In a small village in Tripura, 12-year-old Messi wants to fly

In a tiny village in North Tripura, a young boy dreams of flying.

Messi, a 12-year-old from the Ranglong community in Laikhua village, wants to build a drone. An electronics enthusiast, he makes makeshift, unconventional gadgets in his free time to impress his friends and to solve practical problems.

When I visit him, I find Messi sitting on the porch of his house with a stack of coloured paper and a pair of scissors. He’s making a fan from scratch. He tells me, “I made a lot of things during the COVID-19 lockdown. We had nothing to do those days, and my friends and I would play a lot. They like watching reels on their phones, but I watch a lot of DIY electronics videos on YouTube. I learned building basic circuits from there, and even today I spend a lot of my free time searching for cool things to make.”

He continues working as he talks, cutting and folding the paper so it resembles a palm leaf. Villagers swarm around him, watching intently. In his hands, a fan slowly begins to take shape. Rila Darlong, a neighbour and an avid bamboo artist himself, says, “It is a simple fan, but to the community it is a sign of our ingenuity.” It might be true. And Messi may have drawn inspiration from his mother who weaves baskets with plastic straws.

But the journey from ingenuous thinking to a finished product doesn’t come easy in Laikhua, where power cuts and water stress are everyday realities. Even a notebook of coloured scraps costs INR 150 in the market, and the only ones available are in Dharmanagar, a town approximately 13 kilometres away. Chunlianly Ranglong, Messi’s mother, says, “He has been painting and creating things since he was a child. We buy the materials he needs from the town whenever we can. But because everything is very costly now, some days he ends up making things with bamboo or waste materials instead.” Messi made a bamboo mixer grinder for his mother because she needed one.

He says, “One day I would like to build a drone that can be controlled with my phone and that can capture videos from above.” When I ask him why, he responds, “Because I will be able to see the world how a bird does.”

A drone consists of the frame and a flight controller. The rotating components are managed with the help of the controller, and an in-body gyroscope keeps the entire set-up stable in air. Involving everything from embedded electronics to algorithms, a drone is a challenging engineering project.

Messi realises this. He says, “I need a lot of money and equipment for this. I don’t know the technicalities of the circuits that a drone needs, but I believe I can figure it out with some help.”

Until the guidance and the financial support arrives, all Messi has is the internet, his self-belief, and the faith of his people in his abilities. As he busies himself in creating an origami parrot, his friend remarks, “He’s very skilled at everything, from studies to sports. That’s why we call him Messi.”

Hansatanu Roy is an IDR Northeast Fellow 2025–26.

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Know more: Learn how a microentrepreneur is running an ice-cream business in rural Tripura.

Do more: Connect with the author at hansatanu@live.in to learn more about and support his work.