My golden memories with E-Pao
- a 10th Anniversary collection -

By: Shanjoy Mairembam *

In the early days of 'e-pao.net' when this web portal celebrated 1st, 2nd, 3rd anniversaries and so on, Manipur was unknown to many friends and colleagues in other parts of India. Only few web documents and links were available in google's search results sparsely here and there. I had the urge to tell everyone I had come across so far all about Manipur – people, culture, folk stories, nature, etc. E-pao.net had filled that huge vacuum and acted as a platform for Manipuris to social network in addition to providing useful information about Manipur online. E-pao.net team deserves a big applause from every one of us for showing the maturity and sustaining spirit for these long 10 yrs.

'Writing' was quite new skill to me around 1999 and I used to write with a skeptical mind in college magazines (during my engineering studies). E-pao.net had provided a wonderful online space to express my ideas and self-analyse own thinking based on the comments/feedbacks from online readers. Since then, creative writing became a powerful art that I have learnt so far in my career as well as in the personal life.

My first big learning from writing articles on e-pao.net is handling criticism and maintaining 'a calm mind' by looking at things from as many viewpoints as possible. Most of us do not like to be criticized for what we do and what we are. I used to get many 'Thanks' feedbacks as well as 'harsh' comments on my articles. Some of those harsh comments were reasonable for the arguments, but most were just plain senseless jealousy targeting the writer but not on the topic. At those instances, reading of interviews and stories about 'how newly famed celebrities (because of sudden successes in their own careers) had to face the scrutiny of public' were found helpful to listen to. Every audience has always the intention to comment, but the one who is 'on action' needs not only to learn how to focus on their work but also how to maintain a balancing control on others' comments. Such skills of handling criticism can't be learnt unless one has experienced them hands-on in life. But these skills are critical for own personality development as a person and also for negotiation/interaction skills in one's career growth.

Another big learning from my experience with e-pao.net is to get to know many valuable people and create the opportunity to network globally. There was a question that haunts my mind since my childhood days – "We aren't the first smart and intelligent people from Manipur; there have been many generations before us. So, what exactly they have been doing since then; that Manipur hasn't met the developing pace of modern lifestyle and pioneered in various fields". E-pao.net had been the first online platform to allow networking among Manipuris and I'm happy that I could support this web portal since then. Personally, I was able to network with various global nationalities (such as USA, Canada, Korea, Malaysia, Germany, Australia, Bangladesh, China, etc.), via my articles in addition to knowing other smart Manipuris around. Networking is also another great skill worth developing for personality development and career grooming, since great people and big businessmen/industrialists at the top management have perfectly utilized the art of business and social networking to be on what they are and what they do.

In today's world of global web communication, people need to realize sooner than latter that 'it's not just about Manipur any more', rather internet and web-interactions have changed this whole world into – new culture, new tradition, new meaning of family, new development, and so on. It's time to look beyond the cocoon of the so called 'Manipur', or 'Sanaleibak' and prepare ourselves for the new globalised world. What's important now is humanity and care/development of each other. Loving Manipur is good but the real meaning should be loving the people within and not just the land.

Lastly, I wish that the 'Team behind the E-pao.net to grow further with a clear and wonderful vision in the years to come'. Also, I look forward to meet/interact with many great minds via e-pao.net in future.