Party pulse: Students jive to remixes with DJ Akash at the console at Xavotsav on January 28. Hips don’t lie, Tere bin and Where’s the party tonight were some of the tracks that drove the crowd on St Xavier’s College grounds wild on the last day of the fest. Picture by Sanjoy Chattopadhyaya

Students jive to remixes with DJ Akash at the console at Xavotsav on January 28. Hips don’t lie, Tere bin and Where’s the party tonight were some of the tracks that drove the crowd on St Xavier’s College grounds wild on the last day of the fest. Picture by Sanjoy ChattopadhyayaSpelling a word right is not only about memorising the sequence of letters in it. This was proved at the finals of the TTIS Spelling Bee contest held at American Center on January 24. With clues galore to help students find their way through words that might be unfamiliar, it was, as St Xavier’s College student Stuti Agarwal put it, “a learning experience all the way.”

In the first round, ninety students, selected through the preliminary rounds held at Calcutta Girls’ High School and Hariyana Vidya Mandir on January 22, were whittled down to 20 through a written test where they had to spell 27 words (picture by Bishwarup Dutta).

The final round, an oral session where students were aided with clues to spell three words correctly, saw Sarthak Chatterjee, a Class VIII student of Don Bosco School, Park Circus, emerge the winner.

So, while spelling “Aotearoa”, one got to know that it was the traditional name for New Zealand, and that “daguerreotype” was the photographic process associated with artist and chemist Louis Daguerre.

The words “paradigm” and “bourgeoisie” were child’s play for Sarthak, as was “arteriosclerosis”, the tie-breaker that decided the contest in his favour. “Today’s contest was easier for me than the selection round. I am not being vain,” he said.

“I read a lot, and I have developed a way with spellings. It is important to view the words to get them right. For me, the most significant aspect today was to compete with so many people, and to emerge the best among them,” he added. Sarthak won a gift voucher worth Rs 5,000 and a silver shield.

Joked chief guest Henry Jardine, the US consul-general, who gave away gift vouchers to the winners: “With the spell-check facility on computers today, I don’t think I can spell anything anymore.”

Remarking on the importance of “pushing the envelope”, he said: “It is important to take failure in one’s stride. But you must enjoy what you do. It is the only way to imbibe knowledge. Fluency in English is important today as the language is growing to be the lingua franca of our time.”

Syamantak Shobhan Basu, a Class IX student of St Joseph’s Collegiate School, was the runner-up. He won an award of Rs 2,500, but felt that the money was an added bonus. “It is the recognition that matters. I was quite satisfied with my performance, though I didn’t win. The other contestants offered tough competition,” he said.

Romila Saha

 

Clean, green drive

Lakshmipat Singhania Academy hosted an inter-school competition on January 11 and 12 showcasing models, charts and banners made by the students under the initiative, Project Citizen (picture by Sanjoy Chattopadhyaya). Under the project, children take up awareness drives and work towards a clean and green Calcutta. The topics covered by the 10 participating schools ranged from juvenile delinquency to clean-dream zones in the city.

Each school focussed on a particular social or environmental issue. There were presentations on polythene use by Lakshmipat Singhania Academy, on young law-breakers by Kalyani Public School, and on cleanliness by Birla High School for Boys. “We researched on crimes against children like kidnapping and molestation. We also got help from the police,” said the Class IX students from Apeejay School, Salt Lake.

While Ashok Hall suggested that an institution be formed where downtrodden children could earn and learn at the same time, BD Memorial Institute talked about the hazards faced by child labourers and the prevalence of sexual abuse among adolescents. “For collecting information on our subject, we met NGOs who work on these issues and also visited slums where we spoke to child labourers,” said the team from BD Memorial Institute.

Lakshmipat Singhania Academy, which was the first to take up Project Citizen in the form of an anti-polythene drive on campus, displayed the projects it has been involved in at the meet. Sixty-five teachers of the school are executing the project that has now become a part of the curriculum. “We are also training ragpickers to make paper bags,” said teacher-coordinator Chandrima Sen.

Nabamita Mitra

 

Urban dilemma

After the success of 64 Squares, Theatrician presented The Luckies Trapped, its second workshop-based play, on January 13 and 14 at Proscenium Art Centre. The play was a culmination of a workshop in which about 20 school and college students participated for over a month. The rigorous sessions included introductory theatre exercises, lessons on personality development, voice modulation, onstage presentation, backstage work and script-writing.

Themed around the fragmented and often delusional lives of today’s urban Indians, The Luckies Trapped was scripted in parts by the participants. Each sub-plot of the play was unique in mood, tone, expression and style — yet together they could bring out the wildly diverse facets of the subject. The audience’s verdict was in favour of the young artistes, most of whom were performing for the first time.

Monidipa Mondal