Column | Window Seat

Window Seat | Mrinal Chatterjee

Valentine Day Celebration

Across India, barring few areas, every Valentine Day see a tussle between pro-Valentine Day Celebration and anti-Valentine Day Celebration people. You can google to know more about Valentine Day, its genesis and history. Not many people indulged in this tussle do know or care to know about it anyway.

In India- Valentine Day celebration has boiled down to a jamboree of the youth- ready to mingle. Thanks to the market that for obvious reasons has heavily promoted exchange of gifts and the culture of eating out and spending romantic time together at some exotic place. So you find young couples moving together hand in hand in parks and malls and coochicooing in upmarket coffee shops and restaurants. You also find ample PDA- public display of affection.

That, I guess has irritated and angered some people who oppose Valentine Day celebration in the name of ‘culture’.

There are people with colourful headbands and ugly looking lathi in hand roaming around parks and other such places in search of couples in compromising or seemingly compromising amorous positions. The lathi wielding people are bent upon public-shaming the young couples. They say: this kind of ‘activity’ is anti-Indian culture and they are doing it to protect ‘our culture’. The pro-Valentine people will talk about freedom and right to move around freely. In some states like Odisha, police personnel are deployed to protect the ‘premees’ (love-birds).

See the irony: Valentine Day- the festival of celebration of love has been the bone of contention of a conflict.

Outreach International Radio Fair

 

Radio, as several surveys and studies show is gaining ground in India- in terms of listernship and business. Thanks to a favourable government policy, licensing of community radio stations (CRS) have become easier compared to the earlier times.  By end 2018, the number of CRSs in the country has grown to 258. Number of private commercial radio stations and Internet Radio stations has also grown phenomenally.

Radio Exhibition by Ghanashayam Pattanaik of Bolgarh, Khurda

Outreach a Bhubaneswar based organization has been organizing a Radio Fair, one of its kind in the country for the last 5 years. From last year they have made it an International Fair. This year there was participation from NHK, Japan; VOA (Voice of America) and Bangladesh.

As part of the fair, exhibition of radio sets and gramophones, had stalls repairing old radio sets and making new ones. Veteran broadcasters like Akhil Mittal and Upendra Kishore Pahad Singh rubbed shoulder with new age radio jockey Rounac (‘Bauaa’ is the popular character that he plays) of Rd FM. People listened to old classical songs and some iconic broadcasts.

Radio- is back, and how!

Alternative way of Birthday Celebration

Recently I turned 57.

At the wrong side of 50s, one more birthday means one more step towards old-age. So I was ideating about reversing the aging process. No I don't want to live forever. That would be too boring. What I was thinking is reversing the aging up to say 24 or 25 years of age, the prime time of youth. Here is how it would work: after you become 56 or 57, the scientists would administer a pill or injection which would reverse your age by one year- until a pre-determined age. So after 57th birthday- you take this pill, next year you are biologically 58 but will feel like 56. This will continue till say your 85 years of age. By that time you will feel like 25- prime youth. And then at one fine morning you die.

Just like that. Phut! And you are gone. 
No suffering old age problems. No swallowing of umpteen numbers of pills. No doctor lording over you to tell what to eat and what not to. No hospital bed. No anxious relatives showing fake-sympathy. 
I call that the best end of life.
Can some scientist help me to realise my dream, please!

My teacher, a respected man of science Professor Amulya Panda tells me that in the book ‘Death of Death’ written by Wood and Cordeiro in Spanish and released in April last year at Barcelona the authors say that “Death will be optional and old age treatable by 2045. Man may become immortal and also enjoy eternal youth.”

But I don’t want that. Eternal youth will be too boring.

Tail piece: Budget

Budget is the noble democratic process through which money is transferred from  ‘those who work’ to ‘those who vote’.

Why cry?

Two children were waiting in the Doctors Waiting Room. The little girl started crying. Little boy asked her: “Why are you crying?” 

The girl said: “I am here for blood test and the doctor is going to cut my finger.”

The little boy too started crying.

Girl: “Now why are you crying?”

Boy: “I am here for the Urine Test.

(Courtesy: Social Media)

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Journalist-turned media academician Mrinal Chatterjee lives at Dhenkanal in Odisha. He also writes fiction. An anthology of this column published in 2018 will be shortly published. Persons interested to get a free e-copy may send a mail to him at mrinalchatterjee@ymail.com

This column is published every Sunday in Gangtok based English daily Sikkim times and www.orissadiary.com