Sari shock!

Didn’t think that I have to write this, but a series of comments — some of those were quite personal in nature — on Facebook made me taking up the keys once more.

I’m not going to defend what my newspaper published today, but the nature of protest till late in evening just fascinated me. It was the sheer "power of words" — a catchline ABP has been using for quite sometime — and also a visual that stirred our morning minds, which led to protests and sloganeering outside our office. The protest continued on web space also. Most of the protesters were women, both on the road and the cyber highway, who thought that the sari-clad images done by our designer were in poor taste and humiliating for people who love traditional saris — either to wear or to appreciate.

Most of my friends and colleagues were furious over the way the visual was represented, thinking that women were the target. For long, I like debates, especially those concern the common masses. I also wanted to start a debate, taking a stand, which I may or may not like, on this issue this afternoon. One of the first comments was targeting the profession I chose some years back. I was also told that we, including my bosses, should give up journalism! Why should we? Just because some people react like that? One of the first lessons in journalism I got from Dipayan da — who nurtured many a young brain to turn into great professionals in this "cocoon" (as one of my friends said) — was that a journalist’s job is done when people react to a story, or a picture, or any visual.

Have we forgot to think things differently? If someone chooses that, does that mean he has lost his "senses"? What sort of communication is that? And it came from my sensible journalist friends and ex-colleagues! Experimenting with a new idea might be bad, but isn’t it better than printing some run-of-the-mill stories and pictures everyday? The day — it was Dashami in Bengal — Sourav Ganguly lost his captaincy, TT did a nice graphic, which I think everyone remembered till date. There were lots of hate calls and mails, like what we have been receiving now, but was there a better way to compare him with the goddess Durga being immersed in the Ganga? Tell me another broadsheet newspaper in India which experimented with so much in design and layout? The day after 7/11, when Mumbai was limping back to normality, can you remember the TT Page 1? Or on January 23, 2002, a day after the attack on American Center?

TT is not at all a "piddly paper bent on gimmickry", as it would be a really long list, which papers have been doing this for ages and on how many occasions!

I know, my friends would again bombard me with comments, and some of you may think that it’s just waste of time responding to this blog! Nevertheless, I welcome feedback and criticism, of course!

©Supratim Pal, 2009

Girl with zeal on global stage

Following is the latest article written by me for my newspaper:

Calcutta, July 10: Meeting the Prime Minister was a dream but Sanjukta Pangi, 16, stayed cool — she had a mission to accomplish.

The tribal teen had come all the way to L’Aquila, Italy, from one of Orissa’s most backward districts to tell Manmohan Singh what he could do to transform the education scene in her village, Semiliguda.

She won a promise from Singh, during the G8 summit yesterday afternoon, that his government would lay stress on rural education in the country.

The student of Government Girls’ High School in Pottangi, Koraput district, had been selected by Unicef to represent India at the J8 (Junior 8) summit in Rome along with 53 others from 14 countries, including all the G8 ones.

Fourteen of the children — one from each participating country — were picked to meet their respective leaders at L’Aquila.

“I told the Prime Minister about the J8 declaration on free and qualitative education in developing countries,” Sanjukta told The Telegraph from L’Aquila.

“Initially, I was quite tense talking to him…. I requested him to improve the transport sector in rural areas so students like me don’t have to stay in school hostels.”

After the 15-minute meeting, Singh introduced Sanjukta to world leaders, including US President Barack Obama and French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

Two other Indian teenagers had been selected to attend the J8 summit: Narendra Kumar, 15, from Rae Bareli in Uttar Pradesh and Samuel Venkatesan, 17, from Dam Kottapalla, Tamil Nadu.
Sanjukta made the team of 14 to L’Aquila on the strength of her performances in the discussions and debates at the J8.

Sanjukta, who comes from a village near Daman Jodi, Orissa’s highest peak, said the J8 summit had made her more confident than ever about talking on child rights, especially on education for girls.

“In my village, girls are married off at an early age. I had to fight with my parents to continue to study,” she said.

At both the G8 and J8 summits, the delegates — the world leaders and their younger counterparts — were looking for an answer to climate change and carbon emission.
Sanjukta calmly told the Prime Minister: “Youths like us are the future of the world. Together we can change it into a better place for the next generations to live. My father is a farmer; he has to wait for the rains every year because industries have come up near our village and trees have been felled randomly. Are we going to a world where there’ll be no greens? We should focus on plantation and the green drive.”

Mission accomplished, she returns to her village, about 500km from state capital Bhubaneswar, next week. She promises it will be “a new Sanjukta going back to India” with a “changed mindset” for a better tomorrow.

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link: http://www.telegraphindia.com/1090711/jsp/frontpage/story_11223141.jsp

All about Green Travel

My father wouldn’t have retired too early, six years before he was supposed to be 60, had there been even a proposal of extending the Metro to Barasat, as it was declared yesterday by a lady known to be maverick in nature, confused in philosophy and restless in work.
This piece is not to celebrate the ideas and ideals of Mamata Banerjee — as has been the case in the public sphere since her party’s meteoric rise to popularity in the past few months — but to share a few thoughts with you as a fellow commuter on the infamous Sealdah-Bongaon section.

Why infamous? Isn’t it derogatory? Obviously, it is.

How many of you have got only a square feet to make yourself comfortable in a place on a EMU compartment in the peak hours? I still have to do on most of the occasions. For me, the rush office hours are better than the semi-full compartments in the afternoons, when I travel nowadays to come to office. The logic is simple: you don’t need to be extra-cautious for your belongings in the office hours than lazy afternoons, when unemployed youths get active to pounce upon innocent passengers, especially women travelling alone. Although I broke my first (or, second) specs of my life on a morning train at Barasat while going to school, I still enjoy the crowd.

The crowd, in the morning office hours, is just superb. While some of them are busy playing cards on the 30/45-minute journey, many others enjoy arguing the Mamata-Buddha political equation, talking about the late night cricket match in West Indies or even the usual soccer duel between Mohun Bagan and East Bengal. I still think the commuters have a better feel of things than the intellectuals or bureaucrats chalking out strategies sitting far from the reality in an AC room!

Once I told my father — before he gave up commuting, which he started in the early Sixties when he was a student at Ashutosh College in Calcutta, in 1998 — that the best intellectuals are the people who take the morning crowded trains to office and repeat the same in evenings. Even now, I can see unknown faces talking to each other on issues like the Indo-US nuclear deal, Iran elections or even Obama’s Afpak policy. It might sound strange to a stranger to Bongaon locals, but it’s true. All you need is proper initiation before your first step inside the bogie. Otherwise you might be shoved just like my big fat maternal uncle. In short, he was told to make room for another person in a cramped compartment he was not habituated to travel!

Somehow, I still prefer train journeys to any other mode of transport. Not because it’s smoother and safer than the rest, but also for its positive impact on the environment. It’s still one of the green public transports available to us — maybe in the mode of a symbolic green EMU rakes to us! Bongaon locals are not infamous as it seems to be, they are really nice to travel on, an experience of lifetime.

©Supratim Pal, 2009

The Great Indian Trek: Last Part

Finally, we reached Roopkund — the lake created by Shiv with his Trishul when a thirsty Parvati asked for water on their way to the Kailash. The last 700 steps to reach the lake situated just below the Trishul (23,000ft, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trisul) seemed an endless journey with its high gradient. The frozen lake denied us any view of the skulls and bones found scattered there. Some people say that the skulls and bones were of the Pandavas who could come only this far on their Mahaprasthan. The local people, like Mahendra, believe that the lake was created by the Nanda Devi king for his queen to use it as a mirror. But scientists had a different story to tell. With carbon-dating and other processes, they found the skulls and bones could not have been more than 900 years old. But how did they die there? Probably a severe snowstorm, with the hails as big as cricket balls, hit the people, who might be devotees of Nanda Devi. In fact, in October 2012, thousands of people would take the journey that will cross Roopkund and Junargali pass.

The descent from Roopkund was doubly dangerous with the surface getting more slippery. One of the best memories of this stretch was to get water from underground, rather under the snow. You can hear water flowing under the snow, but you can’t take it from everywhere. Only in two places, water was seeping by the rocks, and we collected two bottles full from there.

It took about another three hours to reach Pathar Nachani, from where we started early that morning only. The afternoon was sunny and the evening was brighter than Baidini with a late moonrise. We had a great dinner with payesh/kheer — made by Dhan Singh with MithaiMate and cashew nuts bought from Calcutta by Sabyasachi, who was absent at the tent though. Never did I imagine that I would ever have payesh at 14,000ft! Probably that’s the best part of trekking.

The next morning, we met Sabyasachi at Baidini again from where the journey downwards was through a dense forest. After an hour, we reached Gaurali Patal and Wan was quite far from there. The 13km trek from Baidini to Wan left our toes sore like never before, as the pressure is high on knees and toes while coming down. The night we stayed at the forest department rest house in Wan where Sabyasachi made wonderful khichdi. Wan is the last village on that road from Loharjung where vehicles can ply. But we chose to walk. It was a leisurely walk, as we didn’t have any target to reach a particular place at a specific time. The 14km walk was made easy and interesting with birds, flowers, orchids and trees. Late in the morning, we reached Kulling, a small village, from where we picked up some stuff for our lunch that we had planned to do it in a forest. For us, it was a no-cooking morning, as we still had a good stock of biscuits and other dry food. When we reached the GMVN guesthouse in Loharjung, it was almost dusk. We had a quick egg-toast and tea before trying to call up our anxious parents back home. Manas da and Sabyasachi joined hands to prepare a delicious dal, mixed with scrambled egg, that night, while I was as usual busy with the overshooting accounts!

The next day we did a 16km trek to Bekhal Taal through the forest, but memories of that trip I might scribble another day.

Pix at: 1. http://picasaweb.google.co.in/supratimtt/RoadToRoopkund#

2. http://www.facebook.com/reqs.php#/album.php?aid=117783&id=581712447

©Supratim Pal, 2009