E-Pao! - a journey through 2009
- X Anniversary -

2009 had been an uncertain year for Manipur. Amidst the brouhaha in the global political scenario and the backdrop of the global warming, the state of Manipur burned unnoticed. Manipur slipped into a series of turmoil after another. This did leave the global Manipuris in a state of confusion worrying about the future of their birth state often losing hope in its present socio-political condition.
E-pao had been fortunate enough to cater to these Manipuris and provide a steady stream of updates from its home state throughout all these events.

Through our timelines, we string up the related news on a certain burning topic/issue, day after day, providing you a one page index for you to trace the story. We have been doing this for years now. Big time updates in 2009 were made to the "Sharmila" and "Killing Fields" timelines. We also created 2 new timelines on the events that shook not only the state but also the Manipuris globally. The first one started mid-February 2009 when Dr Thingnam Kishan and 2 of his collegues (Y Token & A Rajen) were murdered in a gruesome manner and the other was when a young mother (M Raveena Devi) was killed in a cross-fire in the middle of Imphal while she was carrying the first born in her arms and her unborn in her womb. This was followed by an alleged encounter killing of Mr Sanjit Singh a few meters away in the BT road. This happenned in July 23 2009. Normal life has been badly hit with students taking the worst hit as the education system gets into a stand-still mode.

The death of Dr Kishan saw a huge outpour of emotions from the Non Resident Manipuris and to accomodate these, E-Pao opened up an exclusive section containing such things such as a Virtual Candle Light Vigil - first time E-Pao ran such an application; collection of photos from Dr Kishan's album and the protests following his death; condolence messages and public outpours and Articles.

Towards the end of year (recently on 13 Dec 2009), one of our regular contributor bade farewell to his earthly form. Professor Dr Naorem Sanajaoba was a well-known activitist of social and human rights causes and an academician too whose lose will be felt by young Manipur. We have recently opened up an exclusive section to list the articles (submitted to e-pao), news items, condolences and pictures related to the late Oja.

There also had been stories of rape and discriminatory treatments in other parts of the country which did not get adequate media attention but did not miss the attention of the Manipuris. Their opinions on these incidents are collected under the Opinion on racial discrimination.

The news stories from Imphal continue to report more killings and deaths and arson. While people longed for calmer and peaceful news from home, many users collaborated across the globe after their work hours and composed a list of such news from Huieyen Lanpao and Sangai Express available on e-pao.net and counted the toll. The same was sent to the Prime Minister and various news publication houses. It is learnt that many of these collaborators doesn't know each other and have only known to each other through their email IDs but they referred to this site for their research consolidation. In another example, various poets based at the capital city came together and formed a group after coming across their names at the poets' corners and poems pages of E-Pao! There are also stories of other viral e-mail chains circulating amongst contributors of this site. E-Pao! is happy to be part of these stories in whichever part it has played.
They are proofs of this site having served its purpose of being your e-platform.

In order to provide a stronger e-platform, E-pao also had moved on to strengthen its updates and channels. You must have noticed new updates on the features profiling Manipuri personalities and more particularly the Award winners from Manipur. Two more sub-channels were added into the features channel - Focus on Media and Spotlight on women. Regular updates were also made to all parts of the site.

The 360 degrees Panorama got 6 new addition in 2009. Ooba, the video channel crossed 100,000 video views during April 2009. The Yellout section has a new band profile, that of Kanglasha. A few more should follow in the new year.

We launched a new Subsite called e-pao Books where there are 2 books currently listed. The first one is a compilation of 13 papers called "New insights into the glorious Heritage of Manipur". At this sub-site there are 3 complete papers chosen from the 3 volumes compiled by Dr. H Dwijasekhar Sharma. The second book is by Dr Y Mohendro Singh called the "The Status Of Manipur (1823-1947)". We are happy to point out that the complete book is available for your reading on the site.

The Firefox Toolbar has been upgraded. The RSS feed now includes the mayek news and the Ooba video listing. There is a new sub-section dedicated to the golden era of Manipuri cinema in the e-rang section.

The user contributed e-pao related Wallpaper are also available. You would find some creation from Mahesh here. There are a couple of Screen saver for download and use.

There is a new subsite called Chakhum. You will find the recipe of your favourite Manipuri dish here. After its launch, there has already been few more upgrades to the application to enhance your browsing pleasure. This sub-site lists ingredients and procedures of making a Manipuri dish. The pictures and description of the ingredients are also listed separately. you would be able to search the recipe in various ways - using an ingredient, recipe name. Thanks to Pinky, Reeta, Lakshmi, Romeo, Chaoba, Pramananda, who sent in receipes and various other users who posted their views. The pictures are collected from various sources.
We request all users to help out further by sending us the recipes and pictures of Manipuri dishes - authentic or experimental.

All the pages in e-pao main site is now under the same look and feel. This is an internal drive to align to the home page and standardize the old pages. Good news for twitter users: e-pao can be followed on Twitter (@epaomanipur). The Manipuri Calendar for 2010 went live quite early in the year as a response to requests from many users.

Meitei Mayek e-Learning sub-site is continously updated with newer chapters. The final chapter on Lonsum Mayek Tapnaba was added in December 2009. We are happy to be doing our bit to spread the awareness of the script. It is also a good news for Manipuri Mayek enthusiasts that our eyek is supported by the Unicode standard version 5.2.0 on 1st October 2009.

As is customary now, we give you an update of some figures from the year gone by.