Poovachal Khader, 72, passes away in Thiruvananthapuram
Poovachal Khader, who died in Thiruvananthapuram on Tuesday at the age of 72 while undergoing treatment for COVID-19, was a most prolific lyricist who penned several all-time hit songs in Malayalam cinema.
In a career that spanned over five decades, he wrote over a thousand songs for more than 350 films. He was so busy in the late 1970s and 80s that he took leave from his job at the Public Works Department – he had a diploma in Engineering – to concentrate on his alternative career in cinema.
Poovachal Khader, who used to write poetry from his student days and went on to pen songs for the stage and radio, caught attention right from his early days in cinema. His two songs in the 1973 film Kattu Vithachavan – Neeyente prarthana kettu… and Mazhavillinanjnathavaasam… – were hits. Then the songs of Ulsavam (Aadya samaagama lajjayil…and Swayamvarathinu) established him as a lyricist to reckon with.
Chart-toppers
Among his chart-toppers are Naathaa nee varum kalocha… (Chamaram), Shararanthal thiri thaanu… (Kayalum Kayarum), Sindoora sandhyaykku mounam… (Choola), Ente janman neeyeduthu…(Itha Oru Dhikkari), Etho janma kalpanayil… (Palangal), Ponveene… (Thalavattam), Naanamaavunno…(Aattakalasam),Poomaaname… (Nirakkoottu) and Anuraagini itha en… (Oru Kudakkeezhil).
The accent on meaningful lyrics may have become less in Malayalam film music by the time Poovachal’s career peaked, but he came up with beautiful, poetic lines in song, such as Naathaa nee varum and Aadya samaagama lajjayil…(Ulsavam). That was also the time when a tune was composed first and the lyricist was asked to write lines accordingly. He was still able to write some fine lines.
Not many know that he wrote one of the most popular light songs in Malayalam – Jayadeva kaviyude…, which was set to a lilting tune by M.G. Radhakrishnan. Through songs like that, Poovachal will always be remembered.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> States> Kerala / by P.K. Ajith Kumar / Kozhikode – June 22nd, 2021
Hyderabad FC (HFC) have signed young winger Abdul Rabeeh AK for the upcoming Indian Super League (ISL) season, the club announced on Tuesday.
The 20-year-old from Malappuram becomes the second new addition to the club this season.
Rabeeh has featured in the All India Football Federation (AIFF) Youth Leagues at the U-16 and U-18 levels, apart from the 2nd Division League.
He spent the 2020/21 season with Luca SC, Malappuram, playing a crucial role for his side in the Kerala Premier League, where he was zeroed in upon by the HFC scouts.
Speaking after joining HFC, Rabeeh said, “Hyderabad FC is currently a club where most young footballers would love to play. The opportunity they are offering to youngsters like me is something I cannot let go. Their major contribution to the national team gives all young players belief, and I cannot wait to be a part of the club and show my quality.”
A versatile winger, who can also function as a full-back, Rabeeh joins as a developmental player. While he aims to break into the first team, reserve team coach, Shameel Chembakath, believes the youngster will be a valuable addition to the squad.
“I have seen a lot of youngsters with potential come and go. But Rabeeh is one player that has always stood out. He has the ability to control the tempo of the game even against tougher opponents. Also, he has potential in terms of speed, acceleration and skill, and puts in a lot of hard work every day,” said Shameel.
A doting father and husband, a selfless community worker, our dear friend, and a beautiful human being,” is how one message circulating on social media remembers Tippu Adam Khan, a 42-year-old man who volunteered to help many people in different ways during this pandemic. He succumbed to COVID-19 on Friday. Tippu, a former Vice President at J.P. Morgan played an immense role as a community worker leaving a lasting impact on his family, friends, and even on people who had never met him.
Tippu, along with his friends, had set up ‘Oxygen Helpline‘, a volunteer network to help procure and supply oxygen cylinders for free to people in need across the city.
Humer Khan, who started ‘Oxygen Helpline’ with Tippu Adam Khan says they started the service after he saw the crippling health situation in the city and people dying due to shortage of oxygen supply.
The group has helped more than 500 people across the city so far to procure oxygen cylinders, besides educating people and rendering other assistance to patients.
“Tippu bhai was an inspiration to work with. He worked day and night to help people get oxygen cylinders. He had no fixed timings. You could find him on a call with volunteers at 3 in the night trying to procure cylinders. I have not seen another person like him,” he said.
Mohammed Kaif, co-founder of the NGO Small Appeal, and a friend of Tippu says, he was a relentless and an altruistic individual. Days before he was tested positive for COVID, Tippu had arranged for 9000 masks and dispatched them to Lakshadweep. “When he got to know that there was a rise in Covid cases in the islands, and there was a lack of essential medical supply. He jumped right into it and formed a team to procure medical supplies. He got in touch with people in each island in Lakshadweep to try to understand the needs of people there”.
But friends and associates of Tippu say his work goes beyond providing relief during the pandemic.
Abdullah Raj, a revert and a friend describes Tippu as a genuinely loving person, who was passionate about spreading the message of Islam to the world. “He would talk endlessly about Islam to people trying to clear their misconceptions about the faith”.
Raj said Tippu even left his job as a vice president at J.P. Morgan because it wasn’t complying with Islam, which prohibits interest-based banking. “He was committed to Islam, even at the cost of personal loss,” he said.
In an online condolence meet that was organized in Tippu’s memory on Friday by his friend Imtiaz Chowdhry, more than a hundred people gathered to share their memories of him. One friend Aslam, shared an incident of how Tippu had arranged for monthly groceries for a few widows when he heard that they had no one to support them. Aslam said the families wept when they heard of Tippu’s passing away.
From his children’s school teachers to colleagues, there were tens of people who shared their stories of how Tippu had touched their lives and had helped people. One friend mentioned that he was the grandson of Muslim Vellori (Mohammed Abdul Wahid Khan), a freedom fighter, and a prominent social activist of his time, who took part in many anti-colonial struggles and was jailed several times.
The meeting that was started at 11 pm went on till 2 am. His friends said they had to organize another online meeting the next day to accommodate those who couldn’t attend due to Zoom’s participant limitations.
Tippu was admitted to the city’s Shifa Hospital on June 8th, his brother Tippu Ahmed Khan said. But within days, his condition started worsening and his oxygen level started fluctuating. But even in the hospital bed, Tippu did not stop going out of his to help people in need.
“He was texting and calling people to arrange for oxygen cylinders for other patients when his own health was fast deteriorating,” his brother said.
He was put on ventilator on Friday and he passed away in the evening.
Ameen-E-Mudassar, a Covid warrior who started the Covid Helpline Bangalore website said, in his last message to him, Tippu said that he wanted to start a school, as he had seen many people unable to afford school fees during the pandemic.
“If I come back alive, I want you to work with me on a plan for a school,” he had messaged Ameen. He never came back.
For Tippu’s friends, his silent efforts to help people, without letting anyone know about it is an inspiration they say they would carry forward for the rest of their lives. In the online condolence meeting, one constant statement everyone made about him was how despite knowing him for years there were facets of his life they were not aware of. He had touched the lives of many people in so many ways.
His friends are now planning to bring up a biography of Tippu, highlighting his life and contributions. “It will serve as an inspiration to friends and family and it will serve as a memory to his young children on what a selfless and beautiful man their father was,” said Ameen.
Tippu is survived by his wife and three children.
source: http://www.thecognate.com / The Cognate / Home> News / by Shaik Zakeer Hussain / June 20th, 2021
This is the fifth part of the series called `Scientist Says’ where we bring for our readers the significant and commendable research works of young scientists.
Dr. Ahamed Irshad is a research associate in the department of chemistry, University of Southern California, Los Angeles. He has been associated with National Science Foundation, US Army, and Department of Energy on various battery projects. He has authored several articles in international journals published by American Chemical Society, Royal Society of Chemistry and Electrochemical Society. He served as the topic editor for Journal of Energy and Power Technology, and reviewer for international journals. He is also a recipient of Cottrell scholar award, Bristol-Myers-Squibb fellowship, Dr. J. C. Gosh medal, and Indian Academy of Science award. He shares some of his significant research works with Rashida BakaitofIndia Tomorrow.
Q. Please briefly explain your research.
Ans: My research interest is on developing novel materials for electrochemical energy conversion and storage devices. The research area can be broadly classified into two: (i) hydrogen fuel production from water and (ii) high energy batteries for electric vehicles.
The first project on hydrogen fuel was carried out during my PhD at Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. Hydrogen is considered as a fuel for the future. While burning petrol or diesel release huge amount of greenhouse gases, the only by-product of hydrogen fuel is water. Currently, hydrogen is produced from methane by steam-methane reforming. This method also produces CO2 and hence cannot be counted as a green method. My research topic was on utilizing carbon free, inexpensive, and abundant water (H2O) molecules as the hydrogen source and use electricity to split water. The process requires energy close to 237 kJ mol-1 or theoretical voltage of 1.23 V. However, practical voltage is as high as 1.8-2 V due to sluggish kinetics. This limits the efficiency to 65-70 % and necessitates expensive catalysts such as IrO2 or RuO2. My research goal was to design and develop highly active, low-cost, and stable cobalt and nickel-based catalysts to improve the efficiency. The use of inexpensive catalysts would also reduce the overall cost and make hydrogen an attractive fuel.
The battery research was done in collaboration with US Army and Department of Energy at University of Southern California, Los Angeles. There is a growing demand for high energy batteries for electric vehicles. Current lithium-ion battery (LIB) technology has limited range (200-300 miles) and high cost of $130/kWh. In addition, LIBs use toxic cobalt-based materials. In recent years, lithium sulfur (Li-S) batteries have emerged as a promising substitute to LIBs due to its five times high energy density. In addition, sulfur is earth abundant and less expensive. Commercialization of Li-S batteries is still hindered by its inability to charge/discharge quickly for several cycles. This has been attributed to high internal resistance and dissolution of soluble polysulfides. We proposed an electrode design with different carbons to reduce the resistance and developed an interlayer to improve the cyclability.
Q. What was the objective of your research?
Ans: Although water electrolysis is used to produce high purity hydrogen, its widespread deployment is impeded by the high cost. My goal was to develop cost-effective and robust catalysts based on nickel and cobalt instead of expensive platinum (Pt), ruthenium (Ru), and iridium (Ir) . I also wanted to investigate the key factors that affect the stability and activity. Similarly, Li-S battery technology has a high potential to replace LIBs(Lithium batteries). My primary objective was to identify the fundamental origin of the high internal resistance in Li-S batteries using a technique called electrochemical impedance spectroscopy. It was also intended to develop an advanced electrode structure to reduce the resistance that would allow to charge and discharge battery fast. Then again, we proposed a novel interlayer to stop soluble polysulfides diffusing from cathode to anode.
Q. What were the new findings of your research?
Ans: We prepared a series of novel materials such as cobalt-phosphate, cobalt-acetate, manganese-phosphate, etc. for water electrolysis. Our electrochemical quartz crystal microbalance studies suggested that the cobalt-phosphate catalysts are not stable at high voltage. In addition, the catalyst deposition was slow due to poor solubility of Co2+ in phosphate. We proposed the catalyst preparation from an acetate solution because the solubility of Co2+ in acetate is high and a large quantity of materials can be prepared in a short time. Cobalt-acetate also exhibited higher activity than cobalt-phosphate. In the case of Li-S battery, we used electrochemical impedance spectroscopy to probe the internal resistance. Our studies indicated that the high resistance originate from poor interparticle contact and sluggish battery reaction kinetics. When we added high surface area carbon, battery performed much better than before due to improved interparticle contact and high number of reaction sites. Adding an interlayer between electrodes stopped diffusion of soluble polysulfides. As a result of advanced cathode design and additional layer, our Li-S battery could be charged and discharged quickly for several cycles.
Q. What kind of challenges did you face?
Ans: The ideal catalyst should have high activity, stability, and preferably made of earth abundant, inexpensive, and non-toxic materials. It was a great challenge to incorporate all the features in a single material. For instance, cobalt-phosphate was very active but not stable. Low-cost manganese-phosphate didn’t show any catalytic activity or stability whereas highly expensive iridium-phosphate exhibited highest activity. Among all the materials tested, we identified cobalt-acetate as the most promising catalyst that showed high activity, stability, and relatively low cost. In the case of Li-S (Lithium-Sulfur) battery testing, identifying the key factors affecting the battery performance was a bit challenging. Impedance spectroscopy aided us to isolate a few factors that affected battery performance significantly. Fabrication of electrodes with different compositions and optimizing the electrode design was a herculean task.
Q. Any scholarship or award for research.
Ans: The battery project was financially supported by various federal and private agencies such as National Science Foundation, US Army, Department of Energy, and a battery startup called STAQ Energy. I was awarded the prestigious Cottrell award by the US National Science Foundation (NSF) and Research Corporation in 2020. I am also a recipient of Dr. J. C. Gosh gold medal in Physical Chemistry and Bristol-Myers-Squibb fellowship. The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), India, provided me fellowship for five years during my PhD. I also received Indian Academy of Science fellowship.
Q. How do you think your research would be beneficial to the society or industry?
Ans: There is a gradual increase in the CO2 and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The transport sector contributes almost 30 % of the greenhouse gases. Moreover, the petrol and diesel price keep increasing every day, and these fuels will run out soon. It is the time to look for clean fuel like hydrogen. My research findings on low-cost catalysts will reduce the hydrogen fuel price and improve the efficiency of electrolyzer. It is also possible to interface the electrolyzer with solar panel or wind turbine to store renewable energy. Similarly, high energy batteries are essential for electric vehicles and portable applications. Our results on Li-S batteries will advance the battery technology beyond lithium-ion battery and reduce the weight and cost of car batteries. The use of high energy batteries will increase the driving range as well. These batteries will be useful for drones and other aerial vehicles also.
Q. When did you begin and complete your research?
Ans: I have been doing battery research since I joined USC in 2017. My PhD started in 2011 and I submitted thesis in 2016. During five years of PhD, I entirely focused on developing catalyst for hydrogen production.
Q. Any other new research you are working on now?
Ans: Currently, I am investigating materials for fluoride-ion battery. In this case, the negatively charged fluoride ions are the charge carriers instead of positively charged lithium ions in lithium-ion battery. This is a new concept that has not been well explored. Another project is on alkaline batteries that are suitable for large scale stationary energy storage. I also continue to work on Li-S batteries for electric vehicles.
Q. How do you think your research can be carried forward further?
Ans: We have an extensive collaboration with scientists and research groups across the world. Currently, we are trying to utilize the technology and skills from different groups to understand the detailed molecular and crystal structure of the catalyst. This would allow us to establish structure-property relationship in these catalysts and investigate the fundamental reaction mechanism. We also communicated with battery companies and federal agencies to examine the feasibility of commercialization of our battery technology.
Q. Tips and suggestions for the budding scientists.
Ans: Career as a scientist is challenging yet a very rewarding experience. To be successful, you need to nurture scientific curiosity, creativity, deep passion, and perseverance. Always make sure that you learn the basic concepts thoroughly and keep yourself updated with scientific literature. Use the early years’ research career to learn as many techniques as possible that will help to tackle many scientific problems in future. Don’t hesitate to expose yourself to different ways of thinking by discussing ideas with peers, gaining experience in different research groups, and creating a network of friends. Communication is also important. You should learn to give presentations and write papers to share your research outputs with others. Just like in any other career, life as a scientist will have many ups and downs, but it’s your choice to scream or enjoy the journey.
source:http://www.indiatomorrow.net / India Tomorrow / Home> Education> Featured / by Rashida Bakait, IndiaTomorrow.net / April 16th, 2021
Besides Razia Sultana, 03 other Muslims have also qualified the coveted exam to become Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) in Bihar Police
Patna:
Razia Sultana has become the first Muslim female from Bihar to become Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) in the state police department.
Razia Sultana, 27, cracked the Bihar Public Service Commission (BPSC) 64th Combined Competitive Exam (CCE) in her first attempt and was recommended for the post of Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP).
Raziya Sultana originally hails from Gopalganj district of Bihar. Daughter of Mohammad Aslam Ansari, a stenographer at Bokaro Steel Plant who died in 2016, Razia Sultana completed her education from Bokaro in Jharkhand and Rajasthan.
A total of 1,454 candidates have qualified Bihar Public Service Commission (BPSC) 64th Combined Competitive Exam (CCE) result of which was declared on Sunday June 6, 2021.
“04 Muslims become DSP”
Of them a total of 28 candidates have been selected for Bihar Administrative Service, 40 for Bihar Police Service, 10 for Bihar Finance Service (Commercial Tax Officer), 02 for Jail Superintendent and 8 for Sub Registrar/Joint Sub Registrar.
Besides Raziya Sultana, 03 other Muslims have also qualified the coveted exam to become Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) in Bihar Police. They are: Mohammed Adil Belal, Faisal Raza and Mohammad Shahnawaz Akhtar.
“No Gender Discrimination”
While preparing for the Bihar Public Service Commission (BPSC) exam, Razia Sultana was working as Assistant Engineer at local electricity department.
Razia had passed the 12th board exams from Bokaro and later graduated from Jodhpur in Rajasthan and earned a degree in Electrical Engineering.
“Besides other things, there was no gender discrimination vis-à-vis education and learning in my family. This is why my mother had no objection when I got admission in a Jodhpur college to complete my graduation”, Razia said while sharing her success mantra.
source: http://www.ummid.com / Ummid.com / Home> India> Education & Career / by ummid.com News Network / June 09th, 2021
An excerpt from ‘A Map of Longings’, by Manan Kapoor.
Agha Shahid Ali.
In Delhi, Shahid also became aware of the city’s Mughal and colonial history, and was impressed by its architecture. In the early ’60s, the Mexican poet Octavio Paz had visited New Delhi and had been charmed by its architecture. He wrote numerous poems about the city and about all that he had witnessed here. He found Delhi’s “aesthetic equivalent” in “novels, not in architecture”, and to him, wandering the city was “like passing through the pages of Victor Hugo, Walter Scott, or Alexandre Dumas”.
Paz’s gaze, wherever he went, was directed inwards. For him, all the experiences, including the splendour of the Mughal architecture that attracted him, were revelatory and enlightening in one way or the other. In his book In Light of India, he called Delhi’s architecture “an assemblage of images more than buildings”. It was quite the same for Shahid who, after nineteen years, had returned to the city of his birth.
He was a student at Delhi University, which wasn’t too far from Old Delhi or what was once known as Shahjahanabad, the walled city of Delhi constructed by Shah Jahan – the emperor who “knew the depth of stones, / how they turn smooth rubbed on a heart. / And then? Imprisoned / with no consoling ghosts…”
The tomb of Amir Khusro at Hazrat Nizamuddin in Delhi was a place that had attracted Paz. In “The Tomb of Amir Khusro”, he wrote: “Amir Khusru, parrot or mockingbird: / the two halves of each moment, muddy sorrow, voice of light. / Syllables, wandering fires, vagabond architectures.”
The tomb attracted Shahid as well when he visited the dargah in Delhi almost a decade later: “I come here to sing Khusro’s songs. / I burn to the end of the lit essence… / The muezzin interrupts the dawn, calls / the faithful to the prayer with a monster-cry: / We walk through the streets calligraphed with blood.”
In Delhi, Shahid found poetry at each turn. In an interview with First City in 1991, he said: “For me the lanes of Delhi, particularly the ones leading to and from the Jama Masjid, hold a dazzling value. When I used to go to Kareem restaurant or was having nihari or kulfi on the steps of Jama Masjid, I used to imagine that I was living in the days of Ghalib.”
Unlike Paz, who as an outsider in Delhi could only adore the architecture, Shahid also saw history in the city. Although he had been exposed to the historical forces that had shaped Kashmir, it was in Delhi that he discovered, for the first time, history in brick walls, minarets and on the streets. In “The Walled City: Seven Poems on Delhi”, he wrote about Jama Masjid:
Imagine: Once there was nothing here. Now look how minarets camouflage the sunset.Do you hear the call to prayer? It leaves me unwinding scrolls of legend till I reach the first brick they brought here. How the prayers rose, brick by brick?
Shahid’s poetic concerns were largely a constant for most of his life, and are palpable in these early poems. His engagement with history, which he deals with as both an insider and outsider, reflects his tenderness and the experience of a poet who belongs to multiple worlds and none at the same time.
For the next three decades, he wrote about loss and the memory of loss, the burden of history and injustices of all kinds. The seeds of these poetic concerns were sown during his childhood, mostly at home. However, they were nourished in Delhi, by the city’s air and its history, which Shahid couldn’t ignore.
In the poems from Bone Sculpture and In Memory of Begum Akhtar, Shahid emerges as a poet who feels deeply about South Asian culture as well as politics. Both the collections are influenced by Delhi and reflect an understanding of history. From a very young age, he was aware of the historical movements, the revolutions and leaders who had shaped the world he lived in.
In time, he established his position as a poet of witness with the publication of his poem “After Seeing Kozintsev’s King Lear in Delhi”, which talks about the last Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar. In the poem, Shahid makes a conscious choice as he turns from King Lear and looks at Zafar, turning away from fiction towards fact, from the stories of the colonisers to the histories of the colonised.
This turn marks an important moment in Shahid’s poetry, and it is from here that his poems and sensibility come to be defined by a certain post-colonial outlook, where he sheds light on those whom history had ignored:
I think of Zafar, poet and Emperor, being led through this street by British soldiers, his feet in chains, to watch his sons hanged.
In exile he wrote: “Unfortunate Zafar spent half his life in hope, the other half waiting. He begs for two yards of Delhi for burial.”
He was exiled to Burma, buried in Rangoon.
In the late ’60s, when Shahid joined Hindu College, the syllabus was still under a colonial shadow and predominantly included English writers like John Milton, Shakespeare, Thomas Hardy and the Romantic poets. Although he had read all their works and admired most of them, Shahid’s language was very different from the poets that were taught to him.
Shahid once said that he was often aware that the music of his language was different, that he was able to bring certain flavours to English poetry in India for the first time, which he believed was a result of the combination of Hindu, Muslim and Western cultures in him, and the fact that he had a “natural and profound inwardness with them”.
His use of these cultures was not exotic – unlike, say, Eliot importing the word “shantih” in “The Waste Land”. Shahid felt them in three languages and didn’t have to “hunt” for subjects. In an essay written much later, he reflected on English poetry in India and said that Satyajit Ray had accomplished what he had because Ray was using a specifically Indian idiom for the first time on celluloid.
“I can use the Indian landscape, and the subcontinent’s myths and legends and history from within, and I can do so for the first time in what might seem like a new idiom, a new language – subcontinental English.”
Salman Rushdie’s case was similar. Ray, Rushdie (as well as Shahid when it came to English subcontinental poetry) had an abundance of history, tradition and what seemed like an endless river of subjects that they could explore. Shahid had, in fact, acknowledged that if the novel had done it, poetry couldn’t be far behind.
Little did he know that along with poets like Arun Kolatkar and AK Ramanujan, he would become a proponent of English writing in the Indian subcontinent, a poet who had tradition and the flavour of the soil in his bones. In an essay written much later, he reflected on how the English language was changing in the subcontinent:
The colonisers left fifty years ago, and subcontinental writers, particularly poets, can breathe greater confidence into Indian English (as Walt Whitman did into American English) not only because they belong to what, with qualifications, is the international-ism of the English language (in this context, note the awarding of the Nobel Prize to Patrick White, Wole Soyinka, Nadine Gordimer, and Derek Walcott) but because, by re-creating the language, by infusing into it all the traditions and forms at their command, they can make subcontinentals feel that they do not have to seek approval for any idiosyncrasy in syntax and grammar from the queens, Victoria or Elizabeth (the second, of course). As a matter of fact, for all kinds of reasons, it is gratifying to give an insult to the English language.
By the ’60s and ’70s, some young Indian English poets had started emerging on the literary scene, much of which had to do with Purushottama Lal, the founder of Writers’ Workshop, Calcutta. The publishing house started by Lal, which operated out of the library of his residence in Calcutta, had turned into a platform for publishing Indian writing in English. It published the first works of such poets as Nissim Ezekiel, Vikram Seth, Ruskin Bond and AK Ramanujan. Lal also published Shahid’s first two collections of poetry, Bone Sculpture and In Memory of Begum Akhtar.
Yet, in the ’90s, Shahid wrote in an essay that the “Indo-English scene” during those decades was “thoroughly empty and corrupt” and that “in some quarters” it continued to remain the same, singling out Lal’s publishing house, which he said had been functioning as a near vanity press.
In his essay “Indian Poetry in English”, Shahid wrote, “Educated Indians generally speak three languages, write in two, and dream in one – English.” Although they were written in English at a time when the chutnification, or what he called the biriyanisation, of the language hadn’t taken place, Shahid’s poems were indeed very Indian in nature and in terms of the subjects they dealt with.
The English language came to him naturally, while his ideas were deeply rooted in the culture of the subcontinent. Shahid’s English wasn’t the Queen’s “propah” English but a product of the biriyanisation of the language. Although as a poet he was slowly learning, poems like “Bones”, “Introducing”, “The Walled City” and others not only marked the beginning of a poetic career but also a poetic style that was steeped in a sense of loss, language and the history of the subcontinent. When at last, in the late ’60s, he met Begum Akhtar, his appreciation for the traditions of the subcontinent grew and his poetry changed in unimaginable ways.
Excerpted with permission from A Map of Longings: The Life and Works of Agha Shahid Ali, Manan Kapoor, Vintage.
source: http://www.scroll.in / Scroll.in / Home> Book Excerpt / by Manan Kapoor / June 03rd, 2021
The world is in chaos. The pandemic happened when none of us were expecting it. It has been one of the most disastrous and depressing things throughout history. It wasn’t in our plans, but it happened. People have lost their jobs and their loved ones. Moreover, people are losing their will to live. The lower class of society is struggling. They are even lacking the necessities needed to survive. However, the pandemic has given rise to people who have come forward to help poor, needy, and unarmed people to fight the pandemic. These people are the warriors of the nation and Sofia Khan is one such warrior.
Sofia Khan cleared School Service Commission in 2009 and was the topper of her zone as well. Then, she was appointed as a government school teacher. However, she is also a social activist, chairman, and founder of the ‘Sufi Humanity Foundation,’ a no cash or fund transfer NGO. She is a very active participant in the improvement of our society. She has been given the post of secretary in the NGO named ‘Udaan Empowering Women’ in the year 2016 and then in the Rotary Club of Kolkata in 2018. Her performance was remarkable in the two organisations. She then joined the TMC Minority Cell, West Bengal, as a general secretary.
Sofia Khan has organized various literacy awareness campaigns in different states of the country as she is the president of the Sarparast Literacy Awareness Movement in West Bengal. She has also participated in many debates in national media as a panelist from the TMC. She conducted campaigns and rallies for TMC during the 2021 West Bengal elections. She has continuously been a keen supporter of girls, always ready to support and empower them. She helped the girls of the Milli Al-Ameen College for Girls by joining their protest against injustice to the college students. These girls were not being allowed to sit for their exams due to the college’s internal disputes. Sofia fought for them and got them justice.
It’s commendable and worth mentioning how she did not waver from her motive of helping the people even in lockdown. Sofia Khan has helped many people by providing them food amidst the lockdown. She sent back numerous migrant labourers to their native places during the first phase of the lockdown in 2020. This year when second wave was on its peak and people were dying without oxygen she was there to help people across West Bengal with free oxygen cylinders. She later extended the help and converted four cars into free ambulance service with oxygen cylinders for Covid patients. When the state was hit by a deadly tropical cyclone called the ‘Amphan’, Sofia Khan, along with her team distributed tarpaulins and ration to almost a thousand families. She also showed her support during the Yaas cyclone. She sent relief materials like biscuits, cakes, drinking water containers each of 20 litres, clothes, etc. to the affected families. Her works and contributions have also been recognized by the Sanmarg Hindi daily, Echo of India, Awami News, etc.
Life has been tougher than usual for all of us but that doesn’t stop some of us from being an inspiration to others. While our nation and the world are fighting against the pandemic, it is important that we stay alert and be responsible for each other. We need to support and help those who are unable to survive on their own. Warriors like Sofia Khan do not wait for a chance rather they create the opportunity to help others because they realize that ‘Warriors are not born, but self-made’.
(The author of the article is a freelance journalist).
source: http://www.indiatomorrow.net / India Tomorrow / Home> Featured> National Interest / by Meer Faisal / June 18th, 2021
Glossier, more attractive birding books have been published in the 80 years since Ali’s guide first appeared, but it remains indispensable.
The first edition of Salim Ali’s book appeared in 1941. (Source: Wikimedia Commons)
It is a small book, my copy of Salim Ali’s The Book of Indian Birds — a hardcover version, bound in green, a mere 187 pages. I have the 1979 edition. The cover is long gone, leaving behind a few tatters of the original, but I am hard put to think of a book I have treasured and used as much. The book and an old pair of Bushnell binoculars acquired some 20 years ago are a part of my essential travelling kit, as essential as a toothbrush and comb.
The first edition of the book appeared in 1941. Jawaharlal Nehru , a keen nature lover, gifted a copy to his daughter while lodged in Dehradun jail.
Ali was quite matter-of-fact in his autobiography, The Fall of a Sparrow. According to him, the book was “acknowledged as largely responsible for creating and fostering much of the interest in birds and birdwatching seen in the country today”. Indeed, for people of a certain generation, no other guide has been valued and loved in the same way, and even among Ali’s other classic works, it is this book that has iconic status among Indian birdwatchers. While setting off on a birding trip, we would ask each other: “Have you taken your Salim Ali?” Or: “Oh, no, I forgot my Salim Ali.” It was always the small green book that we were talking of. It is the essential — the foundational — field guide for Indian birders. It is now in its 13th edition. No other book can take its place.
I came to birdwatching by serendipity. No one on either side of my family was even remotely interested in birds. By a throw of the dice, I was allotted Bharatpur for my district training in the IAS. The Keoladeo Ghana National Park beckoned. I was hooked. Ali, who had done more than anyone alive to create this “Garden of God” out of a Maharaja’s private wetlands reserve, was still alive, and visited a few times while I was there. Two bird guides, Sohan Lal and Bholu Khan, still active today, were being trained by him and other naturalists. They were to mature into fine birding guides, much in demand.
The Book of Indian Birds is where we learned our basic vocabulary of birdwatching. For instance, we learned that “pied” meant black and white, that “rufous” meant reddish-brown as in rust or oxidised iron, and that “fulvous” indicated tawny. Every carefully chosen word signified something. The clarity and the precision of expression meant that in a short half-page entry, we would have all the necessary information about a species. Each write-up was organised around five or six points — size, field characters or appearance, distribution, habits, food, call and nesting. Size was always charmingly described as myna plus, or house crow minus, or with reference to a sparrow, a bulbul or other common bird. Under “field characters”, Ali beautifully and accurately described the appearance: Colour of the feathers, the shape of the bill, silhouette in flight. A crimson-breasted barbet was “heavy-billed”, a blue-throated barbet “a gaudily coloured, dumpy green, arboreal bird” and the common grey hornbill a “clumsy brownish-grey bird”. Birds are described variously as handsome, squat, soft-plumaged, lively, dapper, dainty, spruce, slim, perky, well-groomed. The common roller or blue jay (neelkanth) is described as a “striking, Oxford and Cambridge blue bird”.
People who have always noticed the easy readability of the prose might not be aware that Ali himself gave credit to his wife, Tehmina, for ironing out the “stilted passages” and for “moderating the language”. He did not fail to praise her “remarkable feeling for colloquial English prose style”.
My Salim Ali bears the marks of the trajectory of my life, where I went, what I did. It is not merely well-worn and well-thumbed, with an unravelling spine and precarious binding; it also bears the added signs of pickle stains and tick marks in ink and pencil. Like me, it has seen better days. I know that many bird guides have been subsequently published with much better production values and better colour plates. I am aware that many of the illustrations in the Salim Ali book are decidedly not true to life. For instance, never did a rosy pastor look as pink in real life as it does in the book. But this is mere quibbling. The core and kernel of the book is that it communicates to us so successfully the magical universe of the birds of India.
The international jury which selected Ali for the J Paul Getty Wildlife Conservation Prize of the World Wildlife Fund in 1975 said in its citation: “Your message has gone high and low across the land and we are sure that weaver birds weave your initials in their nests, and swifts perform parabolas in the sky in your honour.”
On his 34th death anniversary on June 20, it is time to remember the book that Ali gave us, which took us on this magical journey to the birds.
This column first appeared in the print edition on June 19, 2021 under the title ‘Birding with Salim Ali’. The writer is a former IAS officer.
source: http://www.indianexpress.com / The Indian Express / Home> Opinion> Columns / by Malovika Pawar / June 19th, 2021
The award is given by a US-based non-profit entity Sir Syed Education Society of North America (SSESNA)
Aligarh:
Twenty-eight students from various departments of Aligarh Muslim University students (AMU) have been selected for the prestigious Sir Syed Global Scholar Award (SSGSA) for the academic session 2021-22.
The award is given by a US-based non-profit entity Sir Syed Education Society of North America (SSESNA).
Announcing the award, Salman Bin Kashif, Chair, SSGSA Programme and a past beneficiary of the programme, said:
“The quality of applications continues to improve each year. In the coming years, it will serve the students well if they go the extra mile in building their overall profiles through projects and internships while being diligent in learning the fundamental concepts of their respective subjects. We will continue to strive for expanding our programme”.
He said a record number of applications were received from the faculties of Arts, Commerce, Humanities, Science, Medicine, Life Sciences and Engineering and Technology.
“Experts from each discipline evaluated the applications independently and the shortlisted students were invited for an online interview as a part of a rigorous selection process”, he said.
Kashif said that several faculty members from prestigious universities in the US, who were on the interview panels this year included Dr Farhan Ahmad (Honeywell International Inc), Prof Abrar Alam (Arkansas State University), Prof Nawab Ali (University of Arkansas), Prof Asim Ansari (Columbia University), Dr Ruchi Dana (Dana Corporation), Dr Shabih Hasan (Delos), Prof Syed Hashsham (Michigan State University), Prof Shakir Husain (Youngstown State University), Dr Afzal Hussain (Aligarh Muslim University), Prof Asad Ullah Khan (Aligarh Muslim University), Dr Sayeed Mohammad (Fractionation Research Inc), Dr Ahsan Munir (Vertex Pharmaceuticals, Inc), Prof Sultana Nahar (Ohio State University), Prof Bushra Sabri (Johns Hopkins University), Prof Yasmin Saikia (Arizona State University) and Prof Samina Salim (University of Houston).
“SSGSA Merit List”
Kashif said that the Final Merit List was compiled by taking into account various evaluation criteria like the CGPA, projects, internships and extracurricular activities.
“All the selected SSGSA scholars will be provided personalized mentorship, financial aid for the required standardized tests (GRE/GMAT, TOEFL/IELTS), and university application fees for up to five universities. The applicants who could not make it to the final list will be offered mentorship and guidance by the organization so that they can also continue with their academic goals”, he said.
“List of Past SSGSA Scholars”
Kashif said that the list of more than 120 past SSGSA scholars is also available on the SSGSA website: “www.ssgsa.us“. Many of the SSGSA alumni have successfully graduated with Masters and PhD degrees and are professionally placed across the globe, and some of them are currently volunteering for the SSGSA programme.
The selected SSGSA scholars are Aafiya (Physics), Ayush Agrawal (Mechanical Engineering), Sehrish Akhtar (Physics), Danish Alam (Physics), Ayesha Nasir Alavi (Law), Mohammad Anas (Computer Engineering), Bushra Ansari (Biochemistry), Mohd Mushfique Javed Ansari (Architecture), Samina Irshad Ansari (Psychology), Heena Aslam (Electrical Engineering), Mohd Abdul Baseer (Physics), Mohammad Fahad (Electrical Engineering), Aqib Faraz (Commerce), Ifrah Farid (Biochemistry), Harshul Gupta (Physics), Arsalan Hameed (Computer Engineering), Saman Jafri (Biotechnology), Faisal Jamal (Biochemistry), Faraha Javed (Medicine), Shahrukh Khan (Electrical Engineering), Tayyibah Khanam (Electrical Engineering), Yusra Meraj (Electronics Engineering), Madiha Noman (English), Kunwar Muhammed Saaim (Computer Engineering), Saba Sarwar (Computer Science), Md Showgat Jahan Shourave (Economics), Mohd Talha (Physics) and Amber Tanweer (Law).
The SSGSA core team, consisting of the present Chair Salman Bin Kashif (Clemson, South Carolina, USA), founding members Syed Ali Rizvi (Boston, Massachusetts, USA), Dr Saif Sheikh (Chicago, Illinois, USA), Dr Rehan Baqri (Boston, Massachusetts, USA), Dr Shaida Andrabi (Srinagar, Kashmir, India), and former chairs Dr Mohsin Khan (Providence, Rhode Island, USA), Ali Muzaffar (Atlanta, Georgia, USA), and Dr Wasikul Islam (Geneva, Switzerland), expressed gratitude to Prof Asad U Khan, Prof M M Sufyan Beg and Omar Peerzada for their help to SSGSA activities on campus.
source: http://www.ummid.com / Ummid.com / Home> Education & Career / by Ummid.com News Network / June 11th, 2021
Like many others, Iqbal too is going through hard times amid the pandemic-imposed lockdown.
In 2020, Abdullah Naan Mahal used to serve Nahari Sherwa too, but had to stop because of Covid-19 and consecutive lockdown.
Hyderabad :
We’ve heard of people donating money, distributing essentials and cooking for the needy during this pandemic. But here’s a breadman in Tolichowki who is helping the needy with his out-of-the-box initiative.
Mohammed Iqbal, who runs Abdullah Naan Mahal, does not want anyone to go hungry. So, he came up with Neki ki Roti (Bread of Goodness). Every morning, he places a basket outside his eatery for people to buy naan rotis and put them in it. “Anyone, rich or poor, can pick up the rotis from this basket. No one should go hungry,” he says.
Iqbal himself places at least 20 rotis a day in the basket. “By doing this, we are not helping people but God. It is God who is making us do this,” he believes. “Even those, who are not my regular customers, are now buying Neki ki Rotis to help the poor.”
Like many others, Iqbal too is going through hard times amid the pandemic-imposed lockdown. “As soon as I get back to being financially stable, I will start making Nahari Sherwa. The poor can have the rotis with it,” he says, adding that, “Nobody likes dry bread. Not even me. But what can we do in these difficult times?”
In 2020, Abdullah Naan Mahal used to serve Nahari Sherwa too, but had to stop because of Covid-19 and consecutive lockdown. However, Iqbal is hopeful that this difficult phase passes and the world becomes a better place again. He wants to continue his initiative for as long as he can. “People ride down to my shop to take these free rotis. We never question them because we do not know what they are going through,” he says.
That’s very thoughtful of him. Long live Neki ki Roti.
source: http://www.newindianexpress.com / The New Indian Express / Home> Good News / by Express News Service / June 12th, 2021
