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Central Mental Haspatal premiered
Robab Rosan
The artist-turned filmmaker Tokon Thakoor's latest drama serial titled 'Central Mental Haspatal premiered at the Russian Cultural Centre at Dhanmondi in the city on Sunday.
The drama serial will be aired on Mondays and Tuesdays at 9:35pm on Channel i.
Among others, Shahir Huda Rumi, Kusum Shikdar, Arman Parvez Murad, Kochi Khondokar, Nusrat Yasmin Tisa, Nafisa Jahan, Barsha Bibhabari and Rifat Chowdhury are in the cast. Most performers play the characters of craziness.
The hospital that reportedly remains open 25 hours in a day will give the audience witty and humorous dialogues by the performers of the play.
It is the heart that is important to get admitted to the hospital more than one's financial ability. Hospital authorities are involved in several incidents to meet their own personal interest.
According to the director, the play is a social farce. It will present the problems of the 'crazy' people of the society. It will also uphold their liking and disliking. The similarities and dissimilarities of thoughts of the mad people with the normal people of society will also be presented at the play.
Quoting the Bangla saying 'Pagole ki na bole' Tokon Thakoor hopes that the audience will enjoy the conflicts among the mad people of the hospital. 'The internal conflicts between owners and donors of the hospital will hopefully be the most enjoyable parts of the play. Incidents of the violation of the rules of the hospital by its patients will also create huge impact among the audience,' he aspires.
He further says that he has tried to create a world of 'fantasa' mingling the English word 'fantasy' and Bangla word 'batasa'. He will be happy if the audience involve in his world with a mind free from all sort of social malice.
Videographed by Taijul Islam Roman, the drama is edited by Moinul Hossain Rupak and Abdullah Al Mamun. Background music is done by Ustad Kheyal Khan and the title music is done by Nochiketa.
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150 rare paintings of Bengal's pioneer artist missing
Tapos Kanti Das and Anisur Rahman
Some 150 paintings of Bengal's pioneer artist Shashibhushan Paul (1878-1946) have reportedly gone missing with custodians of the rare works shifting the responsibility on others.
The disappearance of the art works along with some sculptures of Shashibhushan Paul, who founded country's first art school in Khulna in 1904, came to light recently during a research work on the legend.
Patua Alauddin, former principal of Mashwarpasha School of Art, said, 'When the Shashibhushan Art School was transferred to Gallamari area and renamed as Khulna Art College along with 150 paintings of Shashibhushan Paul in the late 1980s, the paintings were also supposed to be transferred to the new campus.'
Patua, who served as principal from 1965 to 1983, told New Age that he had no idea regarding the whereabouts of Shashibhushan Paul's paintings after the renaming and shifting of the Art School.
The present principal of Khulna Art College, Mohammad Nazrul Islam Aghrani, said that during his Master's degree thesis he took photographs of 15 paintings.
He also informed that 53 other small paintings on hardboard were still under the college authority's supervision while the remaining paintings on canvas cloth were totally dilapidated, but did not give the wherabouts.
An article in a journal called Chinnapatar Sajai Toroni, brought out by former students of Khulna Art College in April 2005 on the legendary artist Shashibhushan Paul, mentioned the availability of the 150 paintings and some sculptures inherited from Shashibhushan's personal collection.
In response to another question, Aghrani said, the former principal Baby Sultana could be able to provide some more information in this regard.
When contacted, Baby Sultana informed that she, after receiving an anonymous letter threatening to damage the sculptures in 1996, handed over seven stone made sculptures of Shahsibhushan Paul to the district administration to keep them at the district treasury for their safety.
'I was informed that they were later handed over to the Khulna Museum by the district administration for preservation,' she added.
Official sources in Khulna Archeology department said they have received some sculptures of the Khulna Art College from the district administration in 2002.
A researcher in fine art, now working on Shashibhushan Paul's life and works, told New Age that there was something mysterious about the fate of the rare paintings.
Smelling fish, she feared that the paintings have gone missing or have been deliberately shifted to somewhere else through an underhand deal.
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Two poems by Muhammad Samad
Pleadge
If there is happiness
Let me share
If there is sorrow
Let me all bear
Translated by Debabrata Sarker
Why the seagull cries
You can smell
The fragrance of blooming flower of pain
From twelve hundred miles apart
You become restless, scared
Black long hairs are tearing apart
And you're going away
The ocean roars in your green lips and watery eyes
I run breathless
You separate yourself like ebb-tide of ocean
Quicksand is engulfing the great poet
Southern Bengal crumbles like a heap
In devastating storm I couldn't stand erect
You're leaving me
Alone.
A young seagull bursts into
Shrieks continuously-
Innocent seagull flies over my head
Why does the seagull cry-why she feels me
Still the seagull cries-
Why she cries!
Translated by Siddique Mahmudur Rahman
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2-day art workshop of UODA ends
Anisur Rahman
A two-day art workshop on etching and print making media at the Fine Art department of the University of Development Alternative, Dhaka ended on Saturday.
Eminent Bengali artist Shahid Kabir who lives in Spain, conducted the workshop. Some 40 fine art students from Dhaka University, Shanto-Marium University of Creative Technology, Narayanganj Art College and the UODA participated at the workshop.
UODA organised the workshop aiming at introducing unique style and technique used by Shahid Kabir among the fine art students of the country, said Nasima Haque Mitu, MFA course coordinator at the UODA.
The organiser will hold an exhibition at the Gallery Chitrak, featuring the art-works sketched by the participants at the workshop. 'I am impressed at getting innovative ideas from the young fine art learners in Bangladesh', said Shahid Kabir. 'More such workshops need to be organised to promote the progress of fine art in Bangladesh', he added.
Born in 1949 in Bangladesh, Shahid Kabir, who graduated in Fine Arts from Dhaka University in 1969, had worked as a teacher at the same faculty for nine years. He has been living in Madrid of Spain since 1980. He has won a number awards including at home and abroad. He received the Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy awards in 1975 and 76 and Carmen Arozamena Prize in Madrid in 1984.
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Ravi Shankar bids farewell to Europe
Press Trust of India . London
Having mesmerised fans around the world for decades, Sitar maestro Pandit Ravi Shankar will bid farewell to Europe by performing a select set of ragas in London tonight for the last time.
The 88-year-old sitar maestro, who has been a major force for innovation in Indian classical music, is on a tour to Europe which will culminate at the prestigious Barbican Centre here tonight. His daughter Anoushka will also perform with him.
Much of the tour had to be cancelled due to a stomach virus - but Ravi Shankar has now been declared fit and ready to play.
In an interview to Guardian newspaper ahead of tonight's performance, Ravi Shankar said he 'feels much better now than ever before but his body sometimes lets him down.'
'My mind, musically... In every sense I feel much better than ever before. But it is the body that sometimes let's met down,' he said.
Anoushka, who is also a sitar player, said her father has given a new shape and definition to sitar.
'He has given a new shape and definition to this instrument over the course of the 20th century,' says his daughter Anoushka.
'He added the bass string that is quite common now. He created the modern notation system for Indian music. The tabla player was never really an important factor until my father made percussion a central part. A lot of what people now consider Indian music can be traced back to him.'
Shankar, who began his career at the age of 10 touring the world with his brother Uday's dance troupe, says he might have ended up a dancer if master instrumentalist Ustad Allauddin Khan would not have inspired him.
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Moore, Kutcher raise funds for homeless
Associated Press. Los Angeles
Demi Moore, Ashton Kutcher and several of their famous colleagues - including newlyweds Charlie Sheen and Brooke Mueller - spread their wings Saturday night at the exclusive Butterfly Ball fundraiser benefiting Chrysalis, a Los Angeles-based organisation that helps homeless men and women find jobs and homes.
'We love it, and we really believe in it,' Moore said before the event.
Sheen and Mueller created
a stir among photographers and reporters when they arrived on the ball's purple carpet.
It was the first public
appearance by the recently married couple, who wed Friday night.
The 'Two and a Half Men' star and real estate developer were engaged last summer after meeting at the Chrysalis Butterfly Ball in 2006.
The newlyweds didn't stay for this year's ceremony.
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State Language Movement in East
Bengal 1947-1956
21st February is the International Mother Language Day. The choice of the date owes its origin to the state language movement of East Bengal beginning with the creation of Pakistan in 1947 and ending with the liberation of Bangladesh in 1971. The saga of this martyrdom for mother tongue is the subject of this book written by a participant in the movement, who is a luminary in the intellectual horizon of Bangladesh.
The book gives the details of the movement from 1947. Mainly dealing with the period from 1947 to 1956 when Bangla was recognised as a state language of Pakistan, the book covers subsequent landmarks in the history of the movement ending with the declaration of Mother Language Day in 2000.
The history of Bangla as a language in the Indo-Germanic family and its emergence as a pioneer language in the subcontinent and a language of the Muslims in Bengal is briefly recounted. Pakistan imposed Urdu as the only official language in the country neglecting the claim of Bangla, the language of 63 per cent of its population. That ignited the movement and it gained strength from other developments that soured relations between the two wings of Pakistan and turned East Pakistan into a colony of West Pakistan. Deprivation in all spheres added fuel to the language movement and Bengalis of East Pakistan asserted its nationalistic identity and fought a liberation war for the emergence of the nation-state, Bangladesh.
Many books have been written on the language movement in the last half a century but most of them are in Bengali. This is almost the first comprehensive book on the epic struggle of Bangla language in the English language.
Abul Maal A Muhith is an eminent economist, a successful development administrator and a political leader. One of the most brilliant students of his time he had a distinguished career in civil service wherefrom he resigned as Secretary to Government at a young age. He had a brief stint in diplomatic capacity in Washington DC first as Economic Counselor of Pakistan and then as a Registered Foreign Agent for Bangladesh and finally as Economic Minister and also the Charged' Affaires of Bangladesh. He served in international financial institutions as the first Alternate Executive Director from Bangladesh in the World Bank and as the only Executive Director from Bangladesh in the Asian Development Bank. He was the Finance and Planning Minister in Bangladesh in 1982 and 1983 and a Visiting Fellow in the Princeton University in 1984 and 1985. He was Chairman of Bangkok-based UNESCAP, co-Chair of Rome-based Third World Forum, Founder Chair of Bangladesh Association of Washington DC and Founder Chair of Porosh and BAPA of Bangladesh.
He has published about a score of books, contributed to many anthologies and has written extensively on issues of development, finance, banking, governance, public administration, environment, history and socio-political culture.
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