok is home now.

While we often straddle between the material “house” and the affective “home”, this zine is heralding a space/ a home for Rong anthropologists/ scholars who have been made to feel unwelcome and forever liminal in academia and other scholarly engagements.

Home is always a welcome space with the old and the new coming together. Home often bridges the generation gap between the old who lived and felt safe in a particular space with the younger generation as they adapt to the need of changing times. At the end of the day everybody finds their way home.

As Rong anthropologists who grew up reading anthropology of the Rong people, we have come a long ways. Rongs have been the most studied in the history of anthropology in the region yet when Rong anthropologists study our own people, our works are not academic enough and we are not being objective in our work. Our scholarships are mere stories our grandparents told, while our stories being told by the other is profoundly academic. We have seen, heard and experienced the continued questioning of our scholarship, while silencing and erasing our narratives.

Rong Anthro Zine recognizes the need for Rong scholars/ scholarship to speak their minds and is providing this platform to freely publish and engage in both scholarly and cultural conversations. It is an attempt to discuss and participate in a healthy exchange of issues/ ideas related to Rong sum/ culture that is happening in Mayel Lyang today. Aachuley!

Charisma K. Lepcha

lepchack@gmail.com