A poster of the film Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne

When my elder brother returned home a week ago from an interview he had gone to give in Calcutta, he brought a lovely present for me. A DVD of Satyajit Ray’s Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne!
I was so excited, I immediately invited my friends to come over, though not all of them understood Bengali.
But such is the magic of this film, that language was hardly a problem, and they didn’t really need to read the sub-titles as such. It’s a simple story about two young boys, Goopy and Bagha, who are both turned out of their villages. I really loved the way they meet in the forest and become friends. The best, of course, was the scene where they meet the king of the ghosts, bhooter raja, as he is known in the film. It kept me and my friends spell-bound. After seeing the film, how hard we tried to clap our hands against each other, like Tapen Chatterjee and Rabi Ghosh, as Goopy and Bagha, were doing in the film to conjure up anything they wanted! It was simply brilliant. I will invite my other friends to see it too.

Ranjan Das, Class V
Jamshedpur

My ambition

What is an ambition? It is a cherished dream that an individual keeps safely in his heart. It is the determination to do something in life, a goal to be achieved, the aim for which helps us to translate our dreams into reality. It?s a hope that keeps one going, and striving even when things are going wrong.

I, too, have an ambition to serve humanity and hope to achieve this goal through neurosurgery, a stream, which has always fascinated me. It involves the study of the nervous system and I know I will have to work very hard to excel in this field. But I know I will do it one day.

India certainly needs to develop its medical sciences and neurosurgery is one of the most advanced fields in medical sciences. It will only get bigger in the future.

Debayan Chakraborty,
Hill Top School, Jamshedpur

Disappointed fans

Mangal Pandey ? The Rising, the much-awaited film starring Aamir Khan, left most fans disappointed.

Fans await Aamir Khan?s releases for months and when he comes up with a damp squib like Mangal Pandey, it leaves a lot of his fans feeling cheated.

The film was more like an unsolved puzzle, which despite an excellent cast, brilliant colours and well researched sets, failed to create an impression on the viewer?s mind.

Rani Mukherji seemed more of a character forced into the life of the great warrior, trying to make him more of an ordinary man. And the distortions did not end there. The script was a distortion of history, which more than anything else, gave a sense of moving away from reality, rather than an account of it.

This left all die-hard fans of Aamir Khan wishing for something better from their hero.

A.M. Nalini,
Ramakrishna Mission English School,
Jamshedpur

My best Holi

After many years my cousins came for a visit this Holi. Year after year, we had been playing Holi only by ourselves. Just dad and mom and me. I won?t say it wasn?t fun, as they did try to make it special for me.

But the Holi this year simply turned out to be the best Holi of my life. It?s all thanks to my cousins, who really pestered my uncle to time his visit to the city during this time. What a blast we had together.

They were four. Rani, Ratul, Anju, and Monu, the youngest, just four years of age. We didn?t just turn the house upside down with our naughty antics but on the day of Holi we just filled up every bucket we could find in the house with colours. We were well armed with both dry and water colours. Every guest that came that day, left completely drenched and unrecognisable. My parents could not recognise any of us either.

We also visited some of my friends in the area. In the evening, my parents took us out to a restaurant for dinner. That was fun too. It was a Holi I will never forget.

Mini Singh, Class VI,
Jamshedpur