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I met Anurag Banerjee just after his friend’s poetry reading at the Shillong Literature Festival. He has a kind of easy, affable presence that draws interruptions: he left one friend to walk with me, was stopped mid-sentence by another during our conversation, and ran into someone else as soon as we finished. In a few hours, he would be onstage, this time being interviewed by another friemd – novelist Janice Pariat – for a panel.

He describes himself as a dkhar, a Khasi term for non-tribals, a label that marks him as an outsider in a city where belonging is tied to lineage and community. Banerjee is a photographer and writer whose two-volume project, The Songs of Our People, emerged from the protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act and the National Register of Citizens in 2020 and his own reckoning with his homeland.

The first volume, published in 2024, focuses on younger musicians and politically charged genres such as rap and R&B, built from 19 extended interviews and collaborative portraits. The second, out late last year, turns to teachers, choirs, and the artists who shaped Shillong’s music scene, while also letting Banerjee write himself into the narrative, making the act of listening as much a part...

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