The Tribune, Chandigarh, India - Chandigarh Stories

St Stephen’s students to perform in Wales
Tribune News Service

CHANDIGARH, July 1 — A team of students from the local St Stephen's School is all set to represent India in the Llangollen International Dance Festival to be held in Wales. The week-long festival is being organised from July 3 to July 8. Students from as many as 56 countries are going to present folk dances of their respective countries.

A group of 14 students from the school has been selected by the Heritage, a cultural agency of Patiala to perform Bhangra and Jhoomer in the festival.

This has been the only team selected from all over the country after an evaluation of its performance by the Heritage officials in February. The same team was declared first in the all-India ICSE schools competition held at Bangalore on the occasion of Republic Day this year.

In the dance festival each team will be allowed to perform two dances of four minutes each. The Indian team will perform Jugni, Mirza, Jugalbandi, Sialkoti and Malvai steps in Bhangra. In Jhoomer the slow as well as fast dance movements will be performed.

The team will leave the city tomorrow for Raja Sansi Airport at Amritsar to reach the venue on July 3.

The students going to participate include Tarnjit, Ravi Inder, Harsimran, Yatin, Partesh, Sahil, Jasgaurav, Gurpreet, Anoopinder, Udaybir, Jasmeet, Ayesha, Amarinder and Karan. The dances have been choreographed and directed by Mr Pritpal Sodhi , a teacher of folk dances at school. Mr Sohan Lal is going as dholaki.

The students have been preparing for the festival everyday since April. The rehearsal was held in the school even today. The participants, attired in colourful bright dresses, were dancing energetically on the beats of the dholak.

The students are feeling on the top of the world as this opportunity is a dream come true for them. "They have been practising for five days a week even during the school days. At this time they are all feeling very confident and energetic," said Ms Amita Uppal, the teacher in charge of extra curricular activities. She is also accompanying the students on the trip.

Sahil Shukla, the youngest member of the team, expresses himself like this,"I am very excited to go on the festival. We will stage our dances in front of the world and get an opportunity to interact with students from different countries and cultures," says Sahil.

COURTS

Courier firm to pay up for deficiency
Tribune News Service

CHANDIGARH, July 1 — The State Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission held a local courier company liable for having acted irresponsibly by not delivering the assignment at the required address and directed it to pay Rs 121 as compensation to the complainant, along with another Rs 200 as costs of litigation incurred by him.

The direction was given by the commission Bench consisting of President, Mr Justice J.B. Garg, and members, Dr P.K. Vasudeva and Mrs Devinderjit Dhatt, in an appeal case filed against On Dot Courier and Cargo Company by Wg Cdr P.S.B. Sachdeva. The Wing Commander came in appeal against the earlier order of the District Forum I which dismissed the complaint on grounds that the complainant was not careful enough in furnishing the address.

Raising objection to the said plea, counsel for the appellant argued that the said assignment was delivered by post at the same address later on. He maintained that if the courier man had taken his job seriously the packet would have been delivered at the correct address.

The Bench concurred with the said contention and held the company deficient in services. The costs imposed were Rs 200 and the compensation ordered was Rs 121.

CULTURE

Disability no hurdle for Saurabh
Tribune News Service

CHANDIGARH, July 1 — Saurabh Saini at the age of 14 has many pencil sketches and paintings to his credit. He also has the honour of holding a solo exhibition of sketches, when he was just 13 years old. For present, his ambition is to make a name for himself in the field of art. In future, he wants to design cars and become a computer professional.

Saurabh also happens to be a disabled child. His hearing is impaired, since birth.

Saurabh's story is that of courage and strength. "His disability was detected when he was about two years old," says his father Dr J.S.Saini. "Our initial reaction was of disbelief and shock. Our elder son was absolutely normal. We kept asking ourselves that why did this had to happen to us. His mother had to be hospitalised as a result."

The family did take time to recover from the initial shock. According to Dr Saini, "We began his speech therapy from the Karuna Sadan in the city. In the meantime his mother and I completed a two-year certificate course, by correspondence, from John Tracy Clinic in the USA".

Saurabh continued his speech therapy later from the Prayaas. "Initially the therapy did not yield any results. It was after some serious efforts by both of us that he uttered his first word," says Dr Saini.

Today, Saurabh has picked up lip reading and manages to supplement his speech deficiency by using gestures and signs. He is also studying in class eight.

According to Dr Saini, the parents of the disabled children face certain problems which multiply as the children grow. "When we got over the initial shock, we started worrying about the future. Unfortunately in our country, most of schools do not accept disabled children. The government schools, as a rule, cannot refuse admission to them. But none of the schools has teachers trained in integrating physically disabled children in a normal school setting. We had some really tough time getting him admitted to a good public school."

Moreover, most of the schools also do not have a special evaluation mechanism for these children and expect normal performance from them. "Since he could not hear, he was confused with the different shapes of the English alphabets," says his father.