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Assam transport minister Anjan Dutta proved his mettle in problem-solving yet again in Karimganj. The young minister, a former scribe, was being felicitated by workers of the Assam State Transport Corporation in the terminus in the south Assam Karimganj’s busy station road when a bevy of young women strode into the meeting.
Even before Dutta could realise what they were up to, one of them began berating the ASTC authorities who, they alleged, had failed to provide toilet facilities at the bus station.
The minister, though well aware that the cash-strapped ASTC had no funds to provide such utilities, hit upon an idea to solve this nagging, embarrassing problem in his inimitable style. He chose Karimganj district Congress committee general secretary Parimal Roy and asked him to raise a commodious toilet equipped with modern paraphernalia for both sexes. He suggested that Roy could recoup his investment and the cost of daily maintenance by charging at least Rs 2 from each user.
Officials of the ASTC were, however, neither enthused nor amused by this proposal. They are now wondering as to how corporation land could be provided to a private individual for commercial utilisation, and without calling for tenders at that. One thing leads to another.
It was a show of the eri and muga. Both, quite fittingly, wove the tapestry of the fashion show held on the concluding day of the closing ceremony of the golden jubilee celebrations of the Bodo Sahitya Sabha at Titaguri in Kokrajhar district last Saturday.
Though the spotlight of the four-round show was on the traditional Bodo garments — dokhna and gwmgra — exotic mekhela chadors, sarees, salwar kurtas and western outfits, too, drew resounding applause.
The show titled “Golden Jubilee Inspiration” was a mind-blowing exposition of the trendiest garments that could be created out of eri and muga with upcoming designer Sanjita Phukan, excelling in innovation and well-known co-operative society Roje Eshanshali.
According to Sabita Bhutani, the brain behind the entire show, the talent and material was just waiting to be explored in a “fashionable way” in order to capture the market. Well said, and done too.
Shillong, the Scotland of the East, is trying to shrug off the tag of being a paradise for car-lifters.
Close on the heels of the setting up of a motor vehicles verification counter at the police headquarters in the Meghalaya capital recently, the second in the region, the city police have launched a crackdown on the racket of vehicle-lifters with a “missionary zeal” and on a “priority basis”.
Armed with records of stolen vehicles from all over the country from the counter, the police are now confident of nabbing the gang that has given the city the bad name of being one of the places in the country where the highest number of stolen vehicles are sold.
Albeit cynical citizens, faced with the spiralling stolen-vehicle graph in the city, are raising doubtful eyebrows about the police crackdown.
Thanks to the counter they will, at least, no longer be duped into buying stolen cars.
These soldiers might not have died fighting the “enemy”, but their sacrifice is no less supreme.
In a befitting gesture of tribute thus, a memorial dedicated to soldiers of Red Horns division who lost their lives fighting insurgents in Assam, was recently inaugurated in the Umroi cantonment.
The memorial constructed by the Red Horns division of the army to cherish the “heroic deeds of the brave sons of Red Horns” is the first of its kind in the region. It has the names of all the martyrs inscribed in it. It also has an epitaph cherishing the sacrifices.
Inaugurating the memorial, Lt. Gen. Mohinder Singh, AVSM GOC 4 Corps, expressed the hope that the memorial would serve as a reminder to the people about the sacrifice of those who gave their “today” for the nation’s “tomorrow”.
The golden jubilee of the Assam Table Tennis Association has run into rough weather financially, but this did not dampen the overall atmosphere of the bash, which ended Wednesday night with a musical concert by a local band.
The participants, old-timers and well-wishers, literally, had a ball because the meet ushered in a new dawn for the game, which was till a few years back was bereft of any direction.
“The number of participants and the presence of old-timers will no doubt revive interest in the game. Things can only look up from here,” one of the organisers said.
It was the perfect setting for an evening of poetry: a foggy evening on the bank of the Brahmaputra, with a cool breeze sweeping past the landscape.
The occasion was the second day of the ongoing Majuli Festival at the world’s largest river island on Wednesday.
As the large gathering listened in rapt attention, celebrated poet Hiren Bhattacharyya recited some of his famous poems, which deal with a myriad of issues ranging from love to death.
For the packed crowd, the nip in the air mattered very little as the poet held them mesmerised in his own inimitable style. “Memories of the evening will be etched in our hearts,” says a college student from Jorhat.
That the festival has been a success could be gauged from the fact that apart from the thousands of people from all over the state, seven foreign tourists also joined the affair.
