IT Chandigarh

PU Notes

Chandigarh: As part of the ongoing diamond jubilee celebrations, the faculty of languages will organise the first-ever ‘Chandigarh Language and Literature Congress’ in the English Auditorium of the campus on November 2 and 3.

The conference will see the participation of teachers and research scholars from various departments of languages, department of correspondence studies, department of evening studies, University Institute of Legal Studies and colleges of the tricity.

According to Dr Madhukar Arya, chairperson, department of Urdu, the organising committee has requested the DPI Colleges to grant two days’ study leave to teachers and reimburse the delegate fee of the participating teachers.

Those who will be speaking at the congress include professor Abhaya Maurya, vice-chancellor, TEELU, Hyderabad; prof Rajendra Mishra, former VC, Sanskrit University, Varanasi; Dr Ahmad Momeni, first secretary, counsellor and director, Iranian Embassy; M. Shafiee Sahakib, cultural counsellor, Iran Culture House, New Delhi; Ebserhardvieller, language director, Max Mueller Bhawan, New Delhi; professors Pandey and A. Karkoon from JNU, New Delhi, and professors B.L. Chakoo from GNDU, Amritsar.
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Chandigarh: Two months after a Peeping Tom was found in one of the washrooms of the BSc hostel, Government Home Science College, Sector 10, nothing has been done by the authorities to ensure the privacy of inmates is not breached again.

Bathroom windows with no grills and a corridor window with grills but no glass is an open invitation to the Peeping Toms. Apprehensive of their security, the inmates prefer washrooms in others blocks.

A visit to the hostel revealed there was no security guard outside. Neither was any attendant present. What’s more shocking is the fact that unlike other hostels where carpenters and the electricians enter the premises only after signing the entry register, here they have the privilege to come and go at will. Separate rooms are allotted to them on the ground floor amidst the girls rooms.

The students residing in the B.Sc hostel are mostly from other colleges and the students allege a step-motherly treatment to them.

“The corridors are grimy and the washrooms cleaned only twice a week. There is garbage littered all over and repeated requests to sweepers have been of no use,” said one of the residents.

“Moreover, the insanitary conditions in the hostel have forced many residents to leave mid-term and stay as paying guest outside,” said another aggrieved inmate.
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Chandigarh: It is a “magical” journey that he embarked upon more than 40 years ago when he took up photography. But even today the enchantment lives on for illustrious photographer Raghu Rai. Ask him what he considers as his favourite subject to shoot and he does not even have to think before answering. “Every moment of life is special. When you connect, every object, every subject becomes important,” he states.

Rai was in the city yesterday to be part of his friend and fellow-photographer Diwan Manna’s joint exhibition with a French photographer Michel Dieudonne.

However, it is the growing commercialism in photography that he spent many moments regretting. “Photography is growing in the country gradually, but it is largely market-driven. Photographs no longer occupy pride of place because photo-journalism is going the infotainment way. This is a sad understanding of journalism.”

The purpose of newspapers and magazines is to inspire new experiences and new vision and not just feed the appetite for entertainment. And Rai speaks from a lifetime spent in news-journalism. “Everyone is free to do anything they want with the medium, but in photo-journalism you cannot alter truth. That is against the norms,” he insists.

Pictures tell stories that words can alter. While history can be written and rewritten, photo-history cannot and this he says “will be the final evidence of how society lived”.
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