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| The five poetesses from Meghalaya in Delhi with an organiser. A Telegraph picture |
Five poetesses from Meghalaya made their presence felt at the three-day mega poetry festival, which concluded on October 11 in New Delhi organised by the All India Poetess Conference.
The poetesses from Meghalaya, Streamlet Dkhar, Minimon Laloo, Christina Wanniang, Jean S. Dkhar and Rikynti Kharkongor, earned accolades at the festival for their contribution.
There were more than 1,000 women poets from India and abroad.
The poets from Meghalaya read out their poems in Khasi, English and Hindi. Rikynti also spoke on the contribution of Soso Tham, the poet laureate of the Khasis, and read out a poem on him.
Three Khasi books on poetry, Na Thwei Pyrkhat U Longshuwa by Streamlet Dkhar, Ka Mahabharata (revised edition) jointly authored by L.H. Pde and Streamlet and Ki Sur Na La Ri by Minimon were released by Union minister of labour Mallikarjun Kharge.
On October 10, Kasturba Samman was presented to Streamlet for her contribution to Khasi literature, in particular for the translated version of her writings in Hindi. The bards from Meghalaya, attired in their beautiful dharas, also performed Khasi songs and recited traditional Khasi poetry during the presentation of an award to one of their members.
The All Manipur Roadside Vendors’ Association, which represents people from all walks of life, are vendors who sell all kinds of things, including fish, vegetables, cosmetics, sweets and candies on the roadside in Imphal.
Recently, another association, this time of women vendors, was formed to sell their wares on the roadside.
However, as the number of these roadside vendors increased, they started to occupy parts of the roads, leading to traffic congestion in the cit, thereby making it extremely difficult for passersby to walk along the roads.
The Imphal Municipal Council, which is responsible for maintaining the city, has turned a blind eye to the problem, forcing citizens to risk their livers while walking on the roads.
Left with no option, police had to evict these vendors. But they kept coming back.
The new organisation — the Women Vendors’ Association — is now demanding a government policy regularising their “business” so that the police “harassment ends”.
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| A poster of UFO |
Move over Steven Spielberg, Tarunabh Dutta is here.
The 24-year-old filmmaker has come up with the first Assamese sci-fi movie based on the story of a young girl’s tryst with an alien, using sophisticated computer graphics and 3D animation.
Tarunabh, a graduate from the JJ College of Architecture, is among a new breed of filmmakers from Assam based in Mumbai. He is now working as a concept designer in Disney’s first non-animation Indian feature film, Zokkomon.
Tarunabh said his film, UFO, is the result of hours of painstaking work in front of the computer where he created the alien “frame-by-frame”.
Tarunabh is a self-taught filmmaker having an interest in art and innovative thoughts since his childhood.
During his student days at Don Bosco School, Guwahati and higher secondary education in the science stream at Cotton College, he used to spend his leisure time in various creative pursuits and read books of diverse interest.
In March 2009, he came back to Guwahati, to make his first full-fledged professional feature film project in his native language.
He took up the case of UFO sightings and alien abductions. Using latest VFX and 3D animations that he has mastered on his own, Tarunabh wrote a fictional account of one such case centred around Guwahati.
