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Book Review: Dozakhnama

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Name of the author: Rabisankar Bal
Translator: Arunava Sinha
Genre: Magic realism
Year of release: 2013
Price: Rs 399

Who is the better storyteller: God or Manto?

Manto’s grave In Miani Sahib, Lahore, used to hold this epitaph before it was replaced by his sister fearing consequences from the newly independent Islamic nation of Pakistan. This race with God to be the better storyteller continued till his end and really is the essence of Dozakhnama. Within the conversation between two of the most celebrated writers in Urdu – Saadat Hasan Manto and Mirza Ghalib – the novel oscillates between two of the most important turning points in subcontinental history; the first war of independence in 1857 and the partition in 1947. In disguise of a literary masterpiece, it chronicles history in far more eloquent terms than any history book.

A journalist, unnamed throughout the book, researching on the tawaifs of Lucknow comes across an unpublished manuscript of a novel written by Manto about his conversation with Ghalib beyond the grave. He takes the manuscript back with him to Calcutta to translate it into Bengali with the help of his Urdu teacher, Tabassum. And then what follows is a world unleashed by the turning of pages where lost dastangos are found again, where Ismat Chugtai and Ashoke Kumar are living characters, where the last Mughal emperor, Bahadur Shah Zaffar is still holding onto glories long past. The decay of the Mughal Empire and with it the culture attached to it of Shahjahanabad is echoed in Manto’s description of the aftermath of partition. If history repeats itself, then there are no better historians than poets.

Translators are important. Without them, Marquez would still be undiscovered, Murakami would still be an unknown name and Neruda would not have become the most quoted poet ever. Likewise, without Sinha’s translation, Dozakhnama would have remained a book only celebrated inside the Bengali reading audience. While a lot of the nuances of the original language get lost in translation generally, Sinha has still managed to keep the pacing of the words and the emitting imageries true. Interestingly, the journalist-protagonist in the novel is himself translating a work from one language to another. One paradox inside another, by the end, the novel magically opens up portals to our shared history which reminds one that the past is not always that different from the present.

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Events

LSR organises first Manohar Shyam Joshi Memorial Lecture

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Lady Shri Ram College for Women organised the first Manohar Shyam Joshi Memorial Lecture in the college Auditorium on the 8th of August 2013. The lecture by Mrinal Pande, Chairperson, Prasar Bharati on the “Art of Story Telling in India” witnessed a packed auditorium and was attended by esteemed academicians along with the family of Late Manohar Shyam Joshi.

For those of you who might be unaware, Manohar Shyam Joshi was the writer who penned down the first Hindi soap opera of Indian Television – “Hum Log” and the popular “Buniyaad”.

Dr. Bhagwati Joshi, wife of Manohar Shyam Joshi formerly worked as a lecturer at LSR. Paying remembrance to his great work, the college organised the lecture.

Preeti Dhawan, Vice Principal, LSR and Meenakshi Gopinath, Principal, LSR with Dr. Bhagwati Joshi

The lecture by Mrinal Pande touched upon the story telling traditions in India stating that stories in India exist as a duality of entertainment and information. She also said that often it is ‘irony’ that creates the magic in stories. Further, the discussion delved into censorship where she stated the existence of state censorship and self-censorship. While the former can be fought against, it is the latter that is more harmful. Taking instances from Premchand’s Godan, Folk lore in Buddhism and Manohar Shyam Joshi’s work, the lecture engaged well with the diverse audience. The lecture was a multi-lingual one with the guest comfortably switching between Hindi and English and quoting Sanskrit shloks.

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Mrinal Pande, Chairperson, Prasar Bharati

LSR’s much loved KK (Kasturi Kanthan ma’am) shared an experience of her interaction with Manohar Shyam Joshi. The event ended with a short movie made by a first year student on Manohar Shyam Joshi and an address by the family of the writer.

Image Credit: Nalini Prasad

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Sri Venkateswara College

Fine Arts Society Orientation at Venky

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The Fine Arts Society at Sri Venkateswara College which is a culmination of most of the performing societies of the college, organised their orientation on the 7th of August, 2013.

The orientation comprised of performances from Verve – The Dance society, Alaap – Indian Music society as well as the Dramatics society of the college. As a closing note to all these performances, a movie about the college made by the students of the Film and Photography society was shown to the freshers.

Choreo
Choreo performing their Annual piece.
Verve-western dance society.
Verve – The Western Dance Society showing their moves!
Alaap-indian music society
Alaap – The Indian Music Society
Free redbulls to welcome the freshers.
Free Redbulls to welcome the freshers! As said – ‘Art’ gives you wings!

Sonam Satija and Geetika Varshney

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Sex Amma

Sex Amma: Is masturbating harmful?

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Query:
I wanted to ask that do masturbating 3-6 times a week causes any harm? I do that sometimes in my free weeks in my college. Also, is masturbating 2-3 time continuously in a day harmful?

amma copyResponse:
Aiyo, this little machi is getting it all wrong re! Amma can’t understand what in the name of the byootiful backwaters of Kerala would make you think that giving yourself a little happiness will harm you! What harm are you thinking of, da?

Yenniway, to answer your little query, amma only wants you to know that there are several lonely machis out there who love to pleasure themselves but worry about its risks – so little machi – you’re not alone! But to clear all the yair, masturbation is great way to release all your sexual energy and does no harm, no matter how yoften you do it. Regardless of whether you are a byeauttyful girl or handsome boy, the M word is taboo for many people, but it’s a great feeling and you should do it whenever you want to let your little machi gills be free of all the sexual tension!

It is not possible for us all to always have someone to make us happy, and amma thinks helping yourself is absolutely worth it!

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Events

SRCC Youth Conference slated for August 17th

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An event that first took place last year, the SRCC Youth conference is an initiative of the students of Shri Ram College of Commerce. With the second edition of the conference slated for August 17, 2013, the theme of this year’s event is CHANGE.

This year, the conference has been structured to include more than just the speaker sessions. Concurrent with the first Youth Conference, there will be three speaker sessions wherein people from different fields will share the same dais, articulating their experience and thoughts in regards to the theme.

Two speakers having a political background then present the two sides of the same coin, giving the audience both a view and a counter view on an apolitical subject. Finally a panel discussion comprising of speakers hailing from the social and arts field to end the conference.

Anmol Verma, a Core Committee member of the Youth Conference team, commented “We have changed our structure itself. We have brought a panel discussion and have also tried to make it more interactive with students present.  We have also brought speakers who have come from various fields so that students have a variety of thoughts to listen to. Our main aim is to take this year’s youth conference to a higher level altogether. ”

The speakers for Youth Conference are well known in various spheres of the society. The speakers include Mr. Prabhu Chawla, Editorial Director of The New Indian Express Group, Mrs. Sonia Singh, Editorial Director of NDTV, Dr.Kiran Bedi, Retired IPS officer and Social Activist, Mr. Praveen Swami, National Security Analyst, Firstpost and CNN-IBN, Mr. Rajat Sharma, Chairman and Editor-in-chief of India TV and Rashmi Bansal, author.

The event will be a full day conference scheduled from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. and will take place in the SRCC auditorium.

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News

AISF protests against FYUP in Delhi University

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Yet another protest against the newly introduced Four Year Undergraduate Programme took place at North Campus on Wednesday, 7th August by AISF or the All India Students Federation.  The dharna started out from the Arts Faculty and marched till the Vice Chancellor’s residence, and also commenced a public meeting later.

The protest had participants from across the university – from students to teachers to administrative staff. Their motive was to question the very existence of the FYUP and its implementation by boycotting classes. The main questions they addressed covered several problems of the FYUP that its critics have been citing since last year – from promises of BTech degrees and Laptops to compulsory non honours courses. AISF also raised a major question on the integrity of Delhi University Students Union, dominated mainly by members of the ABVP and NSUI, which has largely remained silent on issues relating to the FYUP.

The protests marked exactly two weeks of the commencement of the new system, and seemed to have impacted the University administration in a manner that seemed relatively stronger than some of the protests before this. It’s level of participation, infact, is reflective of the fact that many in the University can’t see the benefits of the FYUP that the University officials initially promised.

Image Credit: Priyam

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Lady Shri Ram College for Women

LSR inaugurates Resource Center for students with disabilities

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On Friday, 2nd August, the KPMG Resource Center for students with disabilities was inaugurated at apartment 10 of the staff residences at Lady Shri Ram College. The walls of this resource centre adorn art work by students with disabilities, and the notices on the boards are both in Braille script and in English. Spread over two rooms, the computers here have software that makes technology accessible to students and teachers with disability – from coding software that translates sound to text for students with hearing impairments to software like JAWS, Everest –D Braille Embosser, Screen Reading Software, Lex-Talk Scanner, Book Scanners, DAISY recorders and Players and OCR software  for students with visual disabilities. It is equipped with a total of 10 computers, which are installed with softwares needed by both English as well as Hindi medium students.

At the resource center, all text on display is accompanied by a Braille version of the same.

An initiative by REACH (which stands for Reaffirming Equity Access Capacity and Humanism) – an LSR society meant to empower students with any kind of disadvantage, this resource center is a part of KPMG’s CSR activities and will hugely benefit LSR and it’s students and teachers with disabilities.

Hemul Goel, the current student coordinator for REACH said:

“The Resource Centre equipped with the latest assistive technology like the Everest –D Braille Embosser, Screen Reading Software, Lex-Talk Scanner to name a few, really brings us close to our aim of empowering students and making them self reliant. Besides setting up a Resource Centre, a new wing called Kshitij Swavalamban has also been instilled under REACH. Through this initiative we hope to provide placement and internship opportunities for those at a social and economic disadvantage.’’

This initiative by LSR reflects all the values that the college stands for, and is only a beginning of the larger goals of equity and justice that it instills in its students.

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News

Delhi High Court asks DU to look at reservation for Delhi domicile students

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The Delhi High court finally heard the PIL filed by the NGO Moksha Foundation, last week. The PIL demands an 85% reservation for all Delhi domicile students in the state funded colleges of the university and at least 5% in the partially funded ones.

The bench including Acting Chief Justice Badar Durrez Ahmad and Justice Vibhu Bakhru issued a notice to the University to probe into the possibility of allowing this particular  reservation.

The predominant argument of the NGO’s council was that “large scale migration” denied admission to undergraduate students in the capital and also, the University was formed with the prime objective of fulfilling the needs of the students of Delhi which it has failed to perform.

Some of the 12 colleges to be affected by the PIL are Deen Dayal Upadhyay College, Indira Gandhi Institute of Physical Education, Keshav Mahavidyalaya, Maharaja Agrasen College, Shaheed Raj Guru College and Shaheed Sukhdev College of Business Studies.

Devesh Lalwani, founder of Moksha Foundation says, “The decision was not exactly what we hoped for, but we are moving in the right direction. The University has been given a time frame of three months to consider the proposal and give a response to us in writing whether they agree with it or not. if we are not satisfied with their decision, we will go back to court for again.”

The court has issued a period of two months to the University of Delhi and UGC to deliver a decision on the issue.

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Offbeat

Offbeat Careers: Social Media Management

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A social media manager is responsible for monitoring and posting to all social media outlets as well as interacting with and growing a company’s audience. The ultimate goal is to raise awareness of the brand, company, product or a person online while driving traffic online, offline or both. Depending on the job, a social media manager is typically associated with brand building through Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, MySpace and corporate blogging.

We all know how important word of mouth is, and social networking is like word of mouth on steroids. As a business, it’s vital to tap into and join online conversations not only about your brand, but also those about your competitors, your industry and your areas of expertise.

Even if you haven’t launched an outbound social media strategy, it helps to keep a pulse on what people are saying — good or bad — about your company, competitors and major trends. And, by representing your company in a positive, authentic way, you can build credibility for your expertise and business and link to customers and prospects quickly. You can also help mitigate damage should negative conversations about your company emerge by quickly responding to complaints.

Also, contrary to popular belief social media management is not only about management but also writing and analyzing. It is an amalgamation of journalism and advertizing. It offers a career in creating content in multiple places, such as a blog, Twitter, a Facebook page, etc.; monitor and scan the views, decide what comments to approve, and respond to replies on these sites, scanning Twitter followers for conversations you may want to join, or checking your RSS reader subscriptions for relevant articles and new ideas. Checking Google Alerts to see when and where your business is mentioned on the Web and creating and monitoring a community and topics on a site such as Facebook or LinkedIn

However, social media management in India is still at a nascent stage and not many colleges or institutes offer it as a course. Having said that, there is a lot to explore in this sector and understanding social media at the root level is enough to kick start your career. A lot has to be learned and figured out on the job.  Getting internships at a digital advertizing firm or an online news publication is the best place to start if someone is interested in a career in social media management. Nirali Hingwala, the Content Head at SocialSamosa.com, a website catering to Indian Social media news says, “Initially Social Media Management doesn’t pay off well, because its still evolving, there is lack of good talent in this field with no proper training as the discipline is still not taught in the Indian universities. There are only private courses.”

It’s a great time to break into a social media career. The importance of social media is becoming clear to more companies every day. This means social media managers are in high demand and the market is wide open.

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