Monthly Archives: May 2018
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Federer inspires fangirl’s charity
Visits to Wimbledon every year and foundation to sponsor local talent
Chowringhee:
Roger Federer’s philanthropy spurs Calcuttan Sunita Sigtia as much as the magic of his tennis that takes her to Wimbledon every year to watch him play. Her not-for-profit organisation SiiRF, established 10 months ago, stands for “Some Immensely Inspired Roger (Federer) Fans”.
SiiRF was born on August 8, the champion’s birthday, and has since sponsored two young talents who had been struggling to continue in their chosen sport because of financial reasons.
For Sunita, who has met Federer on many occasions, SiiRF is now a mission only matched by her admiration for the legend. “My charity is inspired by Roger….The lesson I have learnt from him is that you have to give something back to society in whatever way possible. My dream is to associate him, even if in a small way, with my foundation,” she told Metro.
Sunita, who is in her 40s, runs a fabrics business. Tennis, Federer and charity – not necessarily in that order – help maintain the work-life balance that she seeks.
One of the two sportspersons Sunita has set out to help is Amit Rawat, the son of a cobbler and a domestic help. Amit, who grew up in a slum in Beniapukur, learnt to play tennis while working as a ball boy at Calcutta International Club and got so good at it that he caught the eye of a coach.
Sunita’s foundation has arranged a brand new kit for him. She also recently sent him to a tennis academy in Pune for six weeks of training. “Amit has done well on the Calcutta circuit, but the next two years are crucial,” she said.
Bristy Mukherjee, the 14-year-old girl who won a silver medal at the Asian Youth Chess Championship in Thailand last month, has also benefited from Sunita’s sponsorship. The teenager’s mother had mortgaged her jewellery to send her to the event. SiiRF has now pledged financial and other support to Bristy for future tournaments.
Sunita, who has “RF” tattooed on her neck and his signature on her forearm, is the Indian face of Fans4Roger, the official fan club of the legend. She had first seen her idol up close in June 2008, when she was visiting London for a house-warming at New Malden, around 5km from Wimbledon. “The house-warming was the official reason for the trip, but I knew I had to visit the All England Club,” she said.
Wimbledon queues are long. For one of the show-court tickets, thousands of fans camp overnight. People in these queues bring tents, folding chairs and rainwear, among other things. Sunita only had an umbrella and it started raining heavily that night. “I was freezing. Another man offered me shelter in his camp,” she recalled.
Visiting Wimbledon has since been an annual ritual. Before each Grand Slam, Federer is presented with the Red Envelope, a collection of good-luck messages from fans across the world. Delivering the envelope to the legend is considered the highest possible honour for a Federer fan. Sunita did so at Wimbledon 2011, wrapping the envelope in silk fabric with RF inscribed in zardosi. “He simply loved it,” she said, beaming at the thought.
Federer’s charity, the Roger Federer Foundation, is involved in more than a dozen educational projects benefiting lakhs of African children in countries like Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
As one of the privileged fans who get to travel each year to London, Paris, Melbourne and New York to get a glimpse of their idol, Sunita believes the best tribute to “the best tennis player ever” would be to emulate his spirit of giving.
Federer might say: “Roger that.”
source: http://www.telegraphindia.com / The Telegraph,Calcutta,India / Home> Calcutta / by Debraj Mitra / May 30th, 2018
Student on pad mission
Calcutta:
Sobhan Mukherjee of Bansdroni has been breaking many stereotypes.
Since last year, the postgraduate student of geography at Asutosh College been spending over Rs 11,000 a month to stock up sanitary napkins at public toilets to promote menstrual hygiene. Till now, he has stocked up 30 toilets with 100 sanitary pads.
“I buy branded pads for Rs 3 and sell them at CMC’s pay-and-use toilets for Rs 2,” said the student who procures fund for his Bandhan Sanitary Napkin Project by running a little magazine. Some of the areas he has covered include Bansdroni, Golpark, Garia and Sonarpur.
On Monday, he was part of a campaign organised by Unicef to mark Menstrual Hygiene Day. #LetsTalkAboutPeriods saw government officials, activists and enthusiasts joining hands to break the culture of silence and promote menstrual hygiene.
The campaign aims to spread awareness about menstrual hygiene through various media. It also plans to engage all sections of society in discussions to break myths and taboos surrounding the menstrual cycle.
“When I found my friend so uncomfortable and distressed to talk about the issue, I realised I needed to do something to break the stereotype,” said Sobhan, who is also pursuing health studies at Indian Institute For Health Training.
He now wants to build a team of young boys and girls who will reach out to villages where menstrual health is a bigger issue. “Let boys and girls of a particular village fund their own Bandhan Sanitary Napkin project. I need to build a self-sustaining model,” he added.
As of now, around 40 per cent of girls in Bengal are using sanitary pads, said Sonali Datta Ray, joint secretary in the panchayat and rural development department. “There are sanitary napkin incinerator in around 12 per cent schools and vending machines in around eight per cent schools in rural areas,” said Datta Ray, who was part of a panel discussion on breaking myths.
Burdwan, Purulia and Nadia are some of the districts that are forerunners in the effort. “Here the schools, panchayats and the health department are working in tandem to promote safe hygiene among students,” she added.
“We need to focus on sensitising men and encourage them to talk about the issue,” added Dibyendu Sarkar, additional secretary in the panchayat and rural development department and another participant in the panel discussion.
Other participants included Ananya Chakraborti, chairperson of West Bengal Commission for Protection of Child Rights, and Choten Lama, secretary of panchayat and rural development.
“When you pair lack of awareness with cultural barriers, there is a higher risk of girls using unsanitary material, not taking the proper diet, not recognising any irregularity in their menstrual cycle and thus inviting health complications,” added Mohammad Mohiuddin, Unicef chief in Bengal.
source: http://www.telegraphindia.com / The Telegraph,Calcutta,India / Home> Calcutta / by Chandreyee Ghose / May 29th, 2018
Science goals & helping hand
Young Metro
St Augustine’s Day School, Ripon Street, has introduced a robotics club to keep students abreast of development in science and technology. The club, an initiative of principal Richard Gasper, organises workshops, where students are encouraged to make models and devices. Buzzer circuits made by the students at robotics workshops have, for instance, been used during a quiz in the school. The children have taken part in many national as well as international competitions and won accolades.
Students of Assembly of Christ School hit the road to express their gratitude to traffic cops who have to be on duty under the scorching sun. The students, along with vice-principal Rev. G. Samuel Davis, visited traffic kiosks between Barrackpore and Sodepur and handed over goody bags to the traffic cops. The campaign started from Lalkuthi in Barrackpore and covered Chiriamore, Titagarh and Khardah before ending at Sodepur. Each bag carried fruit juice, bottles of packaged drinking water, glucose drink and cucumbers.
source: http://www.telegraphindia.com / The Telegraph,Calcutta,India / Home> Calcutta / May 28th, 2018
Calcutta ‘plot’ eyes crime prize
UK author’s debut thriller on harrogate shortlist
London:
UK-born Abir Mukherjee’s debut thriller set in Calcutta in 1919, A Rising Man, has been shortlisted for a prestigious crime-writing prize.
He is one of six authors selected from a longlist of 18 for the Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award, which is sponsored by T&R Theakston, a brewery in the market town of Masham, North Yorkshire.
It is awarded annually at the Harrogate Crime Writing Festival, held every July. The winner receives £3000 and a small, hand-carved oak beer cask.
This year’s prize, created “to celebrate the very best in crime fiction” and open to UK and Irish authors, is for a novel published in paperback between May 1, 2017, and April 30, 2018.
News of Abir’s nomination comes as he is about to release his third novel, Smoke and Ashes. His second work was A Necessary Evil.
The winner will be decided by the panel of judges, alongside a public vote that opens online on July 1 and closes on July 14. The winner will be announced on July 19.
Abir’s new tale, Smoke and Ashes, is set in 1921 – two years on from when his debut novel opened. He has created an unlikely partnership between Captain Sam Wyndham and his Bengali assistant, Sergeant “Surrender-not” Banerjee. The latter is patrician, Cambridge educated and socially a cut above his boss, who has arrived from the UK to join the Calcutta police. Wyndham is haunted by his memories of the Great War and is now “battling a serious addiction to opium that he must keep secret from his superiors”.
Abir has said his ambition is not simply to tell a detective story but to set it against the background of racist British attitudes when the days of the Raj drew to a close and the fight for Independence became more intense.
source: http://www.telegraphindia.com / The Telegraph,Calcutta,India / Home> Calcutta / by Amit Roy / May 27th, 2018
Apeejay Surrendra Park Hotels To Manage Oldest Hotel In India
Apeejay Surrendra Park Hotels has entered into an agreement with the Government of West Bengal to manage the historic The Denmark Tavern, the 232-year-oldest hotel in India, in Serampore, Kolkata.
“We are delighted to manage The Denmark Tavern on behalf of the West Bengal Government. THE Park Hotels will build on the rich legacy of the Tavern and bring it and the area back to life. The hotel will soon be buzzing with guests enjoying a quiet break on the banks of Hooghly and the sights and sounds of old-world Serampore and beyond,” Priya Paul, Chairperson, Apeejay Surrendra Park Hotels.
The Tavern was established in 1786 in what was then Fredricksnagore. The two-storeyed structure by the Hooghly is the place where the Danes had kept their flagstaff and cannons. The Tavern was a place to meet and stay for traders, clergy and travellers exploring Bengal.
In 2010 – 11, more than 200 years after the tavern’s heyday, a group of restoration experts studied the building that stood in complete ruins surrounded by debris. It took around two years to restore the Tavern to its former glory as part of the Serampore Initiative, a restoration programme for several Danish heritage structures led by the National Museum of Denmark and funded by Realdania, a private trust in Denmark, in collaboration with West Bengal State Heritage Commission, and Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH).The refurnished building has a cafe, inspired by the double height central atrium of the Indian Coffee House in Kolkata and six high-ceilinged spacious rooms.
The restored Denmark Tavern will fall under THE Park Collection brand of THE Park Hotels. The Park Collection is intimate, personalized, and tailored to transmit inimitable guest experiences. The Denmark Tavern will have THE Park Hotel’s design aesthetics, its impeccable services and will reverberate with Anything But Ordinary experiences. The hotel will open by September 2018.
source: http://www.traveltrendstoday.in / Travel Trends Today / Home> Hot News / by T3 News Network / May 24th, 2018
The comic from Kolkata
Vaibhav Sethia hopes to find new audiences through his Amazon Prime stand-up special
Before he became a stand-up comic, Vaibhav Sethia did multiple architecture gigs, toiled on remote oil rigs, wrote episodes of a horror TV show which was never released, and assisted direction for a Bengali movie which did release but, “Was so terrible that most cinema halls stopped screening it in four days”.
Now, after over 1000 private, public and corporate stage shows across many major cities in the country, his Amazon Prime stand-up special, Don’t, was launched yesterday. He hopes to find a new audience base on the internet through this show, because unlike YouTube clips which are free, short and only contain snippets of his comedy, he feels a show will offer insight into his persona. “I talk about being bitten by mosquitoes, my experiences with customer care, how phones have ruined our lives, my reaction to my grandparents, my increasing weight and other such everyday things. I go the extra mile to discuss these things in a way which we wouldn’t in common conversation and give the audience a new perspective,” he says.
Chasing a dream
An architecture graduate from IIT Rourkee, the now 30-year-old got on stage for the first time in December 2012, after moving home to Kolkata to deal with an injury. “This is a legendary story among Kolkata comics: It was the first ever open mic held in the city. The prize was ₹1 lakh, and only four of us were competing. The guy who won never did comedy again. The other three of us are still comics,” he sniggers.
Always the funny guy amongst his friends, getting on stage made Sethia feel like he was friends with the entire audience. He had found exactly what he wanted to do for a living but did not know how to build a career in comedy. “There was no scene in Kolkata; we would do one show every two months. In the weeks in between, I would wake up in the afternoon and sit on my laptop all day. My parents were disappointed because I was giving up great job offers to get on stage once in a while,” he recalls.
Staying on stage
Relentless, he reached out to full-time stand-up artistes to figure out how to make it lucrative. He travelled to Mumbai frequently to get more stage time and worked on building a scene in Kolkata through Comedified, an outfit he started with comic Anirban Dasgupta. “I just wanted to get as much stage time as possible, because, as they say, practice makes a man perfect,” he says. In early 2016, he moved to Mumbai to pursue his dream because, “I realised there was no other place I could grow as much”.
Now, a known name in the comedy circuit, he performs over 20 paid shows a month, and still gets on stage every day to hone his skill set. “I want to talk about subjects like parallel universes and the judicial system, but I haven’t found a way to do it in a funny way yet. There are times when [topics like that] just feel like a TED talk,” he chuckles.
Watch Don’t on Amazon Prime.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Entertainment / by Raveena Joseph / May 25th, 2018
Kolkatans elated with ‘Tagore in shorthand’
Kolkata :
Artist Indrajit Nattoji presented a unique collection of paintings at the ICCR on Saturday. It was called, “Tagore in Shorthand” that delves into Kobi Guru’s literary works through handwriting his poems and songs in his image, using ink and paint on paper.
Each art-work showcases one of Tagore’s literary works written in his image. Portraits range from Tagore as a young man to his later years – an artist’s tribute to Rabindranath Tagore in hand written drawing style. Director and actor Parambrata Chattopadhyay was present at the event with Bickram Ghosh, Wassim Kapoor, Baishali Dalmiya among others on day one.
Talking about his inspiration, Nattoji said, “I have been drawing and painting from the time I recall my earliest childhood memories. It was a natural instinct, as basic as eating and breathing. I always wanted to be an artist since the time I used to travel with my parents during my summer holidays. When I was studying at the National Institute of Design, long before the digital renaissance, we used to take notes, write scripts, stories and with pen, pencil and paper. Computers were a distant concept at that time and nor were we allowed near one.
Recently, I started using handwritten words and sentences to create forms while drawing over words when I made mistakes. As I was drawing while writing, the lines took on a life of their own. I started writing while creating an image and I created images while writing. I then added some paint and colour. Shorthand art anyone?”
A student of NID, Ahmedabad, Nattoji has wonthe Singapore Promax BDA Asia Awards, Razorfish Rocket Award for Rising Talent and Best Station ID. He has worked in Channel [v] Mumbai as Senior Producer, later becoming an ad-filmmaker kick-starting his own company called Blink Pictures. Currently, he is writing his next feature film, while conceptualizing, directing and producing three film installations for India’s first Museum on Indian Music in Bangalore and continuing to make Ad-Films. He loves travelling the world with his family.
When asked why he chose Tagore, the artist said, “The Bengali ‘force’ in me has always been strong. I have been brought up with the mandatory staple of Tagore songs, poems and stories. Recently I was in the middle of an animation project where I had taken on a part of the animation where one had to do hands-on drawings digitally. My mother had organized a small function and get together for Robindro Jayanti and had asked me to draw a portrait of Tagore and add a quote from his works. I was already drawing frames for my animation with my newly acquired Ipad and Apple pencil. I quickly combined the words ‘Pochishe Boishak’ into an image of Tagore. It was spontaneous and intuitive. It turned out quite interesting and was much appreciated by everyone. That’s how this project took birth.”
What are the plans with this journey of painting? “I hope to take this further with interpretations of more of his works in handwritten drawing style with larger formats of drawing, painting, screen prints, woodcuts, digital art and large-scale animation and film installations,” Nattoji signed off.
source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / Home> News> Cities> Kolkata / by Ajanta Chakraborty / TNN / May 23rd, 2018
Kolkata to get first batch of women traffic cops
Kolkata:
They have been growing steadily in numbers. They handle important assignments, including latenight duty at important crossings. And now, in a first, lady constables of Kolkata Police will be on vigil on Kolkata streets in their scooterettes — either in blue-white or in pink-black shades.
The primary job of the new brigade will be to assist cops to help out women on streets seeking help and also help cops pull up female riders who break rules. “You cannot strictly call them traffic cops. Their duty will not be the same as a traffic cop. But yes, the scooterettes — just like the Bullets — will increase our presence on the streets. We will provide all details about them once final deployment and role gets thrashed out,” said a top IPS officer at Lalbazar.
Sources said that though this new woman battalion is likely to induct scores of lady constables, around 24 of them were present during their first official appearance at Lalbazar.
On Monday, commissioner Rajeev Kumar went to the Police Training School to inspect the new battalion. “As per our initial plan, some lady constables from here will be deputed to the traffic department for on-road duty. These lady constables will help traffic police in womenrelated matters,” said an IPS officer.
“So far, we had women in senior positions but never on the road. Even men cannot easily misbehave with women,” said an officer. The practical problems though remain. Till the other day, most traffic guards did not have a dedicated ladies toilet. Neither was there any dedicated changing room or a drop-at-home at night. “We are trying to look into the practical problems and address them,” said an official at Lalbazar.
Under the present law, woman motorists cannot be pulled up for inspection by policemen in absence of female officers. Male officers posted at traffic pickets have no authority to stop a car with a woman driver.
“We need to account for the safety of women officials in our departments as well. Women officials in Kolkata Police are not many, but the numbers are fewer in the traffic department,” a senior traffic officer explained.
source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / Home> News> City News> Kolkata News / by Dwaipayan Ghosh / TNN / May 23rd, 2018