Category Archives: Records, All

Toto language more endangered than tribe

About Kolkata / West Bengal, Historical Links / Pre-Independence, Records, All
Researchers and even the members of Toto community admit that the language is under threat and influence of others languages. File photo: Sushanta Patronobish / The Hindu
Researchers and even the members of Toto community admit that the language is under threat and influence of others languages. File photo: Sushanta Patronobish / The Hindu

Language of primitive tribe has no script and is under influence of Nepali and Bengali: researchers

When scientists of the Anthropological Survey of India (AnSI) set out to conduct a study on language of the primitive Toto tribe, whose population has dwindled to 1,536, they did not realise that the language is more endangered than the tribe itself.

During their study they recorded the vocabulary, folklore, and even some songs in Toto language, and realised that the language has no script.

For centuries, the language that belongs to the Tibeto-Burman group of Indian languages, has survived in the small community completely orally without much research, Asok Kumar Mukhopadhyay, research associate, Linguistics (AnSI), one of the prominent members of the research team, who visited the hamlet of Toto tribe, told The Hindu.

“Being a small community, we found that the Totos communicate among themselves in their own language, but the moment they leave their hamlet of Totopara in Madarihaat block of Alipurduar district, they prefer to not communicate in the language even among themselves,” Mr. Mukhopadhyay said.

Under threat
Researchers and even the members of Toto community admit that the language is under threat and influence of others languages, particularly Nepali and Bengali, is increasing day by day.

Interestingly, despite the language lacking a script, members of the community, whose literacy rate as per a sample survey carried out in 2003 was just 33.64 per cent, have penned books and poems in their language albeit in the Bengali script.

Dhaniram Toto, one of the members of the community, has written two books in Toto language over the past two years.

Mr. Toto claims his book, Lokeswar, is about the folk culture of Totos and his other book Uttar Banga Lokpath is about folk tales of the community.

“Since our language does not have a script, I have to take help of the Bengali script,” he says, adding that there is an urgent need to develop a script for the language.

Mr. Toto, who is employed in West Bengal’s Backward Class Welfare Department, says there are others in the community such as Satyajit Toto, who write in the language taking the help of scripts of other languages.

Keep it alive
Their aim is just to keep the language alive. “We carried out this study to keep record of the language. It may happen in a few decades that the language may get extinct. The study of the Toto language is essential to understand the overall cultural ambit of the primitive tribe,” said Kakali Chakraborty, head of office, Eastern Regional Centre of (AnSI).

Day labourers
Totos, one of the primitive Himalayan tribes in the country, usually work as day labourers and porters carrying oranges from Bhutan to the local market in north Bengal.

Despite the geographical isolation of Totopara, the members have started laying emphasis on education, resulting in about half a dozen of graduates, which includes girls. But the elders point out that despite a number of schools being present in the locality, there is no one to teach the children in their own language, and as a result, the children are losing touch with their culture.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities> Kolkata / by Shiv Sahay Singh / Kolkata – August 01st, 2014

The Lede – Shoshimukhi’s Song : In search of the first voice recorded in India

Arts, Culture & Entertainment, Records, All
Panchu Gopal Biswas’s gramophone collection includes the first voice recorded in India, that of theatre actress Shoshimukhi - / Photo : SUDHITI NASKAR FOR THE CARAVAN
Panchu Gopal Biswas’s gramophone collection includes the first voice recorded in India, that of theatre actress Shoshimukhi – / Photo : SUDHITI NASKAR FOR THE CARAVAN

WHEN FREDERICK WILLIAM GAISBERG ARRIVED in India in 1902, he had a daunting task ahead of him. In a country that had never before encountered sound recording technology, Gaisberg, a recording engineer with the Gramophone and Typewriter Company had been assigned the job of recording promising voices for commercial distribution. On 11 November that year, in a hotel room in Kolkata, Gaisberg recorded the voice of Gauhar Jaan, a singer of Armenian descent.

Gauhar Jaan went on to become the first commercial recording artist in India, and her career and work are now legendary. But hers was not the first voice that Gaisberg recorded.

“It was Shoshimukhi,” said Indrani Majumdar, a Kolkata-based researcher and collector of old Bengali gramophone records. Shoshimukhi, Majumdar told me when I met her in her east Kolkata studio in March, was an actor in the city’s thriving theatre scene at the turn of the 20th century. “The first recorded content was a Bengali song, ‘Ami ki shojoni kusumeri’ (Is my beloved a flower),” Majumdar said. Gaisberg hadn’t been impressed with the voices of Shoshimukhi or Fani Bala, the other singer he recorded in his first session on 8 November. In his diary, he described them as “two little nautch girls … with miserable voices”.

Majumdar has been immersed in the early history of recording in India as part of a project to collect, digitise and archive 78 rpm gramophone recordings of Bengali theatre performed between 1900 and 1930. Her research, now funded by the India Foundation for Arts and the Berlin Phonogramm Archive, began seven years ago, after she chanced upon a collection of 400 records that belonged to her late grandfather. “Some had labels of drama companies on them,” Majumdar said. “Not much was known about the plays of this period. I thought it would be great if I could do something to restore that part of history.” In the course of her work, she has consulted a number of sources, among them Gaisberg’s own published diaries and researcher Michael Kinnear’s detailed book The Gramophone Company’s First Recordings, which identifies the matrix number of Shoshimukhi’s recording, India’s first, as 13024.

Majumdar’s research has given her a sense of how the theatre community in Kolkata reacted to the advent of recording technology. The fact that no recordings have been found of some theatre legends, like the actor, writer and director Girish Ghosh, suggests that not everyone took to the idea. “Probably because the 78 rpm records were considered a fluke”, said Majumdar. “These [records] typically played for two-and-a-half minutes to a minute more. How to cut down an hours-long play, or an elaborate thumri into that tiny time frame was the question.”

But others from the theatre community were enthusiastic, like Amarendra Nath Dutta, who introduced Gaisberg to Shoshimukhi, a performer with his company Classic Theatre. The theatre recordings went on to be successful, with listeners lapping up encore pieces of Bengali plays, theatre songs like Shoshimukhi’s, full plays recorded over multiple discs, and comic skits. “It’s not easy to know all the relevant information for lack of documentation. I have yet to find the song of Shoshimukhi. But the search is on.”

Having left Majumdar’s studio seized with curiosity about Shoshimukhi’s recording, I made some phone calls to friends in the Kolkata recording industry. Two days later, I sat in the Dum Dum house of Panchu Gopal Biswas, a retired employee of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation. “This is my collection,” Biswas said, pointing to the piles of records neatly stashed in cupboards all over the room. Fishing out a brown envelope from one pile, he carefully extracted a disc from it and laid it on the bed. A worn purple label had fading words on it—‘Shoshimukhi’, and in Bengali, the name of the song, ‘Ami ki shojonee kusumeri’. Stamped on the record was the matrix number—13024.

As the record began to spin on the player, the shrill voice of a young girl filled the room. I thought to myself: Gaisberg may not have been too harsh when he described the voice as miserable. The singer sounded nervous and out of breath. Then, midway through the song, she appeared to gain confidence. The breathing grew more controlled, the words clearer. The refrain was a passionate declaration of love—valo bashi, valo bashi.

“Don’t tell too many people about this,” Biswas said after the song was over, smiling apologetically as he put the record back in its pile. I asked if he would be willing to help a researcher like Majumdar. “Of course I will,” he said. “I’m in if it’s for non-commercial use.” As I made my way out of Dum Dum, my mind was filled with thoughts of Shoshimukhi, sitting in a hotel room all those years ago, surrounded by foreigners, singing into a machine.
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Sudhiti Naskar is a freelance journalist based in Kolkata. She likes to document people’s lives in moments of flux. She is regularly published in international magazines. She is currently represented by Agency Genesis.
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source: http://www.caravanmagazine.in / The Caravan / Home> Reporting & Essays> The Lede / by Sudhiti Naskar / June 01st, 2013

The Lede – Test of Metal : The Indian origins of a famous rugby trophy

Historical Links / Pre-Independence, Records, All, Sports, World Opinion
Chris Robshaw, the captain of the English rugby union team, holds the Calcutta Cup, which England retained in February - / Photo : Laurence Griffiths / Getty Images
Chris Robshaw, the captain of the English rugby union team, holds the Calcutta Cup, which England retained in February – /
Photo : Laurence Griffiths / Getty Images

On 8 FEBRUARY, before a crowd of 67,144 people, Scotland faced England at Murrayfield Stadium in Edinburgh as part of the 2014 Six Nations rugby championship. After 80 minutes of play on a muddy pitch, England secured an authoritative victory, with a score of 20–0. As disappointed home supporters filed out, up in the main stand Chris Robshaw, the jubilant English captain, held aloft an intricately engraved silver trophy, with three handles shaped like cobras and an elephant figure crowning its dome-shaped lid: the Calcutta Cup, the oldest trophy in international rugby.

The trophy Robshaw received was, in fact, a replica of the original cup, which is stored in the World Rugby Museum in Twickenham, near London. The museum’s curator, Michael Rowe, told me over the phone that although the cup’s significance has decreased in recent years, it was incredibly prestigious in its heyday, when it was “the Ashes in the sport of rugby.” What is most remarkable, Rowe said, was that the trophy’s origins can be traced back to the largely forgotten history of rugby in colonial India.

In the winter of 1872, a group of British émigrés having a hard time adjusting to life in Calcutta published letters in the Englishman, a prominent newspaper, asking that the administration organise rugby matches. A game was played on Christmas Day that year, with English players on one side and those representing Scotland, Ireland and Wales on the other. There is no record of who won, but the event was a success, and was repeated the following week. Those two matches led to the formation of the Calcutta Football Club in January 1873 (at the time, rugby was one of several related games called “football”). The club thrived—137 members joined in the first year alone—and it joined the Rugby Football Union, the sport’s governing body for all British territories, in 1874.

After a successful start, however, the club fell on hard times. A regiment of the British army left the city for a new posting, and new British arrivals were more interested in polo and tennis. According to Rowe, funds soon started running out, forcing the closure of the club’s free bar, which caused the membership to drop substantially. GA James Rothney, the club’s treasurer, secretary and team captain, considered several fundraising suggestions, but concluded that none of them would keep the club going.

Then, Rowe told me, in 1877, Rothney had an “ambitious” idea. He wrote to the Rugby Football Union suggesting that, to preserve the memory of the club, its remaining funds be used to make what he described as a trophy of “ornate Indian workmanship,” to be “devoted to the purpose of a Challenge Cup and presented to the Rugby Union to be competed for annually” in any way deemed “best for the encouragement of Rugby Football.” Both the Union and the club’s members agreed. Rothney withdrew the club’s remaining £60, a substantial sum at the time, in the form of 270 silver rupee coins. These were melted down in September 1878 by WE Jellicoe, a British silversmith and watchmaker on Calcutta’s Esplanade Row, to create the Calcutta Cup.

The cup was taken to Britain, and in March 1879 the Union organised the first Calcutta Cup match—a game in Edinburgh between England and Scotland, which ended in a draw. The contest was repeated in every following year, and the cup, Rowe said, quickly “became eponymous with the England–Scotland rugby game.” In 1883 it was incorporated into the Home Nations Championship, which eventually became the Six Nations—an annual rugby union competition involving France, Italy, Scotland, Wales, England and Ireland that is effectively the sport’s European championship. The cup has been contested every year since, except during the World Wars. England has won 68 of the 121 matches to date, with Scotland winning 39 and 14 matches ending drawn. England has retained the trophy since 2009.

Today, the original trophy is treated with special care. In 1988, on the night after England retained the cup, two drunk players, one English and the other Scottish, took it out onto the streets of Edinburgh, where they passed it between themselves and dropped it several times. The cobra handles were crushed, and the body and base badly dented. The Edinburgh jewellers Hamilton & Inches restored the cup to its original form, but, as Rowe told me, “silver is a soft metal,” and the restoration left the cup “in a fragile state.” The incident led to a decision to give both nations replica trophies, and store the original at the World Rugby Museum to avoid any further damage.

Rowe said that with the rise of other rugby-playing nations, the England–Scotland rivalry has mellowed in recent years, and so reduced the significance of the Calcutta Cup. But, he added, Rotheny’s idea to entwine the memory of the Calcutta Football Club into the history of rugby was a success. “It is quite remarkable that a short-lived club has such a place in the history of the sport,” he said.
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Atul Dev is a correspondent with The Sunday Guardian.
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source: http://www.caravanmagazine.in / The Caravan / Home> Reporting & Essays> The Lede / by Atul Dev / 2014

Prince Dwarakanath lies forgotten in a corner of London

Historical Links / Pre-Independence, NRI's / PIO's, Records, All, World Opinion

On August 1, 1846, a treacherous thunderstorm raged through London. ‘Vivid flashes of lightning’ struck, the wind howled, and in a hotel room, very close to Bond Street, a ‘Prince’ died. Dwarakanath Tagore was only 52 when he died in the company of just two members of his vast family — a son and a nephew.

Four days later, they buried him, without ceremony in Kensal Green Cemetery. Among the mourners were his youngest son Narendranath, nephew Nabin Chandra Mukherji, four medical students who had accompanied him on his trip to England and his former partners Major Henderson and William Prinsep. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert — who had welcomed him to their court like ‘an old friend’ just over a year ago — sent four carriages. It was a princely send off.

Whatever may have been his reputation back home, in London Dwarakanath was the darling of fashionable society. He gave lavish parties, dined with royalty in England and France, showered his friends and hosts with expensive gifts and gave generously to charities. He was immensely popular with European ladies and made no attempt to conceal his many ‘friendships’. He even kept a boat on the Thames with a certain Mrs Caroline Norton — a divorced, small-time Victorian poet of some ‘beauty and wit’ — where he hosted the literati of the day from Charles Dickens to WM Thackeray.

It is all a very different picture today. Although, the city that he so loved continues to remain popular with most of his fellow countrymen, not many people come to see him. We took the Bakerloo Line on the Underground, got off at Kensal Green Station, and turned left. It was late September and the trees had started changing colour. Kensal Green is huge — 72 acres in fact — and is one of London’s oldest and most distinguished public burial grounds. It has many celebrated residents from scientists, botanists, actors and royalty — Ingrid Bergman and Freddie Mercury among them.

But just as we walked though the very impressive archway of the main gate, we realised we were quite lost. In the absence of any map or directions it was near impossible to find Dwarakanath. Although I knew what his grave looked like, I had no idea where it was. And there was not a soul in sight. A little later, a group of Americans ambled in for a guided walk with a ‘Friend’ of Kensal Green. And this ‘Friend’ – locals who volunteer their time – showed us the way.

Just yards from the main gate, where we had been rummaging the last half hour, lay Dwarakanath. The ground was a little sunken. The grave, simple and grey, simply said ‘Dwarkanath Tagore of Calcutta’. Obit 1st.

The ‘Friend’ who knew a bit about the man seemed curious in our interest. “Nobody visits him these days. Not even on his anniversary. You would think someone from the Indian High Commission or his fellow Bengalis would come to lay flowers. But, I have seen no one.”

Standing there — a little overgrown and overlooked by numerous other graves of different ages — it is difficult to imagine the life and times of Dwarkanath Tagore, once the ‘most prominent citizen’ of Calcutta and the leading force behind the first joint-stock commercial bank in India, Union Bank. Pioneer, philanthropist and partner in Carr, Tagore and Co, Dwarkanath dabbled in everything from customs, salt, tea, coal and steam navigation to indigo and sugar plantations and opium. A great friend of Rammohun Roy, he was a strong voice behind the anti-Sati movement, freedom of Press in India and women’s education. Never shy of controversy, he was almost the self-styled mayor of Calcutta at one point.

The hotel where he died still stands, although under a different name. Brown’s Hotel on 33, Albermarle Street is now a luxury five-star hotel in Mayfair. A room for a night costs anything between £460 and £3,000 and a Sunday three-course lunch for two will set you back by £100. A stay fit for a ‘Prince’ indeed.

— The author is a former journalist who has worked for British and Indian newspapers. She now works at Bath Spa University

source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / Home> India / TNN / August 01st, 2014

Unique memorial service to honour brave airmen

Amazing Feats, Arts, Culture & Entertainment, Inspiration / Positive News and Features, Records, All

Kolkata :

On Saturday, a unique memorial service was organized at the Rasgovindpur Airstrip (also known as the Amarda Road Airfield) in Odisha to honour 14 airmen of the Royal Air Force (RAF) who were killed in a mid-air collision between two B-24 Liberator bombers on July 26, 1945. It was Bhubaneswar-based war historian Anil Dhir who dug up this historical fact. He along with Aditya Patnaik of the Gandhi Eye Hospital and school children were among those who laid wreaths in memory of the dead airmen.

“Very few people are aware that 69 years ago two Liberators (EW225 and EW247) collided at low altitude during a practice flight. They were part of a six-aircraft contingent from the Air Fighting Training Unit engaged in a formation flying exercise. The Rasgovindpur Airstrip had the longest runway in Asia (more than 3.5 km). The total length of the runway, taxiways and aprons was more than 60 km. Part of the runway (nearly 11,000 feet) still remains but there is no activity save for the grazing of cattle. This airfield played a very crucial role in the defence of India during World War II. It was a forward airbase against the Japanese and was used for ‘Over the Hump’ operations as well as training pilots for special bombing raids. Unfortunately, there aren’t any details available of the activities that took place here between 1943 and 1945, even in military archives,” Dhir says.

It was during a visit to the Madras military cemetery that Dhir came across the graves of 14 airmen who were killed at the Amarda Road Airstrip crash. It took a lot of doing on his part to find out that the 900 acre airstrip was built at a cost of Rs 3 crore in the 1940’s. During his research, Dhir received assistance from Matthew J Poole from the USA who has studied the crash and prepared a report. With Poole’s assistance, Dhir was able to locate the relatives of none of those killed in the air crash. One of them is 101 years old now.

“The two aircrafts took off from the airfield in Odisha but the crash took place over West Bengal. The debris was strewn across flooded paddy fields in Bengal. I have requested both the Odisha and Bengal governments to erect small memorials at the airfield and the crash site to honour the brave souls who gave up their lives for the defence of our motherland,” Dhir added.

source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / Home> City> Kolkata / by Jayanta Gupta, TNN / July 29th, 2014

Mohun Bagan kicks off quasquicentennial celebrations

Records, All, Sports
Samar (Badru) Banerjee, the Indian captain of the 1956 Melbourne Olympics football team and one of the oldest surviving football stars, meeting the Mohun Bagan junior players accompanied by the Mohun Bagan secretary Anjan Mitra. Photo: Special arrangement. / The Hindu
Samar (Badru) Banerjee, the Indian captain of the 1956 Melbourne Olympics football team and one of the oldest surviving football stars, meeting the Mohun Bagan junior players accompanied by the Mohun Bagan secretary Anjan Mitra. Photo: Special arrangement. / The Hindu

A group of senior members sitting on the redecorated galleries in the Mohun Bagan ground trained their gaze on the dark clouds gathering yonder signalling imminent rain.

A group of senior members sitting on the redecorated galleries in the Mohun Bagan ground trained their gaze on the dark clouds gathering yonder signalling imminent rain. Their faces lit up at the prospect, as rains have become synonymous with the successful celebration of one of the most notable victory in the annals of Indian sport – the IFA Shield triumph in 1911.

Mohun Bagan loves to associate itself with that epochal win against the British East York Regiment and celebrates the day (July 29) as its foundation day.

In keeping with that tradition, the club this year sought to begin its quasquicentennial celebrations from Tuesday as the exact date of its foundation remains uncertain.

“It was established in 1889 and in August, but it is not known exactly on which the date it was founded,” says Subhransu Roy, a noted sports researcher from the city. The day saw a big gathering of former players, members and the media, and the club sought to commemorate the occasion befittingly by organising a host of ‘friendlies’ on its ground.

The club management used the opportunity to announce a bigger function at an unannounced date to make the 125 years celebrations more memorable. “We are the oldest and one of the most popular football clubs in Asia. Mohun Bagan symbolises a way of life in Bengal and that has sustained our popularity for all these many years,” says Mohun Bagan general secretary Anjan Mitra. “We have planned big celebrations and hope to bring them around by September,” he added.

Mohun Bagan successfully completed the club licensing criterion this year and entered the threshold of professionalism. “The club ran on the patronage of Kings and Zamindars in the early years, but continued to receive popular support for its notable performances on field. What is remarkable here is the transcendence from an amateur set-up to a more corporatised arrangement,” says Mr. Roy.

Much like its later cousin and traditional rival, East Bengal Club (established 1920), Mohun Bagan has a big community support which is ever growing. “Mohun Bagan has been able to retain its identity as the champion club of India despite not always performing. In recent years, it has not done well in the national tournaments, but its popularity remains intact,” says Mr. Roy.

“We have thousands of people waiting to become members of the club. This is the image of the club, and the older it grows the more popular it will become,” says Mr. Mitra, the secretary of the club since 1995.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities> Kolkata / by Amitabha Das Sharma / Kolkata – July 30th, 2014

Kolkata couple’s ‘Labour of Love’ on way to Venice Film Festival

Arts, Culture & Entertainment, Records, All, World Opinion

Kolkata :

A film made by a couple from Salt Lake is on its way to the prestigious Venice Film Festival in the next couple of months.

The film, ‘Asha Jaoar Majhe’ (Labour of Love), is devoid of dialogues, though thoughts are communicated through expressions and music. “It’s a positive, simple, easy-going film on love. We’ve shown communication without words. I want people to come to see how love can be expressed by two people without having to speak at all,” said director Aditya Vikram Sengupta.

“In the film, the love is expressed through the most mundane things. In life, I have received love in several forms, from my mother, family members… It wasn’t like they pointed out and exhibited every day how much they loved me. But little actions showed me how much thought and care went behind each,” said Sengupta.

The film features actors Ritwick Chakraborty and Basabdutta Chatterjee. It’s in the race for not one but three awards at Venice – Luigi De Laurentiis Award (Lion of the Future (best debut)), Venice Days Jury Award and Venice Days Public Award.

“We haven’t been able to run it in Kolkata yet as films can’t be screened before the festival in order to be eligible. It’s a non- dialogue film as we felt there was no reason for dialogue just to fill up a silent moment,” said his wife Jonaki, who is executive producer and art director.

The couple, currently settled in Mumbai, produce and make ad-films for a living. “Half of the film was shot by Mahindra J Shetty, who was the cinematographer for ‘Udaan’ and ‘Lootera’. The other half was shot by me. The movie was made with a very small production crew of around 10, and on a very low budget,” added Sengupta.

On the cast, he said: “I took many auditions, but couldn’t find the right face for the role. Basabdatta fit in perfectly. She has a very classic look. Ritwik didn’t complain even if I kept calling for retakes. Some shots were taken 20-30 times. I’m grateful to the actors for their patience. Just because it’s a non-dialogue film doesn’t mean it’s a silent film or an art-house film. I think even 15-year-olds, who have some concept of love, will appreciate and enjoy it.”

The film, primarily set in the city, was extensively shot in north Kolkata. “That’s because my characters live in north Kolkata,” Sengupta explained.

source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / Home> City> Kolkata / TNN / July 28th, 2014

Replicas of greatness

Arts, Culture & Entertainment, Leaders, Records, All

Kolkata :

The state government has decided to set up a museum inside the Assembly.
The museum will be the first-of-its-kind where sculptures of various eminent persons of the state who have contributed immensely for the welfare of the nation will be displayed.

A space of around 2,000 sq feet has been identified inside the Assembly where the proposed museum will be set up. It will have an art gallery, too, where works of famous painters, including Jamini Roy, will be displayed.

Sculptures of famous personalities in the Assembly will also be displayed.

The Speaker has already sent a list of names of eminent persons whose sculptures will be displayed inside the museum.

According to the proposed plan, initially 10 to 12 statues of eminent persons will be displayed inside the museum. Replicas made of fibre glass representing various art forms of different states as well as foreign countries will be put up for display inside the museum.

The PWD is in the process of inviting sculptors and artists to discuss which statutes should be placed first.

It may be mentioned that the Housing Infrastructure Development Corporation (Hidco) has come up with a plan to set up the first ever wax museum at New Town in Rajarhat .

The museum, being planned on the lines of London’s Madame Tussauds wax museum, will be set up at Rajarhat New Town and a 5,000 sq ft area has been earmarked for the project.

source: http://www.thestatesman.net / The Statesman / Home> Bengal / Statesman News Service / Kolkata – July 25th, 2014

Winning formula

Arts, Culture & Entertainment, Records, All

Some 40 actors and film technicians won awards named after Uttam Kumar on Thursday at Nazrul Mancha. “There must be many… who are waiting for an award… . That’s why we started the Bangabhushan… (another award instituted by the government),” Mamata Banerjee told the gathering. Metro presents an abridged list of who got what & why we think they deserve it

Awards1KOLKATA25jul2014
AwardsKOLKATA25jul2014

source: http://www.telegraphindia.com / The Telegraph, Calcutta / Front Page> Calcutta> Story / by The Telegraph, Calcutta Bureau / Friday – July 25th, 2014

First beating heart surgery performed in Kolkata

Records, All, Science & Technology

In a first of its kind surgery in the city, a woman recently underwent a successful complex heart surgery while her heart was still beating.

According to a release, the 51-year-old woman was suffering from a severely stenotic rheumatic mitral valve disease, which required her mitral valve to be replaced. The mitral valve consists of two flaps and is responsible for controlling the flow of blood into the heart.

A team of two doctors at the Eastern Railway’s B.R. Singh Hospital conducted the surgery with the help of a heart-lung machine. The heart was continuously supplied with oxygenated blood and it remained in a state of slow beating to enable the mitral valve to be replaced with metallic valves. The surgery on heart valves is commonly performed on a motionless heart by using a special solution called cardioplegia . As the heart is stopped for surgery, the surgeon must restart it and reintroduce blood into the heart muscles.

This is known as reperfusion. Reperfusion can cause impairment of heart function known as reperfusion injury with complications such as irregular heart rhythms and pump dysfunction. Reperfusion injury is especially a concern in high risk patients, such as elderly, people who had previous heart operations, and those with complex health problems. Therefore, the beating heart surgery leads to better preservation of heart and better survival rate, especially among high-risk patients.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities> Kolkata / by Staff Reporter / Kolkata – July 23rd, 2014