Arbit Scratchpad

EPILOGUE: Uttarakhand Diary Have you ever felt that eruption of a crush? As if someone has just squeezed your heart and all the blood has reached your head! You start floating around in space even though you are standing right there on the ground. It is nothing but an anticipatory chemical surge. You got to blame the chemical dopamine. So what? I say! It feels real and it is – we can define real later on! The bus for Rishikesh had started moving when there were voices heard, someone was yelling from outside. The conductor asked the driver to stop for a minute. Two women came into the bus and seated themselves and the bus started off again with a lurch - the dusty landscape soon giving way to narrow, congested roads. She was now sitting in the bus with her mother. She would have been around twenty five or so, well endowed and taller than her mother; as she sat there she wiped the sweat beads off her dusky forehead with her dupatta ! Princess is what her mother called her (the t...

Photos Courtesy: Sounak Sinha. 08 May 2011, Sunday - On the eve of the 150th birth anniversary of Nobel laureate and poet Rabindranath Tagore, Dr H K Kejriwal the renowned art collector and philanthropist inaugurated the Tagore Hall at the premises of the Jayamahal Sarbajanin Durga Charitable Samiti. The hall is decorated with visual copies from H K Kejriwal's collections of Tagore's letters and paintings along with a few artworks from the Bengal School (Gaganendranath Tagore, Abanindranath Tagore, Jamini Ray, Nandalal Bose). The event was initiated with recitation by Dr Kejriwal of Rabindranath Tagore's poetry and was followed by a talk on Tagore by Debasish Banerjee and Rabindra Sangeet by Shamit Bagchi, Debolina Dutta, Srila Banerjee and a few other artistes. The Jayamahal Samiti Presidents B K Pal and Bijan Majumdar were present and addressed the gathering at this joyous occasion. The artifact collection/decoration was conceived and executed by Tapan Dutta, Shamit ...