How do I relate to Pramathesh Borkotoky of Fried Eye magazine

How do I relate to Pramathesh Borkotoky? Well my father’s uncle’s daughter’s cousin’s grandchild is married to his cousin’s brother’s wife’s third cousin’s younger sister. If you have de-coded that relationship, I am fairly certain you are either extremely patient or you have nothing better to do. Jokes apart, I’d really like to use this platform to explain how Pramathesh and I really relate to each other.

Pramathesh Borkotoky

I have always been an entrepreneurial, self driven and a risk taking kind of a person. Job security and career holds little or no importance to me. Therefore it should come as a little surprise that I admire people who are just like that. Having said that, I guess the smarter ones of you might have already figured out the context of my babbling. If not, let me take up a little more of Pramathesh’s precious web space and explain things in detail.

The journey of an entrepreneur is not an easy one; nevertheless it is always filled with risks, adventures and sheer fulfillment even with a minor success. I remember coming to Bangalore in 2006, without a definite goal or any plan of action. All I had was a vision, passion and a little hope hidden somewhere deep within me, that someday, I would represent my land North-East India and make it proud. Initially it was a shitty corporate job to make ends meet. I lived like a miser and felt like a loser for a year until that voice inside me called out “You can do better than this”. I quit my job and picked up my guitar, went around playing small gigs here and there, again to fulfill the basic human needs ‘Roti, Kapda aur Makan’, till that voice called out again “Dude, WTF? Is that what you want to do?”

That’s when I knew I had to do something meaningful and thus Eastern Fare Music Foundation was born. It was a humble beginning with barely five students, sincere students who were willing to learn music from me. With their support and a little social networking, word soon spread that there was this guy, like, from North East, who like teaches Guitar and stuff. That, and some widespread social networking put my baby, my institute on the Bangalore map and no later there were people flocking in to learn music at Eastern Fare Music Foundation. Three years down the line, we have had several of our students score highest marks in the Trinity Guild Hall examination for music; the Eastern Fare team went on to create a repository of facts about North East India on Facebook and moved on to philanthropic activities. Being part of the institute became a prestige issue.(I am unapologetically proud about it, since the Eastern Fare team has earned it, fair and square). My long cherished dream to present Northeast India as a desirable place started to take a concrete form with the North East India site and YouTube page.

Fried Eye magazine logo

That’s where Pramathesh comes in. My acquaintance with him started from following the blog ‘Bamboo Lounge’, where Pramathesh was a contributor/administrator. Bamboo lounge again is a great blog that strives to and successfully promote the Northeastern corner of India. Pramathesh’s active participation caught my eye, and I began to follow him through various social networking portals. We interacted more and more and our acquaintance developed into a bond of respect and admiration. I was impressed at Pramathesh’s initiatives-be it the ezine ‘Fried Eye’, a platform that has showcased a multitude of talent from Northeast or his unique bamboo products which he gleefully flaunts on Facebook.

His courage to sacrifice a life of guarantee and take up challenges for the love of his origin, his culture pierced through my skeptic mind. I discovered one more person who was proud of his heritage and dedicate his time and efforts to showcase that to the rest of world. That’s where I could relate to him and today my appreciation for him knows no bound.

So, with reference to the first paragraph, my father’s uncle’s daughter’s cousin’s grandchild is not married to Pramthesh’s cousin’s brother’s wife’s third cousin’s younger sister. I simply relate to him because we do in-fact have similar human traits. As a rule, people with similar traits tend to relate to each other, but if I said that at the beginning of this article, I wouldn’t have had the blissful feeling of wasting your time! Lol

- Jim Ankan Deka