Solemn salute to student saviours

Toddlers from South Point High School flex their muscles at the annual sports meet held earlier this month at Kishore Bharati Krirangan. Also taking part in the athletic activity were the students of Sandipan, South Point?s free evening school.

The awards ceremony of the seventh edition of the Indian Chamber of Commerce (ICC) Calcutta Foundation Better Calcutta Contest, held in association with The Telegraph, at Science City auditorium on Saturday, was a salute to the young crusaders making this city a better place. Minister Sunil Dutt to skipper Sourav Ganguly, the adults all trooped in to congratulate and shower praise on the schools and the students. Here?s a list of the main award- winners...

Performing Arts

Parivarikee (ICC Trophy)
Apeejay School
Loreto Day School, Sealdah, and Birla High School (boys)

Visual Arts

Modern High School for Girls (Art and Heritage Foundation Trophy)
Chowringhee High School
The Assembly of God Church School (Park Street)

Creative Writing

Apeejay School (The Telegraph Trophy)
Modern High School for Girls
Bhawanipur Gujarati Education Society School

Ongoing Projects

Aditya Academy Secondary (Eveready Trophy)

Eveready Special Awards

Bikash Bharati Welfare Society ? National Open School
Centre for Special Education (IICP)
Greenfields
Mentaid
North Point Day School
Oxford House

Attractive Report

Bhawanipur Gujarati Education Society School
Centre for Special Education (IICP)
Chowringhee High School

 

Girls from Aditya Academy perform at the Better Calcutta Contest 2004-05 awards ceremony at Science City on Saturday. Picture by Pradip Sanyal

History revisited

History is his source, and language and imagination are his methods to infuse characters with vitality. Based on Annals and Antiquities by Cornel James Tod, a narrative describing a hundred years in Rajasthan, Abanindranath Tagore wrote Rajkahini. Imbuing zest in the wearisome historical narrative, Tagore created a work for all ages.

At Rabindra Sadan on January 24, Nava Nalanda staged Rajkahini, a ballet based on the first four chapters of this work ? Shiladitya, Goha, Bappaditya and Padmini.

For six months, a cast and crew of around 200 ? students, ex-students, teachers, reputed artistes and others ? rehearsed tirelessly in the evenings in school. Bharati Mitra, the motherly ?Rector Aunty? to students, overcame all odds in her old age to direct the ballet.

Nava Nalanda is not new to staging public performances. This was the fourth time. Previously, the school staged Meghnad Badhkabya, Mahabharat, Parir Parichay and Suoranir Saadh. The last two were also shot for TV.

Though being staged for the fourth time, the show had a full house. The story of Shiladitya was around an hour, Goha 10 minutes, Bappaditya 10 minutes and Padmini for an hour. The audience cheered after every scene, encouraging the little bravehearts on stage.

Subhajoy Roy

 

Leading lads & ladies

The fact that leadership knows no boundaries was proved at the AIESEC National Congress 2004 conference held from January 18 to 24 in Udaipur. Delegates from Pakistan and the executive boards of AIESEC from 12 local committees in different cities in India joined hands in for the member committee president elections (the highest position of AIESEC in India).

The suspense mounted till Parthiv Dave was announced the national committee president 2005-2006. ?This is a year of exemplary leadership,? remarked Parthiv, adding to the roaring enthusiasm of AIESECers towards the upcoming International Congress (IC) 2005-06, one of the biggest international conference hosted by AIESEC in India.

The core committee president of IC 2005, Dhanur Gandhi, shared his experience of meeting President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam on January 7. He announced the names of the executive bodies, including Vinay Jaju, a student of St Xavier?s, Calcutta, who will be handling the finances for the event. There was also Dhruv Chitgopekar for external relations, Sneha Menon, Adrienne and N. Pani for public relations.

The corporate recruitment fair was the biggest hit of the conference, where leaders like KPMG, Earnst & Young, Axis Risk Management, Synapse and more had their recruitment sessions, screenings and presentations to give young aspirants a preview of corporate challenges.

The transition session was conducted by Kartikeya Sharma, the present national committee president, on the vision of the organisation, growth strategies, long-term planning, skill development, characteristics, structuring, timelines, current realities, bottlenecks, check mechanisms, HR management, networking, financial allocations, team adaptation and quality guidelines. The opening and closing sessions were based on self-development and experience-sharing procedures.

The IC will be held from August 27 to September 5. The recently-launched Visakhapatnam extension of the Calcutta local committee was given member prospective status.

Suchita Sahal,
Organising committee, National Congress 2005, AIESEC

 

Participants at Impulse ?05, the fest of Institute of Technology and Marine Engineering, shake a leg at the choreography contest. The two-day inter-college meet presented in association with The Telegraph included quiz, antakshari and band competitions. On Sunday, Bangla band Cactus livened up the atmosphere, while DJ Sumeet rocked the dance floor. On Monday, Silk Route rounded up the event. Picture by Sanjoy Chattopadhyaya

Art for a cause

If you visited the Academy of Fine Arts last week, among the well-dressed bhadralok crowd thronging the galleries, you would have found a few young boys and girls in shabby outfits and dishevelled hair. They are the Tapan Moiras, Bapi Samantas and Panchu Halders ? slum children with with not much to be joyful about in the city of joy. But Charuchetana is trying to bring cheer in their young lives.

Born on August 4, 1996, Charuchetana, an organisation in Kayasthapara, Kasba, has been endeavouring to add colour to the lives of little bravehearts left unnoticed in the slums and streets of Calcutta. It has already reached out to kids in the slums of Bosepukur, Rajdanga, Khalpar and Babapalli in Kasba.

Starting off only as a centre for art, the activities of Charuchetana have since expanded. It now holds regular classes on academics, music, mime, drama and recitation, and also provides monetary help to the students. ?They bear the entire cost of my education,? says Bapi Samanta, who studies in Tirthapati Institution.

In the art section, classes are held on painting, sculpture, embroidery, weaving madurs and works of wood and shola, in Kasba Modern Institution for Girls every Tuesday and Saturday. The results of the efforts have already started showing. The children have performed impressively in board examinations and some have secured first division marks ? a tremendous feat considering the environment they live in.

Also, a sculpture of waste materials was made in Triangular Park in association with Dhritee, another NGO involved in similar work. Besides, the children also staged a drama, Beyara Chakor, written and directed by themselves.

The works by the students through the year are sold at an annual exhibition held at the Academy. This year, it was from January 22 to 31. A deluge of pastels, water colour, stencils, collages and greeting cards were sold. Charuchetana is looking for its own campus, where it can keep its works in store and which will also help to widen its activities.

Charuchetana needs support and encouragement to carry on the work and change little lives. Dial 24842270 to help.

Subhajoy Roy

 

Scientific success

A combination of youth and an understanding of the true value of science is considered the best possible blend for a perfect world. That was what happened at Acharya Satyendranath Bose Science and Technology Fair 2005, organised by Paschim Banga Bigyan Mancha from January 19 to 23 in Hedua.

Around 42 schools and 400 students from all over West Bengal took part in the competitions and the activities aimed at inculcating scientific curiosity among them. The fair was inaugurated on January 19 by Somnath Chatterjee, Speaker of the Lok Sabha, and eminent scientist and professor Bikash Chandra Sinha. Next day, an inter-college debate on ?Science is a power card in the hands of the rich? was held. Scottish Church College made a clean sweep.

The third day witnessed a battle of the brains between teams from around 23 schools at the science quiz. Hare School won the contest. Students had a chance to come face-to-face with eminent scientists at an interaction session on January 22.

The exhibits and the experiments presented by the budding scientists were perhaps the biggest crowd-pullers at the fair. The myriad list of exhibits by youngsters from around 23 schools ranged from innovative circuits and weird but useful gadgets to projects creating awareness against superstition and pollution.

Boys from Calcutta Deaf and Dumb School proposed a very innovative measure to control pollution in the city. Loreto Day School, Sealdah, girls presented a haunting project report on the condition of the state?s river resources and proposed measures to conserve them. Shahid Smriti Vidyapith emphasised global warming, using just a candle and a glass of water.

But the laurels were won by Amurtya and Sayan from Uttarpara Children?s Own Home, with their uniquely simple experiment on the point of gravity.

The investiture ceremony on the final day was attended by Dr N.R. Banerjee (vice-chancellor, BE College, Shibpur, Meera Bhattacharjee, wife of chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, MP Md Selim and Utpal Dutta, secretary, Paschim Banga Bigyan Mancha. The five-day science extravaganza ended with a pledge to popularise scientific values among all sections of society.

Santanu Sengupta,
Class XII, Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan