Column | Window Seat

Window Seat | Mrinal Chatterjee

Phobia

Biologically speaking, developing a phobia is as easy as experiencing a traumatic event and consistently relating that event to something (often arbitrary) that was present when the event transpired.It is possible for someone to develop an irrational fear of almost anything.

For example,'caligynephobia' is the distinct fear of beautiful women; at least the ones the sufferer deems to be beautiful. 'Philophobia is the fear of falling in love. This may start out by obsessing over a broken relationship, and eventually culminate in the fear of experiencing heartbreak again.

Then there is phronemophobia. People who suffer from phronemophobia are scared of thinking. More specifically, they are afraid to be alone with their thoughts, and are said to have a faulty understanding of how the brain interprets ideas and reactions as separate things. They feel that if a certain thought enters their head, they will be powerless to stop it. Therefore 'phronemophobics' spend a lot of their time distracting themselves in order to keep deeper thoughts at bay.

And then there is 'Pantophobia', (also referred to as panophobia or omniphobia), which means fear of everything. While understandably hard to pin down in direct psychological terms, it can also refer to a non-specific phobia, or just a general sense of being scared all the time.

I guess, most of us are suffering from pantophobia. We are scared of everything. And some of us middle class 'intellectuals' are definitely suffering from phronemophobia.

Clarity is dangerous?

Richard Dawkins, often termed as the world's most famous atheist said in a recent interview," I have two theories which are not mutually exclusive. One is the religion business. People really, really hate their religion being critisised. It's as through you've said they had an ugly face. There is a historical attitude that religion is off-limit to criticism. Also some people find clarity threatening. They like muddle, confusion, obscurity. So when somebody does no more than speak clearly it sounds threatening."

How profound!

Farewell

The other day I attended a farewell party of a colleague who is retiring on this month end. I realised that farewell party is an occasion for nostalgia, reflection and probably plans for the one’s own post-retirement future. Even as I was munching the pastries, I was thinking how I would feel when I'll retire on 2025. On mid 2017 it looks too distant. But I know, I'll be there almost suddenly- without me even realising that the time has arrived. Will I be happy? Will I be sad? But one thing is certain- I'll miss this place in which I have been working for the last seventeen years, this small Central Odisha town, this small campus with a hill and a forest woven at its rims.
Let me not think about retirement now. I have a heavy load of pending works before I hang my boots. And I do not want to be distracted by the thought of life without any work to do, any deadline to meet, any assignment to complete. That is too tempting to fall in love with.

Tailpiece 1: How to get a seat in a crowded restaurant?

A man went to a restaurant and after seeing every table being occupied by couples, he took out hiw phone and pretended to make a phone call loudly saying

“Hey your wife is here with another man...come over and see for yourself.”

Nine ladies disappreared!

Tailpiece 2: Kya Common Hai?

Mandir k bahar Chappal rakhane me aur Miscall dene me kya common hai?

  .....Hamesa dar laga raheta he k sala udhar se utha na le…!!!

(Courtesy: Sudhansu Deo )

***

Mrinal Chatterjee, a journalist turned media academician. He lives on the valley of Paniohala Hills at Dhenkanal, Odisha and besides writing on media and current affairs, also writes fiction.

mrinalchatterjee@ymail.com

Top of Form

Bottom of Form

Column | Point by Point

Sambad Kalika 30 July 2017

Column | Patha Prantare

Samaya Taranga, 30.7.2017

Media Awards

Press Council of India Awards

Press Council of India has announced awards in the following categories.
1. Raja Ram Mohan Roy National Award for Excellence in Journalism
2. Rural Journalism and Development Reporting
3. Investigative Journalism, 
4. Photo Journalism
(i) Single News Picture
(ii) Photo Feature

5. Best Newspapers Art:
The Award for 'Best Newspapers Art' covering cartoons, caricatures and illustration relates to the creativity of the art journalism through the medium of newspapers.
For details see: presscouncil.nic.in/WriteReadDa…/…/UpdatedNationalAwards.pdf

(Posted on 29 July 2017)

Column | Jagate Thiba Jetedina

Samaja Saptahika 29 July- 4 August 2017

Column | Window Seat

Window Seat | Mrinal Chatterjee

O Bengal

Every time I visit Bengal, the land amazes me. It is so full of contradictions!
It has the best of brains but the atmosphere of most of the government educational institutions is not
conducive to education, to put it very mildly. It has the best of doctors but an appalling public health
service. It has tens of thousands of skilled workers but non-functioning industries. The carcasses of large manufacturing units at Howrah, Hind Motors, Dunlop and countless other places are mute testimonies.
Political interference has incapacitated the three areas West Bengal was excellent in: education, health and medium manufacturing industries. After over three decades of left front rule, people of West Bengal opted for poriborton- change and brought a government headed by feisty Mamata Banerjee in 2011, their eighth CM and the first woman to assume this office in West Bengal. After 7 years hardly anything seemed to have changed so far. The colleges are more chaotic than ever. Large and medium industries are shying away from West Bengal primarily because of the land acquisition problem, a not so encouraging work culture and fleece mentality of local politicians.
There is disillusionment and frustration among the people, although it has not really reflected in the
results of the last assembly elections. There is a simmering discontentment and rage at the way things
are going on. Darjeeling is on the boil. There are law and order problems and communal tension in the districts bordering Bangladesh.
But Bengal is an amazing land. It can turn around at the most unexpected way.

Foodie’s Delight

Kolkata is a foodie’s delight. It has all kinds of food to suit all taste and budget. The office pada street
food stalls offer arguably the widest variety of food in the country at a rate no other city can match.
This time I stayed in Kolkata for three days. Thanks to the amazing friends I have in Kolkata I was taken a food trip for the three days. From breakfast to Flurrys in Park Street (which arguably offers the best English breakfast in the country) to authentic Bengali lunch with mustard hilsa to mutton biriyani in dinner at Shiraj’s the trip was more than soul satisfying.
But about one thing I always wondered- why is that Biriyani in Kolkata has a big piece of potato. I found no potato in the biriyani in Hyderabad, Lucknow, Delhi or any other place.
This time I heard a story regrding why biriyani in Kolkata has potato. It happened in Nawab Wajed Ali Sha’s sojurn in Kolkata. One day he had invited guests for sahi dawat. But it so happened that the
required amount of mutton was not available on the day. The cook was at a loss. Then he used potato
in the same way he used mutton in biriyani. The guests liked it. They thought it was some exotic vegetable in the royal biriyani. And thus, the humble aloo got a prominent place in the biriyani in
Kolkata.

Bharatiya Vidya Bhaban and 

Sir Asutosh Mookerjee’s mustache

Bharatiya Vidya Bhaban, established by K.M.Munshi in 1938 is a country wide educational and cultural organization. It has two centres in Kolkata. One is located in the ancestral house of Sir Asutosh Mookherjee, who was known as ‘Banglar Bagh’- the Tiger of Bengal for his personality, knowledge and probably mustache.
I went there and met his grandson Justice Chittatosh Mookherjee, who was the Chief Justice of Calcutta and Bombay High Court. His father Ramaprasad Mookherjee and grandfather were also Chief Justices of various High Courts. I met Sir Asutosh Mookerjee’s granddaughter Dr. Rina Bhaduri, who was a Professor and keen to upkeep the legacy of Sir Asutosh in spreading education.
I learnt an interesting thing about Sir Asutosh from Subir Ghosh, author and Principal of Bhavan’s Mass Communication Centre. Sir Asutosh was also used to be known as Gunpho Saraswati. Saraswati- for the vast knowledge on several subjects that he had and gunpho because he had that prominent mustache covering the upper lip. In Odia there is a term for the kind of mustache Sir Asutosh had: torani chanka . It is difficult to translate the word or explain the meaning in English. Odias are fond of watered rice. The water which becomes thick as it is usually kept overnight- is called torani. It is the kind of mustache that filters the torani.

Sealdah

Sealdah is an interesting place. Here the market overflows into the street. You have to jostle through
even while walking on the road. There are a row of shops selling marriage cards. On the opposite side
you have a row of shops which sells astrological gems and trinkets. There are prominent advertisements
of astrologers who claim to have all solutions of all problems.
I often wonder one of them should be made the PM of India. He/she will solve all problems of India.

Tailpiece: Astrologer’s Prediction

When the astrologer said that I was born for bigger things in life… little did I know his predictions were
so accurate. I moved from M to L to XL to XXL to XXXL to…
(Courtesy: Social Media)

**

The author, a journalist turned media academician lives in Dhenkanal, a Central Odisha town
surrounded by hills. He also writes fiction and radio plays.

mrinalchatterjee@ymail.com

Article :

Realism in Art and Literature in Contemporary Odisha

Dr. Mrinal Chatterjee

Put simply, realism in the arts means, the accurate, detailed, unembellished depiction of nature or of contemporary life. Realism rejects imaginative idealization in favour of a close observation of outward appearances. As such, realism in its broad sense has comprised many artistic currents in different civilizations[1].

In the visual arts, for example, realism can be found in ancient Hellenistic Greek sculptures accurately portraying boxers and decrepit old women. The works of such 17th-century painters as Caravaggio, the Dutch genre painters, the Spanish painters José de Ribera, Diego Velázquez, and Francisco de Zurbarán, and the Le Nain brothers in France are realist in approach. The works of the 18th-century English novelists Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding, and Tobias Smollett may also be called realistic.

Realism was not consciously adopted as an aesthetic program until the mid-19th century in France, however. Indeed, realism may be viewed as a major trend in French novels and paintings between 1850 and 1880 in which the artists and writers attempted to portray the lives, appearances, problems, customs, and mores of the middle and lower classes, of the unexceptional, the ordinary, the humble, and the unadorned. Realism was stimulated by several intellectual developments in the first half of the 19th century. Among these were the anti-Romantic movement in Germany, with its emphasis on the common man as an artistic subject.

Theme of Realism in modern Indian literature is an outcome of the creation of a reading public which was trying to construct an identity in the context of the anti-colonial struggles and nation-building. This attempt combined liberal-reformist ideology with an affirmation of an 'Indian' cultural specificity. The realist novel's focus on growth and individual freedom is transformed in the Indian context with the economic conditions of uneven capitalism. Thus the economic, political as well as the social conditions served to provide the basis for Realism in modern Indian literature[2]. 

It is no different in Odisha. Art and literature in Odisha followed the general trend prevalent at the national level. However, we find a surge of uber-realism in Odia literature post 1980s in the writings of writers like Kanheialal Das and Jagdish Mohanty. This surge continues through the early decades of the new millennium in the fiction of writers like Gourhari Das, Mrunal, Ashish Gadnayak and Khetrabasi Nayak.

This surge of realism is present in the theatre since 1980s. In the operas (open air theatre) the realism wears the garb of popular fantasy to cater to the low brow entertainment need of a paying public. The operas take up contemporary events and issues and weave a tale around them with enough turns and twists to keep the audience glued.  Interestingly mainstream Odia cinema, barring a few, is immune to the surge and continues its dalliance with romanticism. At the best it takes up the contemporary themes like political corruption, violence, atrocities against women, but the treatment is too melodramatic to keep the realism out.  

***

24 July 2017

mrinalchatterjeeiimc@gmail.com

The author, a journalist turned media academician also writes fiction. So far he has published 6 novels and 7 anthologies of short stories.

---

[1] https://www.britannica.com/art/realism-art

[2] http://www.indianetzone.com/49/theme_realism_modern_indian_literature.htm

Media Jobs

IIMC, Dhenkanal needs an Academic Assistant

IIMC, Dhenkanal needs an Academic Assistant for English Journalism on one academic year contract. Persons with Masters in Mass Communication and/or Industry experience may apply by 4 August 2017:
Regional Director
IIMC, 
Sanchar Marg, Dhenkanal 759 001
iimcdkl@yahoo.co.in

(Posted on 29 July 2017)

***

The UNESCO New Delhi Office is offering internship opportunities in
the Social and Human Sciences Sector (SHS) for a duration of 4 to 6 months.
***

Published in The Statesman 22.7.2017

Column | Jagate Thiba Jetedina

Samaja Saptahika July 2017

Media Academician Jobs

Assistant Professor in Journalism 

Applications are invited for the post of Assistant Professor in Journalism under Delhi University colleges - Lady Shri Ram College - 3, Kamala Nehru College - 1

See details here:

http://as1.du.ac.in/colrec2017/index.php

Posted on 12.7.17

Lecture | Why Media Matter?

My new Book

Point by Point

Published in 2017.
Cover and Illustrations: Siba Swastik. Siba my student at Iimc Dhenkanal did an excellent job. Presently he is working with Kanak TV in their Graphics and Animation Section.
This book contains 63 pieces of my selected writings from my column Point by Point. This column was published in Odia daily Khabar and is being published in Odia daily Sambad Kalika.

Column | Pathe Prantare

Samaya Taranga 9.7.17

Column | Window Seat

Window Seat | Mrinal Chatterjee

Rain

It has been slightly above normal monsoon so far in most parts of the country. Good for the farmers, good for the country and good for the ruling party.

It is raining now in Dhenkanal, a small town where I live. And with the rain all the side effects of the season have become visible. The roads in almost all cities and towns across the country are flooded. Thanks to the clogged drains and obstruction on the natural way of water. Forget Cuttack which is a low lying city prone to water logging, even hilly Bhubaneswar roads are flooded. In big cities like Kolkata and Mumbai- water logging has become so common that people have taken them in their strides. I had been to Delhi recently. Fifteen minutes of heavy rain could and did make life miserable in that smartest of the smart city of India.  

With rain, the ailments have come in great strength: Fever, Cold, Cough, diarrhea, etc. Hospitals are full. Doctors are busy. Pharmacy shop owners are a happy lot now.

Vegetables have become costlier. So have the fruits. Mango has disappeared from the market.

Despite all these, children do play in the rains. They do make paper boats and sail them.

Rains do evoke a sense of rejoice in some, apprehension in some.

Somehow, rain makes you look up at the sky every now and then.

Irony of Modern Living

Research says, by 2020, there will be fewer than 20 million deaths worldwide from infectious disease, but more than 50 million deaths from chronic preventable lifestyle diseases—heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. These are all fuelled by the same preventable risk factors: high blood pressure, overweight, physical inactivity, high blood sugar, high cholesterol, and smoking.

Inference: human beings will eventually self-destruct themselves.

Impact of the Spoken Word

Unfortunately in our society common human courtesy is taking a back seat. This you can experience by the way people not known to each other speak to each other in the market places, at railway stations, in public places. Most of the times, people tend to yell at the others. It creates a vicious circle, vitiating the atmosphere.

Most of these problems could be avoided if we speak softly. Researchers at Kenyon College conducted a test in cooperation with the US Navy. The purpose was to discover how the tone of the voice affected sailors when they were given orders. The experiments revealed that the way a person was addressed determined to a large extent the kind of response he would make. For example, when an individual was spoken to in a soft voice, he would answer in a similar manner. But when he was shouted at, his reply came back in the same sharp tone. This was true whether the communication was given face-to-face, over the intercom, or by telephone.

 With yellers there is a tendency to yell back at him or her. However, other research has shown that if we answer a yeller softly in a soft tone of voice, he will have to lean forward to hear what we are saying and tend to lower his own volume.

 Richard De Haan wisely said, "What we say and how we say it not only makes a difference in the reaction we'll receive, but it also determines whether conflict or peace will result. Many arguments could be avoided and tense situations relaxed if we understood and practiced this truth."

Peacocks in JNU Campus

While in Delhi, I stay close by JNU campus and go on a morning walk inside the campus.  There are scores of peacocks in the sprawling JNU campus in Delhi. It is a delight to watch them strolling regally along the roads, now scurrying under the bushes, now flying a short distance the blue of their body framed against the grey sky or the green of the babool forest. Oblivious of all the controversies over how they have babies, the peacocks and peahens continue their daily chores. 

Tailpiece 1: Why?

Man: Waiter, why do I find so many stones in my pulaav?

Waitress: Sir, if I am not wrong, you ordered ‘Kashmiri Pulaav’..

Man: O shit..

(Courtesy: Social Media)

Tailpiece 1: Men and Women

Who are MEN ?

Woh jo narak me bhi mile to kahe ....abe !! Yamraj ki beti dekhi ?? Aag hai Aag !!

And, who are Women??

Who go to heaven and say "Apsara dekh...no dressing sense at all!

(Courtesy: Bibhuti Rath on facebook)

**

The author, a journalist turned media academician lives in Dhenkanal, a Central Odisha town surrounded by hills. He also writes fiction and radio plays.

mrinalchatterjee@ymail.com

9 July 2017

This column is published every Sunday in Sikkim Times and www.orissadiary.com

The Great Indian Newspapers: The Living Legends | Jam e Jamshed

Communication Today. April-June 2017

Media Jobs

Sub Editor at Ommcom News

 Ommcom News- a leading digital news platform in Odisha having its web portal www.ommcomnews.com and mobile app- Ommcom News, is inviting CVs from candidates for the post of correspondent cum sub editor in Ommcom News office in Bhubaneswar. Candidates with following qualifications would be preferred:

1. The candidate should have very good command over English language and should have passion to work in digtial news platform.

2. The job requirement is primarily that of a sub editor in the newsroom desk.

2. Candidates having at least one year of work experience in news portal or English daily newsroom desk would be preferred.

3. The candidate is expected to have basic knowledge of how news is posted and shared in Facebook , Twitter and other social media.

4. The salary per month for the post would be between Rs 10k to 15K depending on the work experience of the candidate.

5. Interested candidate may apply with their CV and photo before 3rd of July to ommcom.media@gmail.com and jajati.karan@gmail.com

6. Interested suitable candidates would be invited for an interview in Ommcom News office in Bhubaneswar.

Posted on 6.7.17

Column | Jagate Thiba Jete Dina

Samaja Saptahika 8-14 July 2017

column | Pathe Prantare

Samaya Taranga 2.7.17