By Sachidanand Singh Final act: pouring! I was still at the university, biding my time. Purely for form I had myself enrolled for some easy course. With little work pressure I had time to put my chemistry knowledge to practical use. Fine powder of charcoal, called “activated charcoal”, is known to absorb colour and odour from liquids. I decided to use activated charcoal to refine the country liquor which was then available for ten rupees a bottle. It came with a hideous colour and a powerful odour.  A quick trip to the labs, some skillful negotiation with the assistant there and I came... 

    The prize-winning master plan! Patna: In a major step towards realising the ambitious Nalanda International University, coming up in Rajgir in Bihar, an international jury has selected the architectural design of an Ahmedabad-based firm for the varsity. The design of Ahmedabad-based company Vastu Shilpa Consultants  was selected by a jury that comprised top architects from Singapore, China, Japan and India. Vice Chancellor Gopa Sabharwal, addressing the media here Thursday, said 79 proposals had been received and eight final entries were shortlisted. B.V Doshi, principal architect... 

By Ratnakar Tripathy Talking eyes: cinema sync To start with a warning, please do not expect me to recount the 100 year tale in any detail. All I know is I turned cinema-crazy quite early, had my first black and white crushes on Nutan, Mala Sinha and a few other aunties at the age of eight and found myself among the milling masses of devotees. This was a sure contrast with how it went with my literary-minded friends during adolescence in school. It was a small tight club of boys in a boarding school who shared a mystic bond – the bond of the written word and also the malicious joys generated... 

  By Abhishek Choudhary Dulari Devi: and her wall painting “I can’t make much sense of this book, except that it has one of my paintings!” Dulari Devi told me in her understated but an occasionally proud voice, passing me her copy of Wendy Doniger’s The Hindus: An Alternative History, as we sat in her small, colourful verandah in Ranti village in Bihar’s Madhubani district. A few days before I met her in mid-February, Devi had returned home from a trip to Delhi after attending an exhibition on the Mithila art, that showcased some of her paintings. She explained to me her... 

  Holi colours: and women in white! Vridavan: Breaking the shackles of tradition, hundreds of widows played Holi with gulal and flowers in the land of Lord Krishna. Around 800 widows participated in the festivities in ashrams of Vrindavan in four-day Holi celebrations that began on Sunday. As part of Holi celebrations, traditional ‘Raas-Leela’ dance and other programmes have also been organised. Widows celebrate Holi festival with flower petals at a ashram in Vrindavan near Mathura. “Vrindavan Holi is an effort to free widows from the shackles of age-old tradition. Not only will the... 

  Bihar Day: what to play? Patna: viewpoints on this may vary. Is Bihar day an occasion to celebrate and underline one’s own culture or the time to celebrate culture as such? Honouring one’s own artists is worthwhile thing in itself but then an occasion like Bihar day is also the time to bring in cultural currents for the enjoyment of the Bihari population in Bihar! Or is the right solution to present a suitable mix of both? Actor-legislator Vinay Bihari recently complained that the state government was spending exorbitant sums on Bollywood stars for Bihar Diwas ignoring regional artistes. It... 

By Ratnakar Tripathy More and more awesome: on the pocket? Every time I hear from a young or old friend they watched a ‘great’ film on their laptops, I react with pity not envy. Like a great part of humanity, I feel that the big screen experience, whether 35 mm or 70 mm is something very special. It enables you to see the world within and without to depths that a small screen ranging between a gigantic TV screen to a mobile phone display will never match. The reasons are just too visceral and related to the way the human senses and the brain work, although it is possible to enumerate... 

  As a language vanishes! Vadodara: February 21 is the International Mother Tongue Day, chosen after the date in 1952 when students demonstrating for recognition of their language as one of two national languages of then Pakistan were killed in Dhaka. Concluding his ambitious marathon Peoples’ Linguistic Survey of India,(PLSI) which took four years of field work preceded by nearly 15 years of conceptualization and planning, Prof Ganesh Devy, the Sahitya Akademi award winner, literary critic and founder of the Tribal Academy at Tejgarh declares that out of 1,600-odd languages listed in... 

  Jharkhand’s many tongues: rich heritage! Ranchi: languages in India continue to evolve and develop by receiving recognition through the self-assertion and rise of the suppressed segments and tribes. This has a great potential for the creation of great literature, adding to the immense Indian inventory of narratives and images. In what seems an exciting development, UNICEF has supported the making of a dictionary for the tribal languages of Jharkhand. The dictionary, called Meri Bhasha Mein Meri Duniya, is theme-based and will visually depict items that people come in contact with in... 

    Patna: Tallest Gandhi Patna: altogether at 72 feet, the world’s tallest figure of Gandhi was unveiled in Patna in Bihar yesterday. Bapu’s figure is seen standing affectionately with two children on either side in the bronze statue constructed at the Gandhi Maidan, the very heart of Patna. Funded by the state government, the Rs. 10 crore statue, inclusive of a 30-feet-high pedestal, has been built by Delhi-based sculptor Ramsutar and Sons. With this, the Parliament statue in New Delhi where the ‘Father of the Nation’ is in a meditating pose, becomes the second tallest...