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Calling Kohima

Not sure what triggered the word Kohima in my mind a couple of days ago and it stuck with me like an ear-worm. The sound of the word could have been turned around in my memory as I was reading this book - two things could not be more  unrelated. At first, I could not recall the meaning of Kohima (it felt like I knew it at some point) and then forgot about went about my day. It returned again randomly and this time I looked it up. This was in the list of states and capitals we had to memorize back in childhood. Thankfully, the name of the state or its capital have not changed since then. This is not the kind of permanence we have come to expect in India so it was a pleasant surprise. I have never traveled to Northeast India and it features high on my bucket-list. I also know woefully little beyond whatever fragments of information was included in my textbook from back in the day. A small dot on a map, some call-outs about the state that were absolutely irrelevant to me. The number of square kilometers, population, temperature range, average precipitation - these were the kinds of things that we needed to know about the place. 

The facts were learned and promptly forgotten - and they failed to create any compelling impression. Those were the times I guess. I wonder things are any better now. GenAI can write up anything you want to know about Kohima and Nagaland. So access to all available information is no problem. The question remains about who a kid processes it and what they take away - maybe nothing more than I did back in the day. The information in our sterile textbook was fixed in time, presented in the most uninspiring way. Today's kids are inundated with entertaining, customized and interactive views of a lot more information. It does not automatically mean something meaningful will be realized out of any of that. I kid growing up today a few decades later, might experience just what I did. The word Kohima will cross their mind. It will sound familiar but they won't be able to place it right away and once they do, much of what they learn will feel novel. 

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