Thursday, 8 October 2015

Column | Window Seat

Window Seat | Mrinal Chatterjee
O Barabati!
I am not at all surprised at the unruly behaviour of a large section of people at Barabati Stadium during the Second T-20 cricket match, throwing water bottles and creating ruckus as Indian team collapsed like the proverbial pack of cards. This only reflects our desire to succeed at any cost. In real life we are not prepared to put that effort to succeed. We want somebody else to succeed for us. We assign that responsibility to Indian Cricket Team. When they fail, we feel aggrieved personally. Personal grief finds fuel when others also feel the same way. Then we become enraged and feel betrayed. And we want to do something... anything to give vent to our anger at having been let down. So we shout expletives, throw water bottles or any other article that we can lay our hands on, damage public property, if we can.
We fail to take a defeat in sports field sportingly because we are not winning in other fields. Because, we feel this is our best bet at winning. As a nation, we tend to outsource winning to somebody else on our behalf. When that happens, a cricket team wins, or a girl is crowned Miss World we take it as our personal victory. When that does not happen we feel let down.
The Barabati incident showed us our warts under media glare. That’s it.
College Elections
I am disturbed and dismayed as violence in student election is spreading to more and more colleges in Odisha, considered by many as a relatively peaceful state. Bombs are hurled inside colleges including a  Women’s University premises. College properties are vandalised. Roads are blocked. Traffic is disrupted almost daily in many places. Normal life is being disturbed.
I am told the same situation prevails in West Bengal too.
What is happening in the education sector? 
A teacher friend of mine asks: Whom do we teach? What do we teach? Where do we teach?
Colleges have turned into battle fields of lumpen elements. Local politicians are out to recruit party workers from colleges who would lend muscle power.
Is this how Odisha will prosper? Is this how India will graduate into a knowledge society?
I am disturbed.
Hope
Prof. Dhaneswar Sahoo, retd HOD of Philosophy , BJB College and Academy Award winner litterateur has set an example by donating the body of his mother for medical purpose. As his mother breathed her last he took her body and gave it over.
Here is a great, unassumingly simple man who walks the talk. He does what he preaches. 
In a society crowded with hypocrites, self seekers and downright goons, we need more people like Prof. Sahu amidst us to keep our faith on humanity.
Tailpiece
One beautiful girl on morning walk can improve the health of ten men.
(Courtesy: Facebook posting)

Mrinal Chatterjee a journalist turned media academician lives in Dhenkanal, Odisha. He can be contacted at mrinalchatterjee@ymail.com
Posted in www.orissadiary.com 8.9.2015

Column | Jagate Thiba Jetedina

Samaja Saptahika, 10-16 Oct. 2015

Sunday, 4 October 2015

50 Great Cartoonists | Rajinder Puri

RajinderPuri: the humorist

Rajinder Puri, besides being a well known political cartoonist is also a veteran columnist and political activist. He was on the staff of The Hindustan Times and The Statesman as a cartoonist and writer. Currently, his column appears in Outlook magazine. He also writes for The Statesman and for the website Boloji under his column “My Word”. He does not draw cartoons these days as often as he used to do.
Puri was born on 20 September 1934 in Karachi, now in Pakistan. He drew cartoons for The Statesman in 1956-57, after which he went to London, where he drew cartoons briefly for The Guardian and The Glasgow Herald (1958–59). He returned to India to become cartoonist for the Hindustan Times from 1959 to 1967. He started working as a columnist and freelancer after this stint. From 1972 to 1977, he was the editor and proprietor of Stir Weekly. From late Seventies, he has been a freelance journalist and his work has appeared in several leading dailies and weeklies of India.
RajinderPuri moved into politics in 1977. He was the founding General Secretary of the Janata Party in 1977 and was in charge of campaign publicity in the 1977 general election that brought the Janata Party to power. Later he was founder General Secretary of Lok Dal, then Member National Executive and Labor Cell-in-Charge of BJP. Since 1988 he has been attached to no political party.
RajinderPuri was most active as a cartoonist in what is regarded as the golden period of Indian Cartooning: 1960-1980. He holds a major position in the great lineage of cartoonists in the country that include Shankar, Kutty, O.V. Vijayan and Kerala Varma.
2007062652350201Puri is nostalgic about those days. Terming the golden days of cartooning as ‘much more political and lively,’ Mr. Puri said in an interview “Cartoons in mainstream English newspapers have now become more graphic. There is not much critical comment in it. Cartoonists are more interested in illustration using computers. In some newspapers, cartoons have become just illustrations.” Urging the new generation cartoonists to develop greater interest in politics, Mr. Puri said they should also exhibit an independent assessment of political events. “They should be able to add something to the written word. Today’s young cartoonists are highly talented. Seniors have a lot to learn from them. They could also learn from us. Cartoonists of older times had greater ideological understanding than those now.”
In the evening of his long and illustrious career as a political cartoonist, thinker and writer, he lived in Delhi where he breathed his last on February 15, 2015.
This is what Times of India wrote about him on its 15 Feb issue:
“Junior cartoonists were in awe of the mind and art RajinderPuri generated. Senior cartoonists joked he wielded a dagger. That was him, the power of his mind, a combo of Vijayan, Abu, Ravi Shankar,
RK and Shankar, so beautifully amalgamated into a synchronized punch. Puri’s mind was pure because he had the anti-establishment mindset years before AAP, that was the power of his mind.
He was very audience conscious in the visual sense — never clutter art to respect the reader. His intellectual cartooning senses were forceful and his columns were equally cerebral and thought provoking. Never has a cartoonist wielded so much power in the pen for sheer impact. I studied his lines and said to myself. Never deviate from the power of the black and white line.

He taught us that cartooning is like a laser thin beam, the sharper it is the more incisive it is. His personalties, unlike Laxman, portrayed the other side devil ethos of leaders, perfect features, powerful metaphors and excellent rendering with the most advanced political mind much superior to columnists who could never illustrate their minds … which he did. That was his power — to write and illustrate your own verbiage”.

Thursday, 1 October 2015

Information | National Conference on Kabir in Raipur

National Conference on Kabir


Kabir Communication Research Study Center, Kushabhau Thakre University of Journalism and Mass Communication, Raipur is organizing a two day National Conference on Kabir: A Great Communicator at the University Campus.
The Sub- themes of the Conference will be:
  1. KABIR: A Great Communicator
  2. KABIR: Literature and Communication
  3. KABIR: Harmony
  4. KABIR: Philosophy
  5. KABIR: Youth World
Research papers are invited both in soft copy to the email id: ktujm.em@gmail.comdrnarendra88@gmail.com and in hard copy to the postal address of the University.
Last date of submission of abstract is 03/10/2015.
Last date of submission of complete papers is 05/10/2015.
For Details contact: 
Dr.Narendra Tripathi
Co-Convener
National Conference ‘Rashtriya Chaupal’
Kushabhau Thakre University of Journalism and Mass Communication, Raipur
Kathadih, P.O.Sunder Nagar,
Raipur (Chhattisgarh) - 492013
Mob: 09425755699
Office:  0771-2779207, 2779202
E-mail id: ktujm.em@gmail.com,
Website: www ktujm.ac.in      

Column | Jagate Thiba Jete Dina

Samaja Saptahika 3-9 Oct. 2015