Aged between 12 and 14 years, the members of all-girl band Sonali Choruira were a confident lot as they spoke to the chief minister at Writers? Buildings on Thursday about how their music deals with teenage troubles. Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee launched their VCD and the team donated Rs 7,000 to the CM?s relief fund. Picture by Sanjoy Chattopadhyaya

A green sequinned turban, glittering eyes, a painted moustache, a smile widening into a grin. A child among many others in the dressing room. But, not just any child.

This is a child with grit, who has the strength to pull himself out of the world he was born into. A child from Rambagan slum, a red-light area.

?I am a salesman,? he said proudly. So what do you sell? ?Plastic buckets and other stuff. I go selling from house to house. But,? he hastened to add, ?I am also studying.?

Smiles wreath the faces of Sohan Gujarati, Hashi Majhi, Krishna Das, Sandip Pal, Aditya Das, the tall courteous Dipak Prajapati (who is in Class X and loves to play football) as they wait their turn, backstage at Nazrul Mancha. So what if the mayor hadn?t found time to grace their show. This was their big day, the annual fun-fest Taranga, hosted by Cini Asha, the Calcutta unit of the Child In Need Institute.

?September 30, 1974, was when this project took root from a small emergency hospital at Pailan, South 24-Parganas. The city unit was started in 1985 and today we support a child population of 240,000. Taranga is a celebration of these children,? said manager Nirmal Kanti Saha.

The show was open to all those child-help organisations functioning under Cini Asha in the wards under boroughs V and VII of Calcutta Municipal Corporation. Of the packed gallery, over 6,000 were children who receive educational guidance, medical facilities and other support from Cini.

?Our club runs evening coaching classes for beginners to undergraduates,? said Shankar Sarkar of Anada Mandir Club, Rambagan. ?But our teachers do much more. We hold counselling sessions urging slum-dwelling mothers and sex workers to send their wards to school,? he added.

This year over 27 students from the Rambagan club were awarded by Cini Asha for passing the Madhyamik and HS examinations.

The club has several other success stories. ?One of our students, whose father was a hooch dealer, was selected by an international jury to go to the US as a winner of the Voice of Children contest sponsored by UNICEF. Now he works in a multi-national firm. Another student, the son of a sex worker, has graduated in dramatics from a leading university. He is now an assistant director in tele-serials,? rattled off one of the teachers.

So who sponsors all this good work? ?We still depend largely on donor agencies and government schemes. However, recently we have started the Local Resource Mobilisation project, whereby we approach patrons for help. We have also launched a range of greeting cards. And there are always people ready to help,? smiled Saha of Cini Asha.

Sebanti Sarkar

Festive fun

Register for the Puja vacation hobby camps at Birla Industrial & Technological Museum from October 17 to 26. The first session everyday will be from 11 am to 1 pm, while the second session will be from 2.30 pm to 4.30 pm. Physics camp for Classes VIII-X, chemistry camp for Classes VIII-X, life science camp for Classes VII-IX, geography and basic astronomy camps for Classes V-VII are in the offing. Registration fee is Rs 300 per participant. For details call 22892815, 22812654.

What?s on your mind this week

Testing the best

The new selection procedure for the IIT Joint Entrance Examination is one of the best ways for getting into the country?s top tech institutes. It requires students to secure 60 per cent marks in Class XII or an equivalent examination.

Most JEE aspirants tend to neglect their school studies. In case they fail to crack JEE, they don?t even get admission in undergraduate courses in good colleges.

The board examinations are the foundation for higher studies. School-completion grades are asked for even during job interviews. But it?s disappointing that only two attempts will be given to clear JEE. At least three attempts must be allowed as many meritorious students miss the cut-off by a few marks.

Lalit Ghosh, Kalyani Central Model School

Prey to politics

It is quite painful to see the way schoolchildren are used to fill seats in the audience in functions attended by politicians. The recent incident of 70 schoolchildren fainting at a programme to celebrate Gandhi Jayanti in Kanpur was shameful.

In August last year, Orissa chief minister Naveen Patnaik had barred the practice of making schoolchildren wait long hours to welcome dignitaries. But still this practice continues everywhere.

The state and Central governments? education departments should instruct schools not to allow this inhuman practice to please petty politicians.

Swarnali Biswas, Bethune College

Cricket-struck

Cricket in school, on television, in movies, in commercials and everywhere else. Inevitably, the bulk of our population is oblivious to the existence of our national sport hockey.

Sania Mirza, thankfully, has succeeded in carving a niche for herself in the Indian sporting arena. Even our media seem more bothered about focussing on controversies in cricket (the recent Sourav Ganguly-Greg Chappell episode) than on success stories in other sports.

Do we even know that West Bengal boasts of a top-ranking squash player in the world junior section? Do we even care that a champion in table tennis hails from our city?

Instead, we all know when a cricketer inaugurated a restaurant or shop, for how long a cricketer is going on vacation, where and with whom.

Love for cricket is not the point of discord, but nobody turning up at the airport to welcome Dibyendu Barua when he returned to the city after triumphing in an international chess meet is indeed disheartening.

Godhuli Goswami, Lady Brabourne College

Chit Chat

Alma mater meets up

St Xavier?s College Calcutta Alumni Association (SXCCAA) hosted its Annual Tea Meet, in association with The Telegraph, on September 24. For long a platform for ex-Xaverians to meet and celebrate, the get-together is now regarded as one of the most important social events in the Xaverian alumni calendar.

With a host of events ranging from games to fashion shows and skits to felicitation ceremonies, the tea meet also saw the formal introduction of the new governing council of the alumni association for 2005-06.

The evening kicked off with the lighting of the ceremonial lamp, before ex-Xaverian Shayne Hyrapiet took over, regaling the packed auditorium with a host of evergreen numbers. Imran Zaki Siddiqui, general secretary of the association, said: ?It?s not just a social gathering. The incoming alumni association council pledges to continue the work of the outgoing council, and improve upon it.?

The children of the alumni members charmed all, parading around in the fashion show and dancing. As the evening drew to a close, the ex-Xaverians couldn?t hold back the nostalgia. Seema Beed, master of ceremonies for the evening, remarked: ?There are no friends like old friends, and this evening is a perfect example of that.?