R E G I O N A L   B R I E F S

Regional potpourri

Minding the mob
Palette to pen
Mapping a poetic path

PUNJAB

CHANDIGARH

HARYANA

AMBALA
Office-bearers: The following have been elected office-bearers of the Aided School Teacher Union, Ambala: Vice-President Mr S.S. Mann; secretary — The Shiv Kumar Tewari; Joint Secretaries — The Sham Lal Sharma and the Paritosh Kumar; Media secretaries — Mr Rajiv Goyal and Mr Vikas Jain; Cashier — Mr Subash Mittal and the Balram Garg auditor.

Chawla appointed: Mr Dalip Chawla Bittoo has been appointed the president of the state media cell by the Haryana Pradesh Congress Committee, here, on Saturday. Mr Chawla, who is a close associate of Haryana Chief Minister, Mr Bhupinder Singh Hooda, has been authorised to announce the office bearers of the media cell.

HIMACHAL PRADESH

KANGRA
Lab staff demand: Laboratory staff of MCM DAV College here on Sunday said the two advance increments were granted to them in December 1999 were actually due from December 1995. They said these two advance increments were withdrawn from January 2005 by the college management.

KULU
Sonia’s birthday: Mr Satya Prakash Thakur, Chairman, Himachal Pradesh State Marketing Board, presiding over a seminar organised to celebrate the birthday of Mrs Sonia Gandhi at Banjar, called upon the youth to go for higher education. More than 100 villagers attended the seminar.

NURPUR
Held for murder: The police here on Saturday arrested Rajinder Kumar for a murder of Shukuntla Devi of Laholli village from Kangra. His brothers Swaran and Prabhat were nabbed on Friday. They were produced before a court on Saturday and remanded in police custody till December 13. The woman was allegedly hit by a jeep when she was returning her home near Rehan and her body was packed in a gunny bag and buried near Beas river near Bhogrwan on Saturday last. The police exhumed the body on Friday.

SHIMLA
Rs 200 cr for water: The Union Urban Development ministry has approved Rs 200 crore to the Municipal Corporation here under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission for water and sanitary works. The MC had sought Rs 733 crore for setting up big water supply scheme and augmenting the existing one. Other projects are construction of tunnels, aerial ropeways, by-passes, decongesting parts of the town, improving water supply, sewerage works, housing for urban poor and slum dwellers, improving traffic and transportation. 

REGIONAL POTPOURRI

Minding the mob

damsels in DIScipline : During the recent  Inter-Zonal Youth Festival held at DAV Girls College, Yamunanagar, its students turned from mere  crowd-pullers into active crowd controllers. — Photo by Rajesh Syal

During youth festivals, it is often found that boys make a beeline for the venue not because they’re fairly interested in the cultural events, but because of their interest in participants belonging to the fair sex. And if a youth festival happens to be in a girls college, they’re sure to turn up in an even greater strength.

This was exactly what happened at DAV Girls College, Yamunanagar, during the three-day Inter-Zonal Youth Festival that concluded recently. Apparently having read newspaper reports that over 1,500 students from Haryana would be participating, hordes of youngsters from neighbouring areas converged at the gates of the girls’ college.

But those who had hoped to gate-crash without passes were in for a surprise. For, the students of the college had vowed not to let in any uninvited guests.

The Principal of the college, Dr Sushma Arya, and members of the festival organising committee were suitably prepared for the youth thronging the venue. “Our students are very disciplined and we were sure that they could manage the crowds themselves,” said Dr Arya.

A team of 150 girls drawn from all streams, including sports and the NCC, was selected for the purpose. Under the leadership of English lecturer Guneet Bhatti, the girls formed a team that was christened ‘Umang.’ It was further divided into three sub-teams.

The teams remained posted at predetermined beats throughout the festival. It was the girls deputed at the college gate who had the toughest time but they refused to buckle down and did not let in any ‘unauthorised’ persons.

During youth festivals, there is usually a large-scale deployment of the police, but the college witnessed minimal police presence this time.

“It seemed everyone wanted an entry into our college. But there were strict instructions not to let in anyone without passes,” said Shelly, an MA-II (English) student and coordinator of Umang. The VIP ‘brats’ were a bit difficult to handle, admitted Umang members. It was in anticipation of such a situation that sports students and NCC cadets were deputed at the entry points.

While most of the college students were enjoying scintillating performances inside, the Umang team was busy managing the crowds outside.

“After all, we had donned the caps of cops and had to do our job perfectly,” said Mohini, an Umang member.

The team earned praise not only from the college management and participants but the cops too, with the local SHO Pawan Rana, admitting that the festival was conducted smoothly without much police assistance.

Needless to say, the girls’ mob management did not win appreciation from unsuccessful gate-crashers and roadside Romeos.

Palette to pen

Hisar-based poet-dramatist Kumar Ravindra has been selected for the Sahitya Bhushan Award-2005 of the Uttar Pradesh Hindi Sansthan. Apart from writing ‘navgeet’, the noted poet has also penned several musical dramas.

Two more poetic dramas written by him will be published shortly by the Bhartiya Gyanpeeth. One of these is based on Lord Rama’s mental state after he expelled Sita from Ayodhya.

Born in Lucknow, Kumar Ravindra has now been based at Hisar for nearly three decades. Interestingly, the Hindi poet-dramatist did his Master’s in English from Lucknow University. Having worked as an English lecturer at DAV College, Jalandhar, and later at Dayanand College, Hisar, he is now engaged in freelance writing.

He started off as a painter, but soon gave up the brush to take up the pen. In the beginning, he wrote romantic poetry in English. However, later, he switched to Hindi, the language in which he has made his mark.

The poet feels that people, in general, are indifferent towards literature. He attributes this to the emergence of other cheap and shallow means of entertainment. “Even the budding litterateurs of today are more keen on getting media coverage than reading good literature themselves,” he laments.

Mapping a poetic path

For this student of geography, the initiation into the world of poetry was not mapped out consciously. It was her sickness that made her turn to the pen for solace.

Says Parul, who is doing her Ph.D in Geography from Himachal Pradesh University, “I had once fallen sick and felt lonely inside. I was gripped by fear. That experience gave birth to my first poem: ‘I’.”

“It got a lot of appreciation from people around me and they encouraged me to write more,” she says.

Hailing from a family of Army officers in Shimla, she has been emerging as a sensitive poetess and will soon come out with her first book of poetry. The hills are her main muse. “The serene hills are nature’s perennial, timeless song on earth. Even the best works of poetry cannot give the same thrill that a glimpse of the hills provides to a mind in pursuit of beauty,” she signs off.

 — Contributed by Nishikant Dwivedi, Sunit Dhawan and Sarbjit Dhaliwal