Roots & Leisure was founded by Tiarenla, Sungdi and Amenla from Nagaland, located in the North East of India.

HOW IT ALL BEGAN . . .

Roots and Leisure was founded by three of us (Tiarenla, Amenla and Sungdi) from Nagaland, which is located in the North East region of India. Our story dates back to 1994 – the year Tiaren and Sungdi met at boarding school in Darjeeling and became good friends. Fast forward 10 years, Sungdi meets Amen in Ahmedabad, while attending engineering college, and they become inseparable – almost like family. Another 10 years later, when Amen moved to Bangalore (in 2014),  she finally got to meet Tiaren, after hearing so much about her from Sungdi.

Over coffee, we discussed starting a passion project to try and help promote our Northeastern roots through stories of our local friends from the region. So (finally) in 2016, we decided to give it a shot, and start the project as a weekend activity. One fine Sunday, we pulled an all-nighter and launched a blog in less than 24 hours. And as they say, there has been no looking back after that fateful day in March 2016.

Just a couple of months after launching the blog, we started getting readers, well-wishers and potential stories from like-minded people from across the world. That’s when we decided to open up this platform to friends of friends globally. Today we have folks from North East India, Bangalore, Delhi, Mumbai, Thailand, Tokyo, Indonesia and more, contributing to our daily stories.

WHY DID WE LAUNCH ROOTS AND LEISURE?

Moving to different cities for education and later for work, we all had similar experiences of having to constantly explain every detail about our native culture – starting from geography (that Nagaland is a state IN India!) to our food habits, to our ways of life in general. Although frustrating at times, we also understood that this gap exists because we come from Nagaland, a little known place in the Northeast of India – which was still not widely written about. This was 2016.

That said, we still saw a positive side, where our stories would amuse our friends so much, that they often ended up visiting our hometowns, and taking with them a story to share with their friends and families. And that’s how the seeds were sown – to create a platform, to share more content and stories about the North East India, and hoping to do our bit to educate and inspire people globally through our day-to-day stories of the region and its local people.

Check out our Culture section to explore, and meet the community folks on our Instagram and Facebook pages. We also help our R&L folks exchange (Buy & Sell) their creations and services through our ONLINE MARKETPLACE.

COME AND BE A PART OF THE R&L COMMUNITY. . .

You can join the community as a Reader, Content Contributor, Seller, Buyer, or Well Wisher. We are constantly on the lookout for interesting stories/people to feature, or to collaborate with.

So if you want to share your story or a conversation with an interesting friend, write to us at info@rootsandleisure.com or simply fill the form below: