Ananda Sangbad 2017 Q2

Ananda Mandir 269 Cedar Grove Lane Somerset, NJ 08873

Ananda Sangbad

NON-PROFIT ORG US POSTAGE PAID NEW BRUNSWICK, NJ PERMIT NO. 1215

April 2017 A Quarterly Publication of Ananda Mandir, New Jersey

Theater Night at the Tagore Hall The Tagore Hall at the Community Center of Ananda Mandir came alive again on Saturday, 04 March, with drama performances organized by the Ananda Mandir Theater Club. This was the first such event held at the premises since its inauguration since fall

Reported by Sajal Mukherjee as this one, as well as non-ticketed events where donations will be voluntary. Presentations will be held both in the Tagore Hall auditorium as well as the Temple

very imperative and indispensable role in the functioning of a city household in India, yet are considered very petty. In an hour Vidula long performance,

his depiction of Gagan Goswami, a famous motivational speaker, who talks about what Bengalis need to know in order to become an entrepreneur and leaves them with thinking about the most important question of life WHY?

Ananda Mandir Calendar of Events (Dates are subject to Change) Please check our website frequently

www.anandamandir.org Tel: 732-873-9821 NOTE: If a particular Puja time is not listed, please contact temple or visit our ebsite: anandamandir.org

APRIL 2017 (*) BASANTI PujA Shosthi Sunday, 02, 5:30 pm – 7:30 pm Saptami Mon, 03, 8:30 am-10:30 am Ashtomi Tues, 04, 8:30 am – 11:30 am Sondhi Tues, 04, 2:30 pm – 3:30 pm Nabami Wed, 05, 8:00 am – 2:00 pm Dashami Thurs, 06, morning Vidula Mungerkar

Sudipta Bhawmik

2016. The newly formed Theater Club aspires to become a hub for sustained theater activities in the South Asian Indian community in New Jersey. This is an inclusive initiative designed to attract people, especially the younger generations, even if they have no religious inclinations. Activities will include workshops, training programs, ticketed events such

Basement. There were two drama presentations on this evening.

The first presentation was Sakubai, a Hindi play written by Nadira Babbar, directed by Ashok Vanjari and produced by Theatrix of New Jersey. Sakubai is based on the life of domestic helpers or maids who are normally addressed as 'bai' and who play a

BANI-BANDANA Reported By Arun Bhowmik It has been our tradition to conduct a cultural program called Bani Bandana on the occasion of Saraswati Puja involving all talented children of our community, and this year was no exception.

We had a remarkable show from 12:30 till 6 pm on Sunday, 05 February, and our next generation singers, musicians, dancers, filled the stage with amazing enthusiasm, excitement, and talent. Approximately 60 children performed that day, and these performances were conducted and directed by our senior well known teachers of our community. Reeta Baidyaroy (Ritam Academy of Princeton), Mitra Purkayastha (RDM), Dhriti Bagchi (Mrittika), Mitali Bhawmik (Ethno music school), all pre-

sented a great program with their highly talented students. In addition, Gayatri Sarma, Anindita Sarkar Bhowmik, Malini Majumdar, Swagata Goswami, also presented programs with their students. It was a wonderful day showcasing the young talents of our community in a lovely auditorium.

Thanks to all volunteers Sajal Mukherjee, Chanu Das, Suranjan B Chowdhury, Amlan Goswami, Ujjal Sanyal, and others for their help all day.

Like other years, this year also the entire program was planned, arranged, and coordinated by Rita Bhowmik. Our thanks to Rita for taking charge of this event and managing it so efficiently.

Mungerkar mesmerized the crowd with her superb acting skills.

The second presentation was Banijye Basate Lakshmi - a Bengali play written by Sudipta Bhawmik, directed by Shankar Ghoshal and produced by ECTA, New Jersey. In this solo play performed by Sudipta himself, he left the audience spellbound with

The two wonderful performances set the stage for many more such presentations to come in this year.

Delicious snacks, prepared and served by the Ananda Mandir volunteers under the supervision of Suprasad Baidyaroy during the evening, kept everyone satisfied and glued to the plays.

Durga Puja – 2017 Debir Bodhan, Evening: Monday, 25 Sept, 6:30 pm Debir Amantran O Adhibas, Eve: Tuesday, 26 Sept, 6:30 pm - 8:30 pm Saptami, Morning: Wednesday, 27 Sept, 8:30 am – 10:30 am Ashtami, Morning: Thursday, 28 Sept, 8:30 am – 11:30 am Sondhi Puja, Evening: Thursday, 28 Sept, 7:06 pm – 7:54 pm Nabami, Morning: Friday, 29 Sept, 8:30 am – 10:30 am Dashami, Morning: Saturday, 30 Sept, 9:00 am – 11:30 am

THE PUBLICATION OF THIS ISSUE HAS BEEN MADE POSSIBLE SOLELY

BY A GRANT FROM ANDY BOSE, C.P.A.

Satyanarayan Puja Saturday, 08, 5:30pm – 7:30pm Sahitya O Alochana Friday, 21, 8:00pm Natya Sandhya Sunday, 09, Cultural Program Sunday, 30, 10:00 am – 6:00 pm

MAY (*) Satyanarayan Puja Sahitya O Alochana Friday, 19, 8:00pm Rabindra utsav Saturday, 20,

juNE (*) Sahitya O Alochana Friday, 16, 8:00pm Natya Sandhya (*) See www.anandamandir.org or Call Mandir for details

Special Religious Services: Upon request, the priest of Ananda Mandir offers services such as inhouse Shraddhas, Rituals associated with Cremations (Antyesti Kriya), Shraddha Anniversaries, Pre-wedding rituals (Naandimukh, Ashirwad, etc), Upanayan (Paitey), Annaprasan, Wedding Ceremonies & Wedding Anniversaries, Griha Prabesh (Bhumi Puja), Consecrations of new cars (New Car Pujas) and others. If you have needs for any of the above or more, please feel free to contact Biswabhai @ 732-873-9821

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Ananda Sangbad

April 2017

ANANDA SANGBAD A Periodical Newsletter Published By

ANANDA MANDIR

(A Tax-Exempt, Non-Profit Organization) 269 Cedar Grove Lane Somerset, NJ 08873 Ph: 732-873-9821 Website: www.anandamandir.org PuBLICATION COMMITTEE Of ANANDA MANDIR

Chairperson: Pronoy Chatterjee, pkc_usa@yahoo.com Assistant Chairperson: Subrata Bhaumik, Bhaumik.subrata@gmail.com Editor-in-Chief: Debajyoti Chatterji, Debsmee572@gmail.com Managing Editor, Ananda Sangbad: Guru Chakravarty, guruchakravarty@yahoo.com Managing Editor, Anandalipi: Amitabha Bagchi, amitabhanj@gmail.com Editors: Subrata Bhaumik, bhaumik.subrata@gmail.com Subhodev Das, subhodev.das@gmail.com Sushmita Dutta, sushmitadutt2@gmail.com Amrita Kangle, amritakangle@hotmail.com Nupur Lahiri, nupurlahiri@aol.com Associate Editor: Ruby Banerjea, r_banerjea@yahoo.com Members-at-large: Bhaswati Bhadra Ashok Rakhit l All queries, articles, news reports and letters should be directed to the Managing Editor: Phone: 908-752-3065, E-mail: guruchakravarty@yahoo.com l For general information, please contact the following executives of Ananda Mandir: Ashok Rakhit, President jaiprakash Biswas, Vice President Suprasad Baidyaroy, Vice President Arun Bhowmik, Vice President Sajal Mukherjee, Gen Secretary Chanu Das, Treasurer

EDITORIAL

PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE

Get Involved With the inauguration of the Tagore Hall, Ananda Mandir has now grown into the finest example of selfless Bengalis coming together to serve the community. Several notable Bengali organizations from the tristate area have joined hands with Ananda Mandir, thus assuring a larger participation at Ananda Mandir events.

The Tagore Hall and the expanded temple are ready to serve the cultural and religious needs of not only Bengalis, but also non-Bengali communities. We are experiencing an increased participation by such communities in religious and social programs at Ananda Mandir.

Now, it is time for the community to give back to Ananda Mandir. There are so many ways that people can help – keeping the property clean from dirt and garbage, planting flowers in the Spring, helping in the kitchen during pujas and cultural functions, bringing small supplies for daily pujas, mowing the lawn – just as one would do chores at home. Being handy with tools, painting, repairing and doing odd jobs, are volunteer work that can a go long way.

We don’t have to look beyond the local Jain or Gujrati temples to see how they provide support to their temples.

There is opportunity for adult volunteers to teach at Ananda Mandir. We really lack in the area of religious teaching. How about starting a Sunday religious class? Parents may be willing to enroll their children in such a class. While they wait for the class to get over, they can utilize the time to assist with some yard work.

What’s more, teachers may volunteer to introduce children to math and science, perhaps in some novel ways, ahead of the regular school curricula.

And, we need to revisit the issue of helping the elderly and lonely, especially those who are unable to drive. Presently, there are people in the Ananda Mandir community in need of such help. A large part of our senior community is getting to that stage, slowly but surely. There have been some attempts to form a Volunteer Committee, but success has eluded us. This area needs our urgent attention.

The community is lucky to have a great facility built by far-sighted, selfless people. It provides a great opportunity for all to get fully involved with it.

Dear Members of Ananda Mandir, Winter season is coming to an end, and soon every tree will start waking up with buds for new leaves and all New Jersey gardens will soon bloom with colorful tulips, daffodils, forsythia, geranium, roses and many others.

Our center is also slowly completing construction and is getting ready to be fully functional by the time summer arrives. Lately, the progress has slowed down due to some administrative challenges requiring several meetings with Township management for approvals. These include approval for expanded banked parking, installation of a security gate at the driveway entrance, and increase in size of the originally planned private puja room attached to the temple lobby. We are scheduled to have a hearing with Township Board in early April and, if approved, construction will restart.

Our subcontractor for the temple spires is also behind in delivery schedule.

It is frustrating to see projects slowing down; but we will have to keep working with all our partners and be patient. One thing we have learnt is that no matter what we put in our contract, construction never finishes on time, and all we can do is to stay positive and work with them as a team to cross all hurdles. So, please be patient and hope it will be all done soon!

Now let me ask you all to play your part in making this center successful! Our expanded temple is fully functional inside, including a commercial vegetarian kitchen in the basement to prepare foods for your friends and family when you perform private puja in the temple or in the front house.

We would like you to support the temple kitchen by buying foods for your religious events (like annaprasan, Satyanarayan puja, batsorik shraddha, etc.). If you plan to serve non-veg foods after the religious ceremony, I would strongly urge you to consider renting Tagore Hall for lunch/dinner.

We have hired a resident Manager, Mr. Surinder Singh to work with you to prepare a lunch package with the private puja performed by Biswabhai. We have built this beautiful facility with both veg and non-veg kitchens so that we can meet your needs for all occasions. Remember, this is your community center and you have to accept shared ownership so that we can pay our mortgage and other bills just like you take responsibility for your expenses at home.

Let me update you regarding Tagore Hall. To provide better service to you, we have decided to hire a resident Manager who can reach out across various ethnic groups of the Indian community and also work with each prospective customer to customize his/her needs. Elite Catering (Maureen/Troy) will still provide banquet service as needed in coordination with our resident manager. Visit our website at www.Tagorehallnj.com.

We have a beautiful hall that is multifunctional accommodating dinner/lunch banquets as well as drama and concerts for all occasions. As a member of the community, we urge you to try to rent your community hall before you go to other commercial places. Our hall is a non-profit center built to serve your needs, and your participation to help run it is critical.

We plan to put a ‘Suggestion Box’ in the Temple lobby for your ideas for improvement or comments to help us serve you better. We may not be able to address all your requests; but I can assure you that we will definitely consider the best way to address those concerns. We all have a shared responsibility of running our center, and the Board of Trustees needs your help and cooperation. Thank you and May Ma bless you and your family.

Guru Chakravarty Managing Editor, Ananda Sangbad

Best regards, Ashok Rakhit President, Ananda Mandir

DIDN'T RECEIVE YOuR COPY Of ANANDA SANGBAD? If you are a Life Member or an Associate Member, but didn't receive your copy of Ananda Sangbad, it may be because we do not have the correct address on file for you. Please send an email to Guru Chakravarty (guruchakravarty@yahoo.com) with your correct address, and we will send you another copy.

Ananda Sangbad

April 2017

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Confessions of a The Seven Worlds of TRAPPIST-1

By Kaushik Sengupta Poor Bargainer

By Amitabha Bagchi Bargaining is an integral part of the Indian scene. The instinct for it resides deep in the Indian psyche -- or so it seems to me. I grew up observing my elders practice the art in many situations: from the price of fish and vegetables in bazars to saris and shawls in fancy stores and everywhere in between. I noticed that the art required patience, persistence, playacting ability, and a certain insouciance to ignore barbs and the occasional insult from the salesperson. I also learnt early that I was wholly bereft of that talent.

That particular realization came to me in my early teens. I went to a store just below the Dum Dum train station to buy myself an undershirt (genji). The shopkeeper asked for a rupee and two annas. (It was the transition time between the old monetary system [64 paise to a rupee] to the new decimal system [100 naye paise to a rupee]).

I had no idea what the right price of a genji ought to be. But I thought a serious bout of bargaining was in order. So I countered with an offer of fourteen annas.

The shopkeeper guffawed. He was a genial middleaged man from the eastern part of Bengal, as evidenced by his dialect. “I shall give it to you for twelve annas,” he chortled. “The price I first quoted was for those hard asses who bargain me to death!”

Embarrassed and flustered, I meekly bought the undershirt at a price lower than my quote. I had no idea Continued to page 4

A Letter to the Editor of Ananda Sangbad Dear Sir, “Madam President,” one of the articles in your January 2017 edition of Ananda Sangbad piqued my interest. It was penned by Tathagata Ghosh. It definitely is a good and informative article on the history of women heads of state around the world in the backdrop of the 2016 US election results. Nevertheless, I would like to add a few observations that, if reflected in the article, would have made it more complete.

1) The point about competencies and qualifications of the Asian woman leaders: yes, Bhutto had a fine education and some political experience, so did Indira Gandhi - an Oxasian who trained with Nehru, her father, in politics. Both of them could have been named under the same breath. Granted, both were initiated in politics and supported along the way by their respective fathers, who commanded a lot of influence and power as heads of state, but they both were elected leaders in their own rights as well. Agreed, both were indirect elections as asserted in the article suggesting the lack of a clear mandate of people, they were elections all the same, albeit in flawed systems. This is not to say that any of them were as visionary, effective, and inspiring leaders as their respective constituencies or the electorates at large had hoped for them to turn out to be.

2) Corazon Aquino of Philippines should have been mentioned in the paragraph about Asian women leaders. She led her country for about six years.

3) Margaret Thatcher's name needed a more emphatic mention than what was afforded in the article.

She probably enjoyed the reputation of the most effective woman leader of our times.

4) With regard to the analysis of direct and indirect election, it needs to be noted that, contrary to the analysis in the article, US election is only partly direct due to Electoral College system.

Yours truly, Subrata Bhaumik March 2017, New Jersey

Imagine you are visiting a distant planet where daylight has a salmon hue but the intensity is much less than what you would normally encounter on Earth. You are warm nevertheless because the planet belongs to a red dwarf star, which looms large in the sky, almost three times as big as our Sun. You watch other planets crisscross the sky in the ruddy, perpetual twilight, some of them similar to the moon in our Earthly sky while some other even bigger! Behind you, gleaming in the star's reddish glow, lies the deep ocean that covers a large part of this mystic planet.

Interestingly, this is how the world would hypothetically appear in a planet called TRAPPIST-1f. The scenario is quite plausible as TRAPPIST-1f is a member of a sevenplanet system belonging to a star—dubbed TRAPPIST-1—located about 40 light years away from us, in the constellation Aquarius. TRAPPIST-1 is a red dwarf star whose mass is just eight per cent that of the Sun. Red dwarfs, also called “Mdwarfs”, are the most abundant stars in the galaxy. They are too faint to be spotted with naked eyes, but their reduced size and limited radiance have an important consequence. They are the longest-lived stars of the galaxy with lifetimes far greater than that of our Sun. The reason they are so long-lived is because they consume their supply of hydrogen fuel at a much slower pace than more massive stars such as our Sun. In May 2016, an international team of researchers using TRAPPIST (TRAnsiting Planets and Planetesimals Small Telescope) in Chile reported discovery of three Earth-sized planets orbiting this Jupiter-sized star. An ensuing detailed photometric monitoring of the star (that is, astronomers measured the dipping of the star’s light when each planet passed or transited in front of its face), with the global network of ground-based TRAPPIST and space-based Spitzer telescopes, revealed four more planets orbiting this star—a total of seven—whose sizes and masses are similar to the Earth. Based on their densities, all of the TRAPPIST-1 planets are likely to be rocky. The planets, named TRAPPIST-1b through h (Figure 1), huddle very close to their host star in tightly separated orbits. The orbital periods of the six inner planets are only 1.51, 2.42, 4.04, 6.06, 9.1 and 12.35 days while that of the outermost planet is still uncorroborated.

Computer models suggest that the planets could have formed farther from the star and migrated inwards at some points in their cosmic histories.

The discovery was deemed very newsworthy because of its implications in the ongoing search for extraterrestrial life, and NASA decided to announce the findings at a news

briefing at their headquarters in Washington. The results appeared earlier in the journal “Nature” on May 2, 2016.

Can the seven worlds of TRAPPIST-1 support a habitable ecosystem? It is too early to tell, but there is a chance that some of them could.

The innermost planets, TRAPPIST1b, c and d, are probably too hot to support liquid water, although a small amount could exist somewhere on their surfaces, while TRAPPIST-1h is too distant and cold to harbor liquid water. TRAPPIST-1e, f, and g, are the most interesting planets as their orbits are confined within the habitable zone—the region where oceans of liquid water could exist on their surfaces, and thus life would be considered most likely to evolve.

Planets of red dwarf stars were once considered unfit for life to thrive because the habitable zones of red dwarfs overlap with their radiation belts where massive flares of X-rays and UV radiation are commonplace. And these flares are the death knell of life as we know it. Be-

couple of them really do? Paying a visit is out of question with the current rocket technology because they are too far from us. The idea is to scientifically study these planets by remotely observing them with powerful telescopes. This is precisely the goal of the next phase of research: study the atmospheric composition of each planet, determine whether liquid water truly exists on their surfaces and search for signs of life.

The Hubble Space Telescope is currently being used to look for possible signs of life-supporting atmospheres around six of TRAPPIST-1’s planets.

Hubble’s successor, the James Webb Space Telescope, scheduled to be launched in 2018, will be ideally suited to provide a closer look at their atmospheric chemistry. If these planets indeed have atmospheres, they really are the best places to look for life.

Astrophysicist and author Ethan Siegel has beautifully summarized the above ideas in the following lines: “While the discovery of these seven planets is remarkable, the most interesting part of this story is

figure 1: Seven Earth-sized planets around a tiny, cold red dwarf star called TRAPPIST-1. Three of these planets TRAPPIST-1e, f, and g, are firmly in the habitable zone. Credits: NASA

sides, some of the closest planets could be tidally locked—the side constantly facing the parent star turning extremely hot, while the far side, extremely cold. But new computer models show that some planets in this configuration could still harbor life provided their atmospheres could dissipate heat across the surfaces. This is a significant result as the chances of evolution of life in the universe are greatly bolstered because red dwarfs make up more than three-quarters of the stars in the galaxy.

Curiously, discovery of the seven worlds of TRAPPIST-1 in some ways has vindicated the long-standing imagination of many science-fiction authors who have depicted solar systems comprising of “space-faring civilizations” with multiple Earth-like planets conveniently suitable for human settlement. However, there is no guarantee that these planets could support life. Yet, how cool will it be if we eventually find out that a

yet to be written. As our telescopes become larger and more sophisticated, we'll finally gain the ability to measure the spectra of these worlds' atmospheres, search for signs of water and life, and perhaps even discover an answer to whether we're not alone in the Universe as far as life goes. With three strong candidates, we might finally need to face the possibility that most of the life that arises in the Universe might occur around stars that aren't like the Sun!” Interestingly, the TRAPPIST-1 star system will probably outlive our Solar System because M-dwarf stars are extremely long-lived. When our Sun dies, TRAPPIST-1 will still be a relatively young star and may go on to shine for another trillion years. If there is another part of the universe destined for life to persist, it could very well be in the Solar System of TRAPPIST-1, a red dwarf star located in the constellation Aquarius, 40 light years away.

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Ananda Sangbad

April 2017

DARK SIDE Of NEW TECHNOLOGY

By Basab Dasgupta When I was in the middle school we were taught that "Necessity is the mother of invention." During the late nineteenth and most of the twentieth centuries, it was indeed our necessity that led to most of the scientific inventions: necessity to travel faster, to keep ourselves comfortable from the severe weather, to farm the land for better crop production, to pump water from rivers and purify it for drinking purposes, to illuminate dark areas at night and of course, to fight the causes of all health problems, etc. Even the atomic bomb was invented out of the necessity to stop the World War II. However, starting from the last part of the previous century and the present period, it seems that it is the technical inventions that are dictating our necessities! As one of my colleagues had said, "now making a buck is the father of all invention!"

If you think about the most dramatic inventions of recent decades such as the personal computer, internet (with its associated conveniences such as Google search, Amazon.com, Facebook and Wikipedia), cell phone, smart TV and so on, none of these resulted from some desperate necessity. We did not even know that these items were possible, and I would submit that our lives would have progressed quite nicely without these gadgets; but the companies who were the inventors, built and marketed them to us in such a way that now these items have become virtually indispensable in our life.

The technical companies did not do that with the noble intention of serving the mankind; they did it for money. Potential for making zillions of dollars through stock price boosts, IPOs, royalty income, not to mention pure profit was the main driving force. Even though one out of ten startup companies failed, the lure of money was irresistible.

Of course, at a first glance one might say that there is nothing wrong with this development; to put it in Gordon Gekko's

Continued from page 3 what his profit margin was, but I was sure he was not selling me the item for a loss. I decided then and there that bargaining was not for me! *** *** *** Ever since that early episode, my attempts at bargaining have been half-hearted and tentative.

I do make an occasional counteroffer to the asking price, but both I and the salesperson know that I would not make a serious effort to haggle and bring down the price. Rather I rely on his kind and merciful nature to get me a better deal. Then, out of the blue, I got a taste of a different kind of bargaining in Mexico.

One summer I happened to be in Tijuana, a Mexican border town just south of San Diego, with some friends. I was sud-

words from the movie ‘Wall Street’: "Greed is good." When one digs deeper, it becomes clear that all such inventions, driven by greed and without necessity, are causing massive social problems, which are not so obvious and therefore not much talked about. The purpose of my article is to make the readers aware of some of these downfalls.

The most significant impact is that it is causing the gap between the rich and the poor to widen. When a new technical innovation hits the market, typically it is sold at a relatively high price and only the wealthier people can afford to buy it. They also enjoy whatever the associated benefits are, and much of such benefits go to give them a competitive advantage in some aspect of life that often translates into money. If the product becomes popular, the executives and the stockholders of the company marketing it find a financial bonanza on their hands. By the time the price of the item becomes affordable enough for the rest of the population, the company comes up with a "second generation new and improved" product at an even higher price for the rich clientele.

The cycle then continues, and the general population never quite catches up with the elite group.

A related aspect of such inventions is that it is making different countries interdependent on each other – the so-called ‘globalization’. While that sounds great, the truth of the matter is that it leads to exploitation of one country by the other.

For example, Apple computer makes tons of money by exploiting the cheap labor in China, Saudi Arabia becomes rich by controlling oil production through advanced drilling techniques and exploiting the oil dependent countries, the Silicon Valley software companies benefit from the "cheap" IT engineers from India, etc. Long time ago, Mahatma Gandhi had a vision of how a country could survive and prosper with equal opportunities for everyone. He called it "Self-sufficient Village". The concept was to divide the country into such villages where each village could provide

education, employment, medical care and food for all its residents without relying on any outside help. Unfortunately, now it seems like an obsolete and primitive idea in the modern age of globalization and technical innovations.

Internet was, of course, a major revolution, and I am certainly glad that I experienced it in my lifetime. However, it also brought about instantaneous access to both news items as well as action options in many facets of our lives. While this ability is desirable in most cases, it created havoc in the lives of millions of people by opening the door to online stock trading.

As a result, even people who had no idea about what companies like Cisco or WorldCom did, invested their life savings into those companies’ stocks with a few clicks just by a whim or at someone’s recommendation and lost their livelihood. Some got a taste of easy money, became daytraders and eventually lost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Internet provides a tool to satisfy one’s urge for instant gratification and that is not usually a good situation when one is spending money, not only in purchasing stocks but in just about everything else. In addition, lure of easy money by forming a "dot com" company has taken away the traditional values of making money by hard work in the younger generation.

Let me talk about the "Facebook" phenomenon next, which also has its own problems. This technology is so attractive for catching up with long-lost friends and relatives. It is also a convenient way to communicate with a large group of friends regarding some news items or events in your life by simply posting it. On a broader scale, social media like Facebook has become a tool to unify a large number of people towards a common cause on the political front. Unfortunately, posting on Facebook has become a platform for many people for all kinds of bragging and selfserving schemes. In my view, this has two negative effects: postings like these might make one feel inadequate or inferior in some way leading to a feeling of envy and

even depression in an extreme case; this is, again, more likely among teens. Secondly, it prompts people to do absurd things just for the sake of posting the pictures and getting some “likes” – things that are not necessarily good. For example, it could be a dangerous stunt or revelation of some rather private information.

In addition, news items about “cyber-bullying” through Facebook leading to suicides have been reported. What has been alarming in recent years is the use of Facebook and other social media by the terrorist groups to promote their agenda, recruit people and even coordinate terrorist activities.

In the medical field it seems that the drug companies are coming up with new drugs for some rather obscure diseases and then looking for people who may have symptoms for those diseases. They are flooding the media with advertisements for these new drugs to such an extent that people who may not even have such diseases are wondering if they have the symptoms. If nothing else, it is certainly contributing to an anxiety level about our health.

There are more subtle negative social impacts of many of the biggest technical innovations of modern time. Here are some examples: a) Invention of microwave ovens single-handedly brought an end to the American family unit by eliminating the need for a family dinner time. There was no longer a need for the family to sit down together for dinner and discuss the events of the day. Anyone could come home and eat at any time, at their will; all they had to do was warming up the food in a few seconds. It also made cooking unnecessary; just buy some frozen food and zap it up. b) Another technological marvel in the late last century was the VCR. It brought movie-going to one’s living room. It was less expensive, less hassle and offered complete privacy. This last aspect opened up the business for the adult film industry to home viewing. I have no doubt that this Continued to page 5

Confessions of a Poor Bargainer denly accosted by a roving salesman. “Want to buy some cuff links?” he asked. “Real sterling silver. Only twenty bucks!”

I was not interested in either sterling silver or cuff links. To begin with, I had perhaps two shirts at most which could use cuff links. And I was not inclined to pay $20 for any cuff links -sterling silver or not. So I brushed him off and continued on my way.

The fellow was persistent and stuck to me like glue. “Tell me, tell me, how much would you pay? Ten bucks?”

I was practically crestfallen.

The price had dropped by a half without my saying anything!

I politely told the fellow that I did not need cuff links and was not interested in his offer. He just would not listen, and pursued me

with ever lower price quotes.

“Come on, come on! Seven dollars? Five?”

By this time I was intrigued.

And also impressed by the guy’s persistence. I had very little to go on as the basis of a fair price for his ware, But I did buy a polished brass pair from Sears not too long earlier for something like $2.

So I decided to do a bit of ham acting myself. I told him that I really did not need cuff links, nor did I wish him to lose money on a deal with me. He was unimpressed by my performance.

It was finally time for me to make a counteroffer. I offered him the Sears price of $2. He whined quite a bit, told me to be a good sport (as opposed to a hard ass), and asked me to split the difference from his last offer to settle on $3.50. I finally re-

lented and bought the cuff links, never doubting that he was making a profit and his claim of the material being sterling silver was most likely hogwash. But I felt good about rewarding him for his effort. *** *** *** I had a flashback of my Tijuana experience recently at Sealdah station on our last trip to India. My wife and I had gone there one evening to start a week’s journey to the hills. As my wife and I disembarked from a taxi with our luggage, a coolie appeared without warning.

“Darjeeling Mail?” he inquired, with extraordinary prescience. “These three pieces of luggage are yours? Let me carry them to the platform for 100 rupees.”

The bags and backpacks we

were carrying were not large nor heavy, and they mostly had wheels. So we politely declined his offer and started to move to the station.

The coolie kept moving with me. “Give me eighty rupees,” he suggested. After a little while, he dropped his charge to 70/-.

When I reached the steps to mount to the platform level of the Main Station, he pleaded plaintively for fifty rupees. Still seeing no response from me, he finally quit.

My two anecdotes are really examples of bargaining in reverse, where the salesperson is motivated to lower the price in the hope of a sale. That is the only type of bargaining that I get involved in. As I did mention at the outset, when it comes to bargaining actively with a genuine counteroffer to a vendor’s quoted price, I am clueless and an absolute dud.

Ananda Sangbad

April 2017

Gayatri GaMarsh Memorial Awards for Literary Excellence The Gayatri Memorial Awards were established in 2010 by Jerry GaMarsh to honor his late wife, Gayatri GaMarsh. The program is administered through the Awards & Recognition Committee of Ananda Mandir, Somerset, NJ. Two cash awards are usually given each year to recognize outstanding works published in North America-based literary magazines. One award is given to an author of Bengali works, and another is given to an author in English. Each award consists of $500 in cash and a commendation plaque. Under certain situations, co-winners may be selected for an award category.

An author may nominate himself/herself -- or may be nominated by third parties (using the Nomination Form shown below). Each nomination should be submitted in duplicate and supported by photo copies of one of the following: Two (and only two) works of prose (essays, short stories or plays) published in North Americabased Bengali or English print or digital magazines within the last five years. The submitted articles should not be more than ten pages long. Longer articles may be disqualified.

In case of poetry, submission may consist of up to four poems, each of reasonable length (2 pages or shorter).

A combination of prose and poetry may be submitted as well. However, please submit no more than one short story, essay or play and two poems.

Please note that unpublished works of literature will not be accepted. Full publication references must be given for the articles submitted with each nomination. Articles published in magazines or websites outside of North America will not be considered.

Nominated authors must be 18 years or older, and must be resident of North America.

Each nominations should include short biography of the author. Judging, however, will be based primarily on the supporting publications. Judges' decisions will be final.

Members of the Awards & Recognition Subcommittee and the judges cannot submit nominations for themselves nor can they be nominated by third parties.

Deadline for nominations (with supporting documents) for the 2016 awards is July 31, 2017.

Awards will be announced and presented in the Fall of 2017.

Please send nominations (with supporting documents) to Debajyoti Chatterji 79 Mackenzie Lane South Denville, NJ 07834 In case of questions, please email Debajyoti Chatterji (debsmee572@gmail.com) or Guru Chakravarty (guruchakravarty@yahoo.com).

DARK SIDE OF NEW TECHNOLOGY Continued drom page 4 caused all kinds of infidelity, marital problems, crimes in the form of various types of sexual molestations and perhaps failures of young people in other areas because of obsession with pornography. Of course, this continued with DVDs and internet. Perhaps the society has now learned to live with this temptation. However it is a very uncomfortable coexistence. c) Introduction of Walkman stereo system had a different type of anti-social effect because the listeners, especially the younger generation were happy to put on their headphones, listen to their favorite music without bothering anyone else but at the same time “tune out” the outside world around them. It made them more individualistic and selfish in what they did, what they liked and what they wanted. This trend continued with portable CD-players and more recently with I-pods. This isolation of younger people, especially teenagers, were perhaps the prelude to their pursuit of dangerous addictions – to drugs, sex etc. d) Although Video games were pioneered by Atari in the early eighties, it was not until the mid-nineties that they became a major pastime for all children and teenagers, with major companies like Microsoft and Sony

entering the arena. Video games became increasingly more sophisticated, more life-like and more violent. Children started to sacrifice outdoor physical activities in favor of playing Video games indoor. The result was an adverse effect on their health (obesity and as more recently reported, weakness in bone development). The worst effect was on the minds of some of the young teens, who could not distinguish between fantasy and reality when it came to violence. It is quite possible that violence in Video games was behind some of the mass killings at schools and other violence in recent years. e) The latest example is the smart-phones. While a smartphone is an incredibly convenient invention and allows you to carry your whole universe with you, it is causing a sharp decline in the academic capabilities of students, especially among the high school and upper middleschool students. They are finding it much more enjoyable to continuously keep in touch with their pals through texting, exchange of Instagrams, etc. rather than listening to the teachers, even during a class. The school administrators are finding it difficult to ban the cell phones from school because the phones are also ways to keep the students in touch with their parents for various personal issues related

to rides, schedules, emergencies etc. In addition, texting itself has become a peril for driving, even among adults.

I certainly do not want to dwell on these negative aspects.

My main point is that major technological breakthroughs always come with some undesirable and perhaps unforeseen consequences; one should recognize those consequences and adjust one’s social life to the new paradigm of the society. It is not just individuals, but society as a whole also has a responsibility to lay out a plan for remedial actions. This is not an easy task and its significance should not be downplayed.

If we look at some of the much older technological breakthroughs like the invention of automobiles and various electrical appliances, they brought with them air pollution, caused by carbon emission from fossil fuels and dangers of nuclear catastrophes, also disasters of Fukushima and Chernobyl, in nuclear power plants built to meet our energy needs. Those problems are not only still very much around, but threatening the survival of entire generations! However, those problems were environmental and hence easily detectable; the problems discussed here are more social in nature and not immediately recognizable, making them more difficult to address.

5

A Trip to Gaya

By Guru Chakravarty We hear so much about the mandatory visit to Gaya to pay homage to our departed ancestors that it makes one, who has not done so, feel sheepishly embarrassed. Of course, we must remember that the need to do so applies only for the “believers”, and some might say, for those who still live in the old times.

One must also face the hard truth that this tradition is not going to be continued by our next generation, because among other things, it is an awkward and tortuous journey from any part of USA to Gaya. Anyhow, I took the opportunity to make my first ever trip to Gaya during my recent travel to India, with a combined feeling of doing my duty for my ancestors, and to see for myself why the encounter with the Pandas (Pujaris at Gaya) has been described by many as a horrifying experience.

Why Gaya A ceremonial Shraddha (last rites after cremation of a human) is performed by Hindus generally at the time of death, and repeated every year. Pindadaan (offering food to departed ancestors in the form of round balls of rice) at Gaya is preferably performed at or after the first anniversary of death. Religious minded Hindus like to perform the ritual in Gaya at least once in their lifetime. Why has Gaya been singled out as the right place for the Pindadaan? Are there other places people can go to perform the same ritual? The answer is –yes, people do go to other places. Prayag, Pushkar, Haridwar, and many other holy locations are considered good places to perform the event.

There may be other places in the Southern India that people go to, e.g., Tirupati. Still, Gaya remains at the top of the list in people’s mind when it comes to paying homage to ancestors. Just like Kashi Viswanath is considered to be the most revered holy site to visit by many Hindus, Gaya is the place for perform Pindadaan.

A clear answer to “Why Gaya” is not found, however, there are mythological stories about highly revered people mentioned in the Vedic literature, going to Gaya to perform this ancestral ceremony. Ram, Yudhisthir, Bhisma, Marichi Rishi, and others are mentioned to have done so. Gaya Mahatmya (greatness of Gaya) speaks about the powerful demon Gayasur and how Lord Vishnu killed him by using the pressure of his foot over him and left his footprint here at Gaya in the process, thus making Gayakshetra, one of the most holy lands on earth. Believers come here to perform Pindadaan with the conviction that the souls of their departed an-

cestors would receive the offerings.

The Process of Pindadaan The process of performing Pindadaan is quite elaborate. It is led by a Brahmin (a pujari) that will take you to several holy sites within a walkable space. In my case, the pujari was selected by a Swamiji at Bharat Sevashram Sangha. I was required to announce how much money I would offer for the process and hand over the money to the Pujari in advance.

I saw that the pujari had to give half the money to an “authorized Brahmin meaning a Panda” who, by virtue of Parampara (meaning continued from his ancestors), owns the land where the ritual is performed. The remaining half of the money is used to buy the necessary materials for the ceremony. By the way, that is not the end of payments; there would be several other places where you have to donate money.

Upon arriving at the pindadaan site at the bank of Falgu River, I received a small container from the pujari to fetch water from the Falgu River. At this time of the year (February), Falgu River was just a small stream of water. Young boys and girls had dug holes in the river bed, and noisily trying to attract the visitors with the words: This is the real Falgu water. What you see on top is just drain water”.

The Falgu is mentioned in literature as Antasalila, meaning flowing under the river bed. Anyway, I saw some flowing water a little away, so I ignored the hawkers and marched on, determined to get to the real Falgu water. I filled the little container with the river water and walked back to the site.

With the water that I brought, the pujari made round little balls (pindas) with powdered gram flour (known as Chattu to local people). Under the direction of the Pujari, I offered the pindas to all my ancestors. Several other groups of people doing the same ceremony were scattered around the place.

After the ceremony, I was asked to take the offerings to a certain place for cows and goats to eat.

As we walked around, my pujari occasionally shouted the word “Bankura” to let the pandas who are always hanging around for business, know that a Bankura native is here for pindadaan. I had to give details of my parent’s name, my home location at the start of this process.

The second part of the offerings were held at the Vishnupad temple. I was led by the pujari to walk around the footprint of Lord Vishnu.

Continued to page 6

6

Ananda Sangbad

April 2017

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME

By Amrita Kangle What is it that they say about the unpredictability of life...something to the effect of not ever knowing what awaits you at the next turn? Well, let me tell you that whoever first said so was an extremely intelligent being. His or her grey cells were as convoluted as Einstein’s at the very least, and before going public with this very profound statement, the gent or lady in question must have spent days and months just applying the said grey cells to re-confirm the veracity of this utterance. I can only endorse it.

There I was on a perfectly normal Sunday, a full working day for me, returning home long after the sun had decided to call it a day. I had shown a client seven homes, done a buyer consultation, which was looking very positive and had given a listing presentation to a client who had wanted to sell his home but had subsequently decided that he wanted to go on a vacation, upon being advised that the best time to sell his home would be during summer. Well, he was entitled to his actions but all I needed was a hot bath, hot food and my bed. I called up the H to convey these simple wishes, who, by way of greeting asked me to keep my phone down at once and not talk while driving. Such an affectionate gesture should not go unaddressed I thought, so by way of a reply I promised him then that I would fall asleep at the wheel if he did not talk to me. Before our loving conversation could go any further, I heard the landline phone ring in my home. After informing me that the call was from India and keeping me on hold, my husband answered and I heard one end of the conversation, which after the initial greeting went something like this: “Oh, no! What has happened?”

“Which hospital is he in?”

By this time, my blood had run cold and the world had ceased to exist around me. My son lives by himself in Mumbai…now, need I say more? I suppose I must have driven the twenty-five odd miles and reached home in one piece that night, but I have no recollection of having done so.

It was the middle of the night and my son had to be hospitalized due to excruciating pain in the stomach accompanied by severe nausea and vomiting. His friend was calling us up to inform. The doctors suspected that it was a kidney stone. He was being administered pain killers through the IV drip and was feeling a bit better. A sonography was also scheduled. As you must have guessed, by now, all thoughts of food and bed were as far away from my mind as the concepts of selling a home and a vacation are from

each other. In fact, I did not even take my boots off nor shed my coat till dawn dawned the next day and we got the news that he was discharged, there was no pain but he had to undergo a CT scan.

Of course, I decided to fly the very next day. But you must understand that ever since he reached a height of 6’- 4”, my son has decided to take on the role of my father. This may have something to do with the fact that I stand 5’-2” in my socks and have to look up to his face to carry on a conversation, but I was damned if I was going to let that come in the way. While father and son continued to argue about the merits and demerits of the necessity of my travel, with the son insisting that he could handle everything by himself and his father trying to convince him otherwise, I went about my job of throwing a few necessities into a suitcase and booking my ticket. Realizing that it was now too late to stop his mother in her tracks, my son stopped arguing and even admitted that he was very glad that he would be seeing me the next day.

Being alone when he was sick had been no fun! But he would be coming to the airport to pick me up.

I always but always fly Air India and this has everything to do with patriotism. I start feeling as if I am back home, the minute I check in my bags. They so understand why a hand luggage can be misshapen and bulky and not only that, they are even willing to understand that 23 kg can sometimes mean 26 kg, and there is no need to kick up a fuss over such small matters. Their flight attendants are so matronly and make you feel at home. I mean, who wants a Miss Universe looking down her nose while serving my lunch? And don’t believe the people who say that the seats in the aircraft are broken or the personal TV screens don’t work. Though this may be true at times, why do people not understand that these are very small issues in the larger scheme of things? Whenever I try to push across the fact that Air India is always very punctual and hospitable, and that it is the best airlines I get a very cryptic answer …………”Yes, when it takes off!”

Air India, as I just mentioned, makes me feel right at home from minute one. It gives me visions of days gone by, of long summer vacations and gossiping neighborhood aunties, of crying infants and children running about and getting pampered by the adults around. A far cry from the adage that children should be seen and not heard! This time around there were additions to these existing luxuries. Across the aisle from me, there was this matronly look-

ing lady who was making it her life’s mission to know all about every person who was there in the cabin. Before I knew it, she knew all about why I was travelling at this time, the family sitting behind had learnt about how to handle small children when flying, the newlyweds in front of her were distracted from their cootchie-cooing into telling her the story of their lives. In a very short time, the whole cabin was wholeheartedly sympathizing with this young girl who was having to learn some cooking to impress her mother-inlaw! Recipes and suggestions flew fast and furious between the ladies and it was a total public show because in addition to being matronly, my neighbor had a voice like a fog horn. You could say that the fifteen hours just flew by without me worrying my head off about my son.

My heart was beating itself out while I cleared immigration, which literally took a minute and a half and my luggage was already on the belt by the time I reached there. Would my son be at the airport? Was he better? Had the pain returned? My heart was definitely going to burst. On trembling legs I walked out, my eyes searching for only one face and there……… ……..there was that beloved, familiar tall structure with a huge smile lighting up his face. He had come to the airport as he had promised. My heart was full.

The next day dawned bright and clear. I woke to the sounds that I dream of every single day of my life……..the birds chirping gaily, the parrots creating a din and flying about like a green feathery cloud, the ding-ding of the temple bell in the distance and all the soft fuzzy sounds that go towards creating a perfect day! As I reached the Living Room the center table was covered with every newspaper that could be found at a vendor. The house was filled with Rajnigandhas in every conceivable kind of vase …….. these are a few of my favorite things!! Before I could even think all this through, I was enveloped in a giant bear-hug!

“HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU MAMINA” In all that had been happening, I had clean forgotten that it was my birthday! Something that is really astounding because normally I do not forget and neither do I let the world around me forget this momentous day. They are given reminders well in advance along with helpful hints as to what would be considered good gifts. I don’t like to trouble people and make them search the world over!

This time, I had got the best gift ever………….and it was hugging me!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!

A Trip to Gaya Continued from page 5 By this time, two groups of several pandas appeared before me and claimed to represent my ancestral family. They both had large bound registers with names of my ancestors. After I confirmed many names belonging to my ancestors, one group with the higher number of names of my ancestors seemed to win the war of representation, and established themselves as the proper panda of my family and thus received a donation from me. I should mention here that there was no haggling by the Pandas to extract a larger amount from me.

The third place for the offerings was the famous “Akshaya Bata” (the indestructible Banyan Tree) where I had to offer donation to the keeper of the tree, and my final pranami to the Brahmin.

Altogether it took about five hours before we returned to Bharat Sevashram Sangha in time for a delicious hot lunch comprising of rice, dal, and vegetables.

On line Services Availability of internet services for the religious duties after death are making the trips to India superfluous for many. A little explanation of these duties are provided here. The Shraddha ceremony after death must be done within a specific period, generally about 10-12 days. This is a hectic period when the survivors need to get together, occasionally traveling from distant places. Much planning is necessary for the viewing at a funeral place, cremation, and then the Shraddha. After the shraddha is done, the ashes are kept in an “urn”, which is then taken to a specific place to scatter out in a river of personal choice. The preferred river is the Ganges, however, people of central or southern India disburse them into Narmada, Kaveri or Godavari. Then, after one year, “shraddha anniversary” is performed. Some people travel to Gaya at this time to do the pindadaan. Some decide to scatter ashes in the Falgu at this time.

Various on line service providers have sprung up to ease the task of the new generations. Professional scattering services from air or from boat into the ocean are now available in the U.S. and elsewhere. In addition, on line services are available through internet to perform shraddha or any other puja. This is a fast growing business in India. According to Saumya Vardhan, founder and CEO of “Shubh Puja”, customers from anywhere in the world can schedule and participate in rituals customized for them, in India, through Skype or Facetime. The priests on-theground handle everything – bringing the offerings needed for the ceremony and informing a customer of when they need to log in - and what recitations, if any, they should participate with during the ceremonies, which are still conducted in the ancient Sanskrit language.

I refer the readers to an excellent article in the April-2016 issue of Ananda Sangbad, titled “On Line Hindu Pujas” by our own Sushmita Dutta.

Places to visit at Gaya The narration of a trip to Gaya is not complete until two notable tourist attractions, Bodhgaya and Nalanda, are mentioned.

Bodhgaya, the most popular destination for the tourists and Buddhist pilgrims, is about 7 miles away from Gaya. The Bodhi tree under which the Buddha was enlightened about 2600 years back was surrounded by foreign tourists from Thailand and Japan. The Mahabodhi Temple, erected next the Bodhi tree had a long stream of people going in and out. The site had been announced as the World Heritage site by the UNESCO since 2002.

The Vishal Buddha Mandir in Bodhgaya had a magnificent 94 feet tall statue of Buddha.

The archeological site of Nalanda, the ancient university is located about 52 miles from Gaya, and is a notable tourist destination and a part of the Buddhist tourism circuit. It is also preserved as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Much of our knowledge of Nalanda comes from the writings of pilgrim monk Xuanzang (better known as Hiuen Tsang) who visited Nalanda in the seventh century, spending around two years at the monastery. In its heydays, this teaching institution attracted scholars and students from near and far with some travelling all the way from Tibet, China, Korea, and Central Asia.

Archaeological evidence also notes contact with the Shailendra dynasty of Indonesia, one of whose kings built a monastery in the complex.

Gaya, together with Bodhgaya and Nalanda, is an enticing tourist spot not only for devout Hindus and Buddhists, but for all visitors.

Ananda Sangbad

April 2017

7

Microfiction as Part of Our Everyday Life

By Subhodev Das There are short stories – writings that are typically over a thousand words – which many of us enjoy reading and penning, the flash fiction – those super short stories of 1,000 words or less – and the microfiction, a subset of flash fiction told in 300 words or less. With such vehicles of storytelling, I would think letting literature into our everyday life along with other non-literary activities would pose no problem. For example, the microblogging site Twitter with its 140-character universe would be ideal for microfiction. Yet, on a daily basis, we miss opportunities to tell our stories. Instead, we look for those rare occasions to spend time reading classics.

As is often said, “It’s not the size of the word count in the story, rather the size of the story in the word count!” So, what are our incentives to tell/read/write stories as part of everyday life?

The incentive comes from the fact that literature connects individuals with larger truths and ideas in a society. Literature creates a way for people to record their thoughts and experiences in a way that is accessible to others, through fictionalized accounts of the experience.

Consider the fact that the average adult’s attention span isn’t much longer than the time it takes to click a mouse or tap a touch screen. However, though this may be true, more than convenience, a reader yarns for a good story. Good stories come in all shapes and sizes—all lengths and forms. If a novel can be thought of as a ten course meal, and a short story as an excellent deli-sandwich, then a microfiction piece might be an exquisite chocolate truffle. All are food. All are enjoyable. But they’re each very different. Microfiction is a scrumptious, bite-sized nugget of a story. It packs big flavor and satisfaction into a small package.

Jerome Stern, in his introduction to Micro Fiction: An Anthology of Fifty Really Short Stories, writes, ‘Before the days of television, popular magazines regularly used to publish fiction, and the short short existed as a sort of trick form, a quick little story with an unexpected twist – something you read while you waited for your turn at the barbershop. All part of the unrecognized literature of everyday life.’

Consider the following, often misattributed to Ernest Hemingway: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” This may serve as an advertisement or perhaps it’s an example of microfiction in which all events are ‘implied’.

The baby shoes story has spawned so many websites and publications devoted to six-word stories that it merits special mention here. Readers and writers have clearly been captivated by the depth of emotion hinted at by these six words. An interpretation may run something like this: A young couple starting family The woman getting pregnant and preparing for the baby’s arrival The couple acquiring baby shoes The baby died before or during birth The shoes were preserved as reminder of the loss or in hope of having another child The shoes were eventually put up for sale in a newspaper ad.

The real key to microfiction is efficiency of text. You don’t need to tell less of a story, and you don’t need to summarize the story. You need to make careful word and phrase choices that are able to paint vivid pictures and imply more than their brevity would suggest. “Show, don’t tell” most certainly still applies. Beyond that, consider all the features that tend to make any story good—characterization, plot, conflict, setting and atmosphere—if you want a reader to engage with the piece, there should be a hook, and some sense that something important happens.

This is no small feat to perform in so few

words, but it can be done.

There are plenty of examples where these micro-vehicles of literature have become intertwined with daily life. There are historical precedents in Japan, China, Latin America and Europe, where microfiction has been used for many centuries.

In Japan very short fictions have a rich history. Forms such as haibun (a mixture of prose and haiku poetry) have been slowly developing since the seventeenth century, linking with the use and proliferation of haiku. The haibun, as an older form, has led to the much more contemporary ketai fiction – stories long enough to fit in a text message – which also originated in Japan but at the end of the twentieth century. In the West this type of fiction has also been dubbed ‘mobilephone fiction’ or even ‘thumb novels’. The ketai is also linked to the development of Twitter Lit. Microfictions are also popular in China, in various self-descriptive terms: palmsized story, minute-long story, smoke-long story. In France tiny stories are called nouvelles. They too have been increasing in popularity and visibility as the twentieth century has rolled into the twenty-first.

Jerome Stern, the practitioner of microfiction, argues that microfiction is ‘deeply rooted in the human psyche and in the history of human communities’, as a result of its reflection of sub-forms such as the fable, parable or the anecdote.

These tiny tales are also forms of fiction which have influenced microfiction, or perhaps could even be considered microfictions themselves: after all, they have a beginning, a middle and an end, they have plot and structure and purpose, and they are written relatively sparely. In fact, of all short forms used both in the present and in the past, the influences of early fables, Biblical parables and the oral tradition of anecdotes are important and illuminating.

Microfiction started to take a more solid shape in the twentieth century, be-

coming recognizable as a block of text, much like traditional prose, but usually very short, rather like a poem, and in tandem with the rising popularity of the prose poem that came to full bloom as modernity came to power, emigrating from the pen of Francis Ponge and into the notebooks of T.S. Eliot, Oscar Wilde and Gertrude Stein on the way. As the century developed, microfiction came alive in the hands of Franz Kafka, Jorge Luis Borges and other literary heavyweights. There exists, however, a rather postmodern feel about microfiction: its knowing challenge, its desire to show things through a new lens, to reshape or even remake.

Microfiction feels ultra-modern because it looks so striking on the page: microfictions are brief blocks of text on the page. Despite their innovative look and ties to our contemporary culture, we have seen – through its possible historical sources – that microfiction was not created to satisfy the small attention spans sadly synonymous with the twenty-first century, or to benefit readers who would prefer to peruse online material rather than paperbacks. Its historical uses in world literature show a form perhaps even centuries older than this assumption supposes and, rather like the theory of evolution tells us about adaptation, it survived because of its uses and possibilities and is now developing further to fit on laptop and PC screens, on Twitter and on mobile phones.

It is through such literary engagements, that one understands life by taking a closer look at the different facets of life.

In many ways, such experience can change one's perspective towards life.

Therefore microfiction is rather important in our lives. It does help us to cope with society. Microfiction literature brings us face to face with the essential human conditioning with all its sublimity and all its degradation: All its powers and abilities as well as all its limitations.

Recent Sahitya O Alochana Sessions at Ananda Mandir Reported by Subrata Bhaumik Sahitya O Alochana (SOA) is a monthly literary and topical discussion forum under the aegis of Ananda Mandir (AM). It completed its 9th anniversary in January 2017 and will have organized ninety seven (97) sessions by the time the current edition of Ananda Sangbad goes to press. These monthly sessions feature exciting and illuminating discussions on diverse subjects including literature, art, theater and movie; history, philosophy and religion; science and mathematics; economics and business; and social issues, sports, and current affairs. The following is an account of the recent sessions organized by the SOA committee of the AM. December 2016 – There was no session in December due to the holidays and other scheduling difficulties.

january 2017In January Amitabha Bagchi led a discussion on Akhil Sharma and his works.

Bagchi presented a crisp and detailed overview of the life and works of Akhil Sharma, an Indian born American writer who has been making headlines in the literary world for a number of years. He read and critiqued one of Sharma’s early short stories (If You Sing Like That for Me) that was published in The Atlantic Monthly more than twenty years ago.

Other more famous works including the most recent novel "Family Life" were also discussed and analyzed with particular attention to the morphosis Mr. Sharma went through from an immigrant high schooler “trying to fit in” into a powerful, compassion-

ate, and stylistically nuanced writer. It was a wonderful session, and a ton of thanks go out to Amitabha Bagchi. february 2017 In February, we came back to one of our oft-visited themes: Influence and Collaboration between British and Indian Literature. This session was jointly led

by Amrita Ghosh and Elizabeth Redwine – both professors of English Literature at Seton Hall University. As Amrita Ghosh put it “India's colonial encounter with Britain was fraught with a myriad of experiences, not all of which was strictly relegated to the "colonizer-colonized" monolithic narrative. Despite the hegemonic framework within an imperialistic history, the realm of literature was uniquely impacted

by British colonialism, which led to some fascinating and nu-

anced literary collaborations that re-envisioned Indian literature.”

This session was formatted like a workshop, which presented a glimpse of such literary fusions and collaborations that changed the face of textual colonial encounters. Tagore's friendship with Yeats and Wordsworth's influence on another Bengali woman poet Toru Dutt were the main focuses of the discussion within the frame of intertextuality and colonialism. The session had two parts respectively exploring the Toru Dutt/ Wordsworth connection and Tagore and Yeats collaboration.

It was a fantastic discussion that broke a lot of new grounds for our attendees and was received very well. We offer our sincere thanks to the discussion leaders for such an exciting and informative session

future sessions Quite a few interesting sessions are in the pipeline for the next several months. They feature eclectic topics including a discussion titled “Religion, an evolutionary interpretation,” an in-depth review of evolution of religion and its effects on our lives; a session on Bertolt Brecht, one of the greatest dramatists and writers that ever lived and an unsung hero of the Nobel Prize (possibly due to his pro-communist thinking and affiliation); an evening of Urdu ghazal (reading and vocal recital); etc.

The friends of Sahitya O Alochana would like to thank Ananda Mandir for its continued support for the forum’s contribution to the cultural enrichment of the local Indian and Bengali communities.

8

Ananda Sangbad

April 2017

Highlights of Recent Puja Activities Reported by Krishna Dutta Roy, Chair, Puja Committee December In December, we celebrated monthly events of Satyanarayan Puja and Shyama Puja. On 31st December, Kallol of NJ and Ananda Mandir jointly organized a New Year Eve party at the newly built Ananda Mandir Community Center to bid farewell to the year 2016 and usher in 2017. This was a very well attended and a successful event. january On January 1, 2017, the temple was kept open whole day. Devotees came all through the day to get blessings for the New Year. In the evening, after a program of devotional songs, puja, aarati, and pushpanjali were performed. Prasad and dinner were served by Ananda Mandir Food Committee.

Our monthly Satyanarayan puja was observed on Sunday, 8th January. On January 26th, we celebrated ever popular Ratanti Kali puja like other years.

Puja was performed from 6:00 pm till 8:30pm. This was a very cold winter night, still many devotees braved the cold and attended the puja. After puja, aarati and pushpanjali, prasad and dinner were served. On the next day, 27th, our monthly Shyama Puja was observed. Last puja of the month was Ganesh Chaturthi which was celebrated on 31st of January. february February was a busy month.

We started with Saraswati Puja

on the 1st. Puja was performed from 8:30am to 11:30am.

Though it was a week day, it was very well attended. Lots of people came from work for pushpanjali and then went back to work. After puja, we had the ceremony of Hatekhori / Bid-

yarambha. 12 young children participated to begin their journey of learning. Some of the kids, not quite aware of what is going on, hesitated, however, they were all happy to receive gift bags from Ananda Mandir.

Anyway, it was a very joyous event for all, particularly the parents. Amitabha Bagchi presided over this ceremony.

On Sunday, 5th February, Ananda Mandir organized Bani Bandana to celebrate the occa-

sion again, to give an opportunity to all children as many of them could not come in the weekday. As usual, puja, aarati, pushpanjali were done. Another set of 12 children had their Hatekhori done, with the help of Pronoy Chatterjee, Santosh Mukherjee and Rik Sen. After lunch we had a children's cultural program at our Community center. This program was arranged by Arun Bhowmik

and very well attended by children and parents alike. A separate report on that program is written by Arun. In the evening monthly Satyanarayan puja was held.

We celebrated Shiva Ratri on 24th February. The puja started at 9:00 pm Friday and continued through Shiva Chaturdashi tithi until 9:00 am on Saturday.

About 60 devotees came to bathe Lord Shiva as the puja and Havan continued all through the

night. The devotees took turn in bathing Lord Shiva with different items like milk, yogurt and honey after the Shiva Lingam was dressed with kingly clothes, flower garlands and crown (Topor). The bathing continued throughout the morning.

On 26th we observed our monthly Shyama Puja.

It is nice to see that our new community center is attracting other organizations to do pujas and other events. Princeton area Bengali school (BKPA) rented the hall to hold their Saraswati puja on 11th February. They requested Biswabhai to do the puja. After puja, aarati, push-

panjali and lunch the school held a cultural program. This was a very well organized program. We wish and hope that other such institutions and clubs, and members in the community come forward to utilize this beautiful hall for their personal events.

Our upcoming puja events are Dol Purnima / Holi and Satyanarayan puja on 12th March and monthly Shyama Puja on 27th March.

We recognize the dedication of all volunteers, who make the pujas so enjoyable at Ananda Mandir. Please check our website www.anandamandir.org for the upcoming pujas.

Science & Technology

Easy Steps to Laptop Maintenance: Tips on enhanced Laptop Performance and Saving Money

By Sushmita Dutta Saturday, March 11, 2017; a cold and prolonged winter morning in New Jersey!

I had planned to send this report to the Ananda Sangbad Editor by early morning as it was past due. In a rush or being bit careless, I dropped my laptop flat on the floor. Panicked for a moment, first thing I did was to check if the laptop would respond to “start.” It did. And then I waited for my desktop to appear with all icons and files stored. I could hear the sounds of the desktop display and initiating sound and linking to “Skype” but, I couldn’t see anything on the desktop, the screen was blank. So, immediately I guessed that there must be some broken connectivity between the laptop machine and the display monitor. I rushed my laptop to Computer Clinic, at 2 Austin Avenue, off Route 1 South, Iselin, New Jersey. The owner of

the small store is a computer wizard. I have always worked with him for the past several years now. He looked at my desktop screen and immediately hooked up another monitor to my laptop to see if the desktop was displaying. Yes it did. So, the machine was doing fine. Is the monitor broken? I asked. Possibly, he said and detached the monitor from the machine to check if the same monitor would work on another machine. It did. So now we are left with the third option to see if there is any loss of connectivity in the machine that would link the monitor to the computer. We had to open the machine completely and we noticed that the hook connecting the monitor display from the machine was detached owing to the impact from the fall. It was a two minute’s fix and my laptop was up and running.

So, three initial recommended steps in a situation like this (laptop dropped from hand) are –

(1) Check if the machine is re-starting (even if the outer case is broken).

(2) Check if the lights indicating running of the machine are blinking (3) Check if the desktop is visible with at least some, if not all items stored.

Another tip to what happens if you spill water or liquid on your laptop. It happened to me and I just grabbed my laptop and drove from work to Office Depot technical division. I t was about 20 some minutes’ drive to the store. When I reached the store, the laptop was working fine.

The heat in the car did the job of dryingup the water. So, the tip here is: (4) If you spill liquid on your laptop, stop using it, remove the battery immediately and let the laptop and the battery dry for 10 -12 hrs. DO NOT USE DIRECT SUN LIGHT. Some basic tips to help you save money on Laptop maintenance: 1. Heat and Laptop: Rule Number

One for Laptops: Do not use it on lap for prolonged period. This blocks all the vents and prevents the laptop air from cooling the machine. So, as your lap gets warmer so does the laptop. So, use a cooler pad

or a hard base, may be a book to use laptop on your lap. For similar reason, do not use beds or cushioned bases instead seContinued to page 12

Ananda Sangbad

April 2017

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Science & Technology

CuT THE CORD

By Chayan Roychowdhury

Are we there yet?

Over last few decades, AT&T, Verizon and a host of Cable companies have enjoyed regional monopoly in the American homes. Cable rules while network TV content slacked and Satellite TV was fraught with poor service. Competition was almost non-existent, and Cable controlled consumer behavior much against consumer angst.

Entertainment channels including HBO, Showtime, HULU, Sporting channels like ESPN, Fox sports and Lifestyle channels like Food or Travel are indispensable to the American household. Basic cable packages, once with 10-20 channels, today contain over a 100 channels.

Cable providers seized the opportunity to exploit a captive consumer base with packages that offered this rich content, but slapped the consumer with annual contracts, set top boxes, DVR service, remotes and, oh yes, increasing cable bills.

Cable expenses have grown FOUR times the rate of inflation almost 10% since 2010. If cable prices increased consistently with the U.S. inflation rate over the past 18 years, you’d be paying $35 a month for about 165 channels and there would likely be a lot less cord cutting going on.

While Content continues to grow, so does bandwidth. The Internet bandwidth has grown from speeds of 10-12Mbps to fiber speeds of 50Mbps or higher. In the home you can wire your devices by Gigabyte Ethernet or go Wireless. Wireless bandwidths are a whopping 300MHz-1.5GZ or higher. Bandwidth, that was capable of only delivering simple capabilities like browsing and email, now offers streaming services for Gaming, Movies and Live events. By 2015, the advances in networkContinued to page 12

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Ananda Sangbad

April 2017

‘THE’ BAR Of SOAP

By Rahul Ray Lately I have been deeply enticed by a bar of soap. A measly bar of soap!

Have you gone completely out of your mind! I am certain this will be the reaction of all the readers of this blurb. However, scorn apart, I have paid profound attention to a very unassuming bar of Dial soap. It looks, as most bars of soaps do beige-colored, with a somewhat-rectangular shape and smooth edges, with Dial logo engraved on the top surface. My wife bought a pack of these garden-variety soap bars from Walmart without paying any attention to them, even probably she had an eye for a bargain. In short, there is nothing special in terms of price or physical appearance about this brand of soap to grab my attention, But it has!

Smells, good or bad always draw my attention. These days, whenever I enter the bathroom, a faint fragrance from this soap takes me back many years ago, to my childhood days.

I am a bit of a clean freak. The word ‘freak’ may actually turn off a few people thinking that I am one of those who cannot tolerate even a speck of dust on the tabletop, or a spot on the floor. No, I do not go that far, but I do like my place to be clean and tidy. My job involves occasional travelling, and staying in hotels. At the end of my stay, I make sure that the bathroom sink is wiped clean and unused towels are stacked neatly so that they can be used by the next person staying in that room. I arrange the couch and the table tidily. I even tidy up the bed and cover it with soiled linen, knowing fully well that the cleaning crew will dutifully replace it with fresh stock before the next person moves in.

I am always the first person to wake up in the morning. Then I go around the house for a quick inspection of various rooms, particularly kitchen and bath, and spot clean as much as time permits before going to work. Some days I spray a deodorant with a name like Nature’s breeze or Spring Blossom. The idea is to make people, waking after me feel fresh and invigorated. This has been my habit for a very long time.

What a nice fellow, most will say! Yes, I will gladly take the compliment with humility. I picked up this habit a very long time ago as a boy growing up in Kolkata.

I realize that it is a bit puzzling for many.

Boys from middle class families in India then and now did not have to clean and tidy their homes. For that matter, there was no expectation that they would do any household chore. They were only required to study hard to be a doctor, an engineer, or these days a computer techie.

Therefore, it may sound strange but I actually did some household chores as a boy.

Daily cleaning of our two-bedroom apartment in South Kolkata was not the job of a faint of heart, and certainly not for a ten or so year old boy, then and even now. A part-time maid came twice daily to do several routine chores including broom the floor of the entire place with jhantaa, a broom-stick made of straw-colored long needles from leaves of coconut trees. She was always in a rush to go to her next job, and my grandmother would

always bark at her ‘Sweep under the bed, sweep under the bed. That is where all the dust gathers.’ Without a word, the maid-servant would thrust the broom under the bed and make a quick sweep.

After sweeping the floor, she would mop the carmine red-colored cement floor shiny clean with nyataa, a small cotton cloth and a bucketful of water. At the end of mopping, that water and the cloth would turn dark gray, as if all the dust and the dirt of the city had accumulated in our tiny apartment. I was always tickled by the distinct smell of phenyl (pronounced Phee-naa-eel), a disinfectant that was dutifully added to the water used for mopping. There were germs aplenty, and that smell always spoke loudly and distinctly GERMS GONE! Twice a week my duty was to dust every furniture and every piece of knickknack on them. My mother was a student of art at some early point in her life. She taught me that each piece of item in the house had its own place, and that place must be chosen carefully with an eye for beauty, harmony and neatness. Therefore, I had to be careful about not to break that order and rhythm. Every Sunday I would take out all the books from an open book-rack and clean them with a feather duster. Then I would line them up in rows in a concave pattern, tallest books at two ends and the shortest in the middle.

Then, there were knick-knacks, like a clay horse from Bishnupur, or a metal Tagore-bust, given to us as a gift by a family-friend. My father once bought a record player and a few seventy-eight rpm records. They were sheltered in a lacey cover that my mother once sewed. I would carefully lift that cover and shake off the dust gathered on them. Dust they all gathered! A thick layer of gray dust would cover everything if I did not clean them routinely.

Cleaning and dusting apart, there was no concept of deodorizing the place. That was simply not possible. Due to warm climate, windows were kept open ten months out of twelve in a year, and fragrance from any deodorant would last only for a short time. Incense sticks or dhoop were burnt occasionally. Their smell would waft through the entire place and vanish in a hurry.

My maternal grandparents’ place (Mamar baari) in Bhabanipur had a tiny windowless room for worshipping, which contained statues and pictures of various gods and goddesses.

Whenever I came near that room, I could get a whiff of sandalwood from all those incense sticks burnt there daily. Even today, I associate that smell with worshipping of any sort. On certain occasions, dhuno, a yellowish-brown colored coarse powder was burnt on a clay saucer that produced a thick smoke and a pungent odor that lasted for hours.

I grew up in a congested, dirty, politically charged and violent city with vivid imageries, colors, and smell. I was an amateur artist like my mother, and several of my drawings and water-colors caught some of those images, and even a few occasional instances of beauty and poise. I

painted picture of a person fishing in a peaceful and quaint lily pond behind the Academy of Fine Arts building while the city was ablaze in political violence, or my mother playing chess with Kamal-da, a family friend with his wrist folded under his chin in deep concentration.

Of course, it is not possible to paint smell, but I grew up in the city with various odors associated with specific persons, incidents and images. Some of those odors left a permanent imprint on my mind. For instance, in the evening of some intolerably warm and sultry days of summer, my mother brought home a dozen of intensely fragrant Rajanigandha (tube-rose) sticks wrapped in shaal-pata (shaal leaf). The slightly greenish-white petals on long stems opened up slowly and filled the entire house with fragrance for days.

As a common practice, for large gatherings, such as wedding ceremonies people rented certain houses or halls. The ‘decorator’ people would adorn the place with white pleated linens and drapes, and light up with lights of all sorts including large ‘jhaar lawnthons’ or chandeliers. In addition, these people always bedecked the throne where the bride and groom sat with long-stem Rajanigandha in tall vases and a profusion of garlands made of Belphool (jasmine). I vividly ‘remember’ the fragrance of those flowers that was mixed with bouquets of various perfumes that gorgeously dressed women wore on these occasions.

These were pre- catering (for food) days. A special area used to be set up with huge charcoal ovens and enormously large utensils for vien or cooking. A randhuni thakur or head cook and his associate fried luchi (flat bread dough) or pieces of begun (eggplant) while they prepared rui machher kaliya (a savory preparation of carp fish) in another large oven. Large trays of sandesh (a savory sweet) filled nearby tables. A rich aroma of various food items and spices filled the whole place. A nerri kutta, or a stray dog from the locality would patiently wait close by in the hope of getting a morsel thrown at him.

There are bad associations with smell also. A meat shop stood near the intersection of Lansdowne and Hazra Roads. I had to pass by this shop five days a week to get to the bus-stop from where I took bus to go to St. Xavier’s College on Park Street. I waited for my bus and routinely observed blood streaming out of that store, and pouring into the drain on the side of the road. Before long, the butcher would come out to hang the skinned body

of the goat from the rafter, and display the severed head in the store-front, as was and still is the common practice. A few goats chained in front of the store looked down sadly, waiting for their turn to face the butcher. The air around the store was always heavy with acrid and fishy smell of blood and raw flesh.

A very sad incident happened almost at the same spot involving my friend’s brother who lived very close to this place.

This fellow also took bus to go to St. Xavier’s College from the same bus-stop.

One evening he did not return from college. His parents were alarmed and called the local police to find out that their son fell from the bus, and the heavy hind tire of the bus ran over him. In the next day, while waiting at the bus-stop I observed that the same drain in front of the meatshop was heavily stained with blood with scores of machhi (flies) buzzing over it.

The stench of blood was unbearable. I could not go to the college that morning, instead, I went home and cried.

I have retained imprints of smell related to people also. My father’s younger sister, mejo pishima loved me dearly. She was suffering from a disease unknown to me. She barely moved out of her room, and whenever I visited my mejo pishima’s house on Harish Mukherjee Road, she would call me in. Strangely enough, that room had a distinct sweet smell. I wondered about it and concluded that she might be wearing a perfume that gave out this characteristic odor. She passed away a few years later suffering from an acute form of diabetes mellitus. Now, at my adult age as a scientist I know that she was at the end-stage of her disease. The keto-acids produced by the abnormal metabolism of excess glucose in her circulation were responsible for that characteristic sweet smell.

The bathroom in our second floor apartment in Grove Lane was located at the end of a short corridor away from the main house.

Strangely enough, the kitchen was located right next to the bathroom. There were no exhaust fans in either chamber, and sometimes smell from both mixed together to create a strange odor.

There were pleasant smells also. My sisters were too young in those days to wear perfumes, but my maa did. She was a very stylish woman, and wore perfumes with names like Priya and Kanta routinely.

Even the soap-bars that she bought for the household were highly fragrant to suppress the sweaty body odor that almost everybody gave out on hot summer days.

She was a high-school teacher at Lake School for Girls in the Gariahata area.

Every morning, before going to school she took a bath, put on nice clothes and freshened up with body powder and perfume.

After getting her three children ready for their schools, she would rush out of the house to catch a bus to get to her school, leaving behind a short-lived tailwind, fragrant with odor of the soap, body powder and perfume.

The odor from the Dial soap that my wife bought recently from WalMart brought back memories of my childhood and my young and pretty mother. ************ And the Brain It is noteworthy that the bar of Dial soap did not look or feel any different from the bars of soap I used as a boy, but only Continued to page 11

Ananda Sangbad

‘THE’ BAR OF SOAP Continued from page 10 the odor conjured up my childhood memories in droves.

What is special about smell as it relates to memory?

It is now a common knowledge that various parts of our brain process various types of stimuli and information.

Therefore, it is likely that brain processes the olfactory response differently from visual and tactile (touch) responses (now we know auditory too). However, the knowledge that brain masterminds emotional responses was unknown until about one hundred and seventy years ago when the case of Phineas P. Gage surfaced.

On September 13, 1848, Mr. Gage, a 25 –year old foreman in Vermont railways suffered an accident. While using a 43 inches long, 1.25 inches in diameter and weighing 13.25 pounds tamping rod to pack explosive powder in a hole, the powder exploded. The tamping rod went right through his left chin, pierced his brain and exited through his skull. He lost eyesight on his left eye, but was conscious enough to joke with Dr. John Martyn Harlow who treated him –“Here is business enough for you.”

Dr. Harlow treated Mr. Gage for a few months and made some most unusual and unexpected observations.

He noted that Mr. Gage had completely lost balance between his “intellectual faculties and animal propensities.”

Mr. Gage, otherwise a decent and responsible man uttered “the grossest profanity” and showed “little deference for his fellows.” Prior to the accident, the railroad construction company thought of him a model employee, but refused to take him back after this accident. This was the first evidence that showed that brain controlled emotion, and Phineas P. Gage became the most noted patient in the discipline of neuroscience.

However, we had to wait almost a century and half to obtain satisfactory answer about why olfactory stimulus has a significantly higher impact of our emotional status than visual, tactile and auditory stimuli. The solution lies in the anatomy of the brain. Smells go up our nostrils and are processed in the ‘olfactory bulb’ which starts inside nose and runs along the bottom of the brain, connecting directly with amygdala and hippocampus, the two brain areas most strongly implicated with emotion and memory. Interestingly, other stimulatory information do not pass through this area providing olfaction a significantly higher control over emotion and memory over visual, tactile and auditory stimuli.

Recently a study suggested that an odor (smell of rose) stimulated memories that were accompanied by greater activities in the hippocampus and amygdala, while verbal labeling of that odor (verbal designation: ‘rose’) failed to do so. In addition, scientists found that odors triggered memories, which were linked to activity in the areas of brain associated with visual clarity, establishing link between olfaction and visual stimulation.

Back to the discussion on the odor from the bar of Dial soap, that triggered memories of my past. As I am about to enter my golden age these olfactory ‘images’ provide bridges to my past and afford means for taking the unknown journey into the future.

Acknowledgement: Smithsonian Magazine, January 2010, Smithsonian.com, http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/phineas-gage-neurosciences-most-famous-patient11390067/#VSgIrUyiLPQiuYAP.99.

Smells Ring Bells: How Smell Triggers Memories and Emotions. Jordan Gaines Lewis, https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/brain-babble/201501/smells-ring-bellshow-smell-triggers-memories-and-emotions.

April 2017

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SporTS SecTion (Editor’s Note: Tathagata Ghosh regularly writes for Ananda Sangbad and is a past Gayatri GaMarsh Award Winner. frequently, he likes to write on sports.)

Reign of dominance

By Tathagata Ghosh The year 2017 will be remembered as a delicious throwback to a classic rivalry savored by tennis fans.

Two players, legendary rivals with vastly contrasting styles, Federer and Nadal, who had faded from the Top 5 in rankings for the past few years, swept aside younger faster, fitter opposition to make it to the men’s final of the Australian Open.

It was a classic match, contrasted primarily by their backhands. Nadal, a hard-hitting lefty with a monstrous two-handed backhand and Federer, a right-handed maestro with a silky smooth one-handed backhand that held up through the match and eventually helped him to win this classic. Rarely in the history of tennis has there been cases where players who have fallen precipitously out of the top rankings, win Grand Slams, because they would have to face strong in-form players early through the seven rounds of brutal winnowing. Their ascent to their finals is as confounding as the losses of the top two players, Djokovic and Murray, to much lower ranked opponents. For the last few years, the top-ranked players in the world in men’s tennis, have consistently denied all the lower ranking players from making it past the quarter-finals. The fact that Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal made the finals of the 2017 Australian Open was rare as a white crow event if not a black swan event. It was conjectured that both had their best years behind them by even the most generous of sports-pundits. Djokovic’s dominance has been imperious over the span of about 5 years. He has effectively torn to shreds the FedererNadal stranglehold on Grand Slams of a few years ago.

This particular event in 2017 raises an interesting question. What is the reign of dominance of the most celebrated tennis players in our generation? The reign of dominance being defined by the length of years between Grand Slam tournaments.

It brings into focus an important point as to the longevity of tennis players and their effectiveness. It is extremely hard for players, espe-

cially in the men’s side, to win a Grand Slam title and even harder to remain at the top of their game. Surprisingly though there have been stretches of dominance in the last 30 years or so. Turning back the clock, we go into the era of Borg, Connor, Lendl, McEnroe; contemporaries who all jostled against each other trying to win their trophies as early as possible, as many as possible and for long as possible.

There have been only five players whose reign of dominance (Elite ROD) has exceeded a decade i.e. more than 10 years between Grand Slam titles. On the very top of the list is Federer, who is at ROD-14.

The next person on the list is Sampras who is ROD-12. Federer, who had 36 consecutive quarter-final Grand Slam appearances during this period is certainly one of the most dominant and consistent players in our generation. The other people on the elite list are Boris Becker, Andre Agassi and Rafael Nadal. Every one of these players won a Grand Slam title even in their 30’s excepting Becker who won it at the age of 29.

Apart from these players, only Connors has won a Grand Slam event when he was 30, though not in the Elite ROD group. It is likely that both Djokovic and Murray may win a Grand Slam title when they are 30.

Andy Murray and Djokovic are at the peak of their powers and will be 30 this year. Djokovic, if he plays true to his potential will be part of the Elite ROD in due time.

Sometimes very early in their careers stars are born powered by precocious talent and willpower.

These were the early bloomers who won a Grand Slam event when still in their teens. Boris won the Wimbledon when he was 17 and so did Michael Chang at 17 who won the other Slam in Europe, the French Open. Edberg and Wilander fall in this (Young ROD) group and so does Nadal and Sampras who also won their first Grand Slam titles when they were teens. Boris Becker went on to win many more Grand Slam events but Michael Chang though being in the Top 5 for a long

time would never win another Grand Slam title.

The people who peaked and faded the earliest included McEnroe who won his last Grand Slam tournament at 25. Other players who hit a plateau and stopped winning Grand Slam titles beyond their midtwenties include Edberg and Wilander. It would be harsh to say that McEnroe has faded because he continued to play doubles on the procircuit even until recently. McEnroe is still considered to be the best over-50 player in the world playing regularly at the Seniors Challenge event and frequently winning.

In contrast, Federer was a laggard, winning his first Grand Slam title only at the age of 22. Ivan Lendl and Murray won at even later point in their careers, in their midtwenties. Maybe that was the reason that Murray recruited Ivan Lendl to be his coach. He may have chosen somebody who has had to overcome adversity and superior players to be able to manage a Grand Slam win mid-way in their careers.

Looking into the near future, there is no player on the men’s side likely to win a Grand Slam title in their teens. The highest ranking younger players are in their early 20’s. Will they be able to grind out a seven match winning streak in a Grand Slams? It seems quite likely in the next couple of years. Is there going to be a new reign of dominance? Seems unlikely at this point, given that the current Top 5 are firmly ensconced in their positions.

As fascinating a story would be whether the waning stars like Federer and Nadal can continue to have flashes of brilliance and rewrite the stats of the reign of dominance. As of right now they are playing well but decline is inevitable as they face younger and tougher challengers. We have been fortunate to witness genius in the Federer and Nadal rivalry. Hopefully the future would conjure up as intriguing rivalries and we have new Reigns of Dominance to look forward to.

food Drive by Ananda Mandir The food for the needy comes from generous donations made by you - our members, temple attendees and all well-wishers of the community. Will you please help? This is a year round program, so any time is good for the donation. All kinds of non-perishable food and toiletries are needed. No glass jars please!

Thank You, Krishna Dutta Roy, Chair, Ananda Mandir Humanitarian Activities

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Ananda Sangbad

April 2017

Easy Steps to Laptop Maintenance: Tips on enhanced Laptop Performance and Saving Money Continued from page 8 lect a hard base for laptop to help proper air circulation which will keep the machine cool. If your laptop gets heated soon, the best solution is to use a cooling pad. These are not expensive, comes around $20 a pad, which increases the life of a laptop.

2. Dust and cleaning Laptop: Fans in your laptop not only sucks air but also dust from surrounding. Keep your laptop and PC dust free. Get hard blower dust cleaned from a store every month. Please do not ignore this. Dust accumulation goes un-noticed and ends up in malfunctioning of the system.

3. Do not use Windex or any similar cleaning liquid for cleaning your laptop. Just use a damp cloth to wipe the screen and the keyboard and the laptop surface.

4. Keep your laptop away from foods, drinks and pets.

Food crusts get below key keyboard keys without you noticing.

5. Laptop batteries: For enhanced longevity of battery, unplug your laptop and run it on battery at least up to 70% capacity. Restart the laptop on battery and drop it back to 20% and then plug-in the machine again. Never drop battery to "0"% capacity upgrades and Performance Issues: 1. Laptop Performance: By rule of thumb scan for viruses, malware and spyware frequently. It is safe to run standard software available in the market for virus and spyware detection.

A helpful note: “Microsoft offers their Security Essentials suite for users of registered copies of Windows, and most Internet service providers offer their customers free anti-virus tools. Finally, you can trust established products like Symantec’s Norton AntiVirus and McAfee. All of these programs will walk you through the stepby-step process for performing a scan.” A quick step-by-step on how to download Microsoft Security software: a. Select your Internet browser. b. Type in Microsoft Security Essentials over the browser search. c. Download the software you need.

2. upgrading Laptop by defragmenting: Here are the steps: a. Select Disk Defragmentation from your start menu on the

laptop. b. Run defragmentation of disk. This will enhance laptop’s performance.

3. upgrading Laptop by disc Clean-up: Disc clean-up removes unnecessary files from the computer and enhances performance. Here are the steps: a. Select “All Programs” from start menu. b. Select Accessories’. c. Select Systems Tools and d.

Select Disc Cleanup.

4. upgrading Laptop by hardware/software updates regularity: Select from your start menu select control panel, select system and security, select Windows update. Click “Check on Updates” to download available updates for your laptop. Also, remove unnecessary programs. Steps: Select start menu. Select Control Panel. Select Programs and Select “Un-install” programs. This displays programs installed in your system. If you see programs that got installed and you do not use them, you can select “uninstall” the program.

Each of your programs on your laptop requires memory and processing time. Uninstalling programs you do not need, increases computer performance.

5. upgrading Laptop by checking Internet files: Locate and Delete temporary Internet files, cookies and history files which slows down your Internet browsing experience.

Steps: Open Internet Explorer.

Click on “Tools” and go to “Options”. Select Browsing History and you will get options to delete Tempoary Internet Files, Cookies and your Browsing History and then click on “Delete.” finally, some reasons why a Laptop runs slow: This is a very frequently complained problem and there could be multiple reasons for your laptop running slow. Here are some reasons and suggestions to resolve the problem: 1. With several years of use your laptop may run slow and freeze frequently. Defragmentation of disc helps speed up performance. Your other option is to reinstall the operating system. Please save all your data in an external hard drive, locate all your installation discs, format your primary hard drive and reinstall the operating system software. Reinstalling the operating system is cheaper than buying a new laptop.

2. Browser add-ons: Another reason for your laptop running slow can be your Inter-

net browser has too many addons. Remove browser extensions and toolbars that you do not need.

3. Hard drive failure: It is always safe to back-up your files. Install HDTune to check your hard drive performance and life span.

4. Running of multiple programs: Working on multiple things at the same time cause slowing down of the system. Shut down programs.

Note: “For Macs, Windows 10, Windows 7 and earlier versions of Windows, you can close the programs from the file menu.

In Windows 8, programs are built so that they run in the background for a while, then automatically shut down.”

5.

Multiple Browser Tabs: Too many browser tabs open can slow down the process for your browser is using RAM for all open tabs.

Solution: Bookmark necessary links and shutdown all to be accessed when needed.

6. Multimedia files: Some multimedia files like audio and video programs run in loop and or encounter an error in closing down. Solution: Close the programs manually or shut-down the system and re-start.

7. Antivirus Program: Some antivirus programs are set to weekly full scans, which can take a few hours and use a lot of processing power.

“Having an active anti-malware program is a vital part of computer hygiene – but yours may be running regular background scans at the worst possible times. “Virus scans slow down the works because they're running in the background,” Solution: Set antivirus programs to run at time when you are not using the laptop.

8. There is a virus: “Viruses, spyware and other malware can slow down your computer as they mess around with everything from hijacking your browser to pushing advertising or phishing sites, to crashing your computer.” Solution: Run a malware scan and remove it.

9. There are many other reasons for your laptop to run slow, such as, (a) Having many Startup menu, (b) Almost 90% to 95% of your hard drive is full, (c) Your laptop room is too dusty, (d) Your laptop does not have enough memory.

Most of these have easy fixes and performance of your laptop can be enhanced without worrying about spending lot of money.

CUT THE CORD Continued from page 9 ing capabilities were robust enough to “Cut the cord.” Now, what does this expression mean?

This implies that you no longer need to subscribe to Verizon or AT&T, Charter for your cable services but only their broadband. Say goodbye to set top boxes, VCR services, cable bills, multiple TV connection charges. But how do we get our favorite channels without cable?

If you are a basic cable junkie, and need everything including the kitchen sink, then for approx. $20/month you can get network and non-premium cable shows from Sling TV, Sony PlayStation vue and a host of other services coming this year (2017) like YouTube TV and Apple. If you need international packages like Star TV or Zee TV (including local programming), you can get add-on services for $5-$15 and tiered just like cable. It goes for sports packages like ESPN or Fox Sports.

What about bandwidth? You need to have at least 25Mbps download speeds from your Internet service provider (ISP). However, not to worry, this is usually the basic tier offered by your ISP. Be wary of multiple TV’s @Home that may be streaming at the same time. You can easily check your bandwidth from popular internet services like speedtest.net and a call to your ISP to adjust your tier.

What about equipment? To stream content, you would need a broadband connection to your home and a streaming box like Apple TV, Roku, Amazon Fire or Chromecast. However, if you simply want it on your phone and able to airplay or Chromecast it to your TV, then you may not even need a streaming box. Modern TV’s have built in capability called Smart TV built into them. Also some streaming services like Sling TV give out free Roku sticks for subscription to them.

A streaming box like Chromecast or Roku Stick can cost as low as $35 today.

If you are not a cable junkie, but a serial binger looking for only specific serials that you are interest in then it's even cheaper. You can get your cable fix by buying Hulu service for $15/month or download individual seasons on iTunes or Amazon Instant Video.

Similarly, if you are a Sports fan only, you may want to think about only getting streaming service from the major league you are hooked on to like NFL, NHL or NBA, which could be even cheaper than Sling TV or PlayStation Vue. What about your TV set? Do they have to be replaced? If you don’t already have a Smart TV, you do not need to get one. In general, the “Smart hub” TV’s are slow, difficult to navigate, and not very flexible. So if new apps are available for streaming, but the chances are that your TV will not support them.

A streaming box like Roku will do what a Smart TV does but better for less money. However, if you are intent on purchasing a Smart TV, Roku has begun partnering with TV makers to create smart TVs that run the Roku interface.

This will give you a blend of the Roku and Smart TV experiences.

The lower costs and simplicity of switching have led the consumers to jump on the streaming bandwagon. The other obvious reason is its ubiquitous nature of the service that allows one to run it at home or on the road on your mobile device. And yes, with your subscription to Sling TV or PlayStation Vue, it can be run on different TV’s in your house.

So, are we there yet? I would hit the gavel with a re-sounding YES!! With time, the options are going to get better, and if you are not tied into a contract you can choose whatever options suit you best, whenever you want.

Ananda Sangbad

April 2017

menTal healTh SecTion

FEAR RULES US

By Nupur Lahiri M.D. Tanya was brought to my office by her mother because the child has not attended school for 13 days. Another two days of absence will make her a truant student, and the parents will have to face the judge at a truancy court. Tanya is an 11-year-old sixthgrade student who has refused to go to school and gets into severe panic state when her father pulls the little girl out of bed and into his car. I asked Tanya, “Why don’t you like school?”

Tanya’s eyes were swimming in tears but she looked up and said, “I may throw up my lunch.” Tanya does not go to a restaurant with her family and hides herself in her bathroom.

Emetophobia is a specific phobia when there is extreme fear of vomiting or witnessing somebody vomiting.

A 29-year-old, young attractive man came to my office and said,” If you don’t help me Doc, I would lose my job.” Jonathan is an enterprising salesman and has recently landed a job in Pharmaceutical sales. I asked, “What is the problem?”

Jonathan looked overwhelmed with fear and said, “Doc, even if I just talk about it I have a panic attack.”

Jonathan’s wife interjected and said, “Jonathan becomes shaky, sweaty, deathly ill and starts hyperventilating as soon as the plane takes off. He loves his job of selling new drugs, but his company has started sending him out of state at least twice a month. He has stopped going to work last week.”

An example of Aerophobia.

Now I would tell you about some famous people and about their famous fears!

Did you know that Donald Trump has been known to have fear of shaking hands, Chirophobia? That may make him look unfriendly! Government sources in Washington DC say the US President suffers from chronic fear of slopes and steps, namely 'Bathmophobia'.

Napoleon Bonaparte was crippled

by Ailurophobia, fear of cats. Queen Elizabeth I was known to have fear of roses, a subcategory of Anthophobia, a generalized fear of flowers.

A list of common phobias: 1. Arachnophobia: The fear of spiders, the most common animal phobias around the world. The famous Andre Agassi’s composure is cracked if a spider crawls onto the court.

2. Ophidiophobia: The fear of snakes, the second most common zoophobia affecting nearly 1/3rd of adult human population. Did you see the movie, Snakes on the Plane?

3. Acrophobia: The irrational fear of heights even when one is not that high up.

Remember James Stewart in Hitchcock’s Vertigo?

4. Agoraphobia: The fear of open or crowded spaces. The name is derived from Greek words literally meaning “market place” or “malls”. Nearly

2 out of every 100 Americans suffer from Agoraphobia. e.g., Sigmund Freud. (I have a little bit of this affliction because I hate shopping and shopping malls!!)

5. Cynophobia: The extreme fear of dogs, one of the most common animal phobias. This is more debilitating than fear of spiders and snakes as dogs are present in many homes. 75% of Cynophobes are women including my daughter in law.

6. Astraphobia: The fear of thunder and lightning, the majority sufferers are children although the phobia can continue into adulthood as well. Adam S, a patient of mine continues to suffer at age 35.

7. Claustrophobia: The fear of small spaces, mainly related to fear of restriction and suffocation. A patient of mine is afraid of getting stuck in an elevator and climbs stairs to the fifth floor daily. Edgar Allan Poe, Harry Houdini and Adolf Hitler suffered from this phobia.

8. Mysophobia: The fear of germs.

Remember the aunt who could not stop washing her hands and had to wipe down all the counters and surfaces in the house including the stove after taking her third shower of the day. SHOOCHI BAI, yes that is what we named the condition. Howard Hughes, the eccentric billionaire was immobilized and lived in squalor during his final years due to Mysophobia.

9. Aerophobia: The fear of flying, which includes 6.5 % of world’s population. Cher, Whoopi Gold berg and the famous Jazz singer Aretha Franklin struggled with this monster ailment Symptoms of specific phobia The symptoms of specific phobia involve an intense fear and anxiety of specific object or situation. The severity of this anxiety is out of proportion to the actual risk. The physical reactions are sweating, chest tightness, rapid heartbeat, dizziness and nausea.

One does everything possible to avoid the object or situation that triggers this perception of fear and panic.

Neurobiology of phobia Phobias are irrational phenomena when the brain overreacts to some stimuli and some areas of the brain memorize the frightful experiences.

The prefrontal cortex and the amygdala are believed to be involved in retrieval of fearful memories and then the mind and body are at a high alert mode as a result of release of fight or flight hormones.

New York University psychologist Joseph LeDoux, PhD, a pioneer of this type of research and others, has found that there may be a double pathway leading to and from the amygdala. A shorter pathway leads directly from a frightening sensory stimulus--like the sight of a snake or the sound of a loud crash--to the amygdala in just a few thousandth of a second, which is im-

precise. A second, slower pathway travels first to the higher cortex before reaching the amygdala. Hence the brain can process the stimulus on the basis of past knowledge and experience to evaluate the stimulus correctly and override the first response. The cognitive behavior therapy of specific phobia is based on this theory.

The studies so far have established some actual causes of specific phobias.

1) An intense fearful experience in early life triggers a phobic response.

2) There is a possibility of genetic link for a specific phobia to anxiety/ phobia of the family members.

3) A negative and traumatic experience may cause a change in the brain functioning and play a role in developing anxiety and phobias. A phobia can also develop from observing and learning from a family member with phobia.

Treatment of phobias: A combination of psychotherapy that focuses on desensitization of phobias by exposure and flooding in conjunction with medications has been known to be most effective. A slow and repeated exposure to the source of specific phobia and the related thoughts, feelings and sensations may help to manage the faulty fright or flight response that originated in the amygdala. Recently two collaborators from Los Angeles and New York have found that exposure to phobic images without conscious awareness is more effective than longer, conscious exposure for reducing fear. The cognitive behavior therapy emphasizes changing of thinking behavior to unlearn past beliefs and replacing them with more rational thoughts by processing the fright rationally in the prefrontal cortex. Antidepressants, beta-adrenergic blockers and sedative hypnotic medications are used to alleviate the symptoms of anxiety and phobic response.

The medications may need to be used in conjunction with psychotherapy for at least 6 to 12 months. Attending phobia clinics and support groups may be beneficial to some.

Overcoming phobias takes time. By taking one small step at a time, most people with phobias can reduce their anxiety and, in many cases, move beyond it. The 11-year-old Tanya is able to attend school and has no fear of eating in public or in the lunch room.

The young pharmaceutical representative is able to fly transatlantic to attend meetings in Germany on a regular basis.

Now for the laughs: Ephebiphobia: fear of teenagers.

Anuptaphobia: fear of staying single.

Nomophobia: fear of being without the smart phone, affecting many members of Ananda Mandir.

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newS you may like To read

MIT, IIT-Kharagpur team up for Tagore Township Tagore's Santiniketan - a model in 19th-century university-town planning - is now a lesson in the classrooms of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, US (MIT). Students from MIT are studying Tagore's unique concept, how the university influences the environs and economy of the place, even outside the Viswa-Bharati campus and how, with time, unchecked growth outside the campus is adversely affecting its character.

The credit course is being taught at MIT in collaboration with IIT Kharagpur.

The idea is to turn at least a slice of Bolpur, outside the campus, into a signature township that will bear the imprint of Visva-Bharati in every nook and corner. The idea germinated from a project that the architecture and town planning faculty of IIT-Kharagpur did for the state urban development department in trying to identify areas of preservation for areas immediately outside the campus, including the Khoai, which has been identified as ecologically endangered.

Armed with this land use control pattern report, Subrata Chattopadhyay , the head of the project, collaborated with MIT professors Bish Sanyal and Arindam Dutta to start a collaborative course spanning a whole year that will end in May. The credit course has been christened 'Triple Bottom Line Approach for a Sustainable Heritage City'.

"Santiniketan is a world-class example and though we are initiating it, many more foreign universities should study the relevance of this 19th-century town planning marvel even today," said Sanyal, who the Ford International Professor of Urban Studies at MIT. "The three key areas of research are urban design and heritage, creative economy, and environment," Chattopadhyay added.

Ref – Times of India

Shuvo Roy: Inventor of implantable artificial kidney Dr. Shuvo Roy is a professor at the University of California, San Francisco in the Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences (BTS), a joint department of the UCSF Schools of Pharmacy and Medicine. Roy (born 10 November 1969) is a Bangladeshi-born American scientist.

He is the co-inventor of implantable artificial kidney.

Dialysis is the primary option for the vast majority of chronic kidney patients. While transplant remains the gold standard, there simply are not enough donor organs available. Unfortunately, dialysis patients experience poor survival and low quality of life. The implantable artificial kidney attempts to deliver on the benefits of transplant – better health, better quality of life – while overcoming the shortage of organs. To date tests have been done in pigs, sheep, and rodents. First clinical trials are planned for 2017.

Ref - Internet

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Ananda Sangbad

April 2017

communiTy newS

NJPA Corner Reported By Anshula Sarkar Spring is in the year! Welcome Bosonto. Wishing everyone a very very happy Poila Boishak.

Spring brings in signs of life all around us. Nature that was dormant and resting starts to show new life. It is a time of the year to rejuvenate and recharge for the warm days. Spring brings memories of Dol or Holi as we celebrated with our families and friends in India.

The new blossoms on Gulmohar and Palash tree matched the hues of abir in the air. Holi is gaining popularity in US and many counties in Europe…it is spreading colors of unity, love, and joy among people across the globe. It brings to mind the song ‘O re griho bashi, khol dwar khol laglo je dol’. The warm days are here and let us enjoy the purity and beauty that nature has brought to us.

We at NJPA celebrated spring by offering our prayers to Goddess Saraswati and hosted an evening of cultural programs by our local and in house artists. It was an evening of coming together again as a family and enjoying the blessings we have in our lives.

NJPA Parivar had hosted a gala new year’s party at Royal Albert banquet hall. We are proud to say that our New Year’s Eve party is now one of the most popular events. It is one of the few that invites families with children and has entertainment for the young ones as well! Do check us out at this year’s New Year’s Eve, you will be part of a big family.

We are looking forward to the NJPA’s picnic in the summer. More information about this upcoming event will be shared with you soon.

NJPA invites you to bring your family and friends and enjoy a day under the summer sky with good food, music and many other fun activities.

NJPA is sad to share that we lost two of our beloved members, Meena Dutta Chowdhary or Meena Di as she was known to everyone and Nandita Sarkar. We are grateful to have known them, may their souls rest in peace.

Wishing everyone a happy and healthy 2017.

GSCA Corner Reported By Nibedita Bandyopadhyay The year began for GSCA with the celebration of Saraswati puja on 4th February, 2017 at Woodrow Wilson Middle School in Edison.

Members and patrons joined in large numbers to make it a delightful experience. The event started around 11 a.m. with a group of members setting up the deity, hall, and puja samagri. Pushpanjali, the showering of the shanti jal and hatekhori marked the conclusion of the puja. The guests proceeded to enjoy the Prasad and bhog, while the stage was set for the next phase of the celebration.

GSCA children opened the cultural program and continued to enthrall audiences with their lively performances. This year one of the key attractions was ‘Antakshari’. The evening entertainment was enchanting with some of the best local talents. A delicious Bengali dinner consisting of khichuri, tarkari, fries, chatni, and misti was served in the evening.

There was also an Art and Craft activity for children to show their creativity. A food stall was placed by GSCA philanthropy in support of the GSCA Scholarship Fund for needy and meritorious students.

The volunteers including kids, teenagers and adults worked together in managing the stall and providing an excellent food service. Money raised through this activity was deposited to GSCA Scholarship Fund.

Our Annual General Meeting is scheduled on March 25th at Crown of India restaurant in Plainsboro. This event is restricted to GSCA members only. Our annual summer picnic is scheduled on July 22nd, Saturday. Please stay tuned for future updates or visit our website at www.gsca.us.

BKPA Celebrated Saraswati Puja in Tagore Hall Reported by Sahil Banerjee and Mitali Chowdhury Co-Presidents of BKPA

Tagore Hall was filled with an abundance of joy as The Bengali Kids of Princeton Area (BKPA) celebrated their annual Saraswati Pujo on Saturday, February 11th, 2017. The beautiful day started with pujo, pushpanjali, hatekhori, followed by prasad and luchi-alurdom lunch, cultural program by both kids and parents, and ended with sumptuous kichuri dinner.

Throughout the day, kids' activities continued at different tables that consisted of drawings, puzzles, board games, crafts, and fun with science. The beautiful

Saraswati deity from Kolkata, decorated by the members along with a well decorated stage filled the room with a sense of pride and joy that is only possible when over fifty kids and their parents gather to celebrate Saraswati Pujo; A Bengali Pride!

Our goal is to learn about our rich Bengali culture and heritage in a FUN way. Kids are the base, foundation, and strength of this unique organization. We attend Bengali Heritage Class every Saturday for two hours around the year to achieve this unique goal.

We are grateful to our elders for

Bakul Banerjee

their help and guidance.

BKPA's activities are distributed under four pillars: Educational, Cultural, Literary, and Charitable. These four pillars allow kids to learn the Bengali language, enjoy the Bengali holidays, perform at different festivities, and give back to the local and international community.

We thank Dr. Ashok Rakhit, Dr. Suprasad Baidyaroy, and Priest Biswabhai for welcoming BKPA to Tagore Hall and for their support. This was our 12th year of celebrating Saraswati Pujo.

Evergreen Club of Ananda Mandir "Seniors Helping Seniors" Invites retirees and nearretirees to participate actively in Forum meetings and activities.

In January 2017, Dr. Bakul Banerjee, an active contributor to Ananda Mandir publications and a recipient of the Gayatri GaMarsh award, assumes the Chair position of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE), Chicago Section.

IEEE is the world's largest technical professional organization dedicated to advancing technology for the benefit of humanity. The Chicago Section is one of the largest sections of IEEE. There are more than 420,000 IEEE members world-wide.

IEEE publishes a third of the world’s technical literature in electrical engineering, computer science, and electronics and is a leading developer of international standards that underpin many of today's telecommunications, information technology, and power-generation products and services.

Bakul has been a member of the organization for 30 years.

Seniors Forum usually meets on the third Sunday of every month at 1:00 PM. However, the date may change because of conflict with other Ananda Mandir events.

Please contact Debajyoti Chatterji (Cell: 908-507-9640) for latest updates on the meeting dates.

Ananda Sangbad

Kishalay Awards in Memory of Gauri Sen Gupta For Writing Excellence The Kishalay Awards in Memory of Gauri Sen Gupta have been established by Ananda Mandir in 2016. The awards have been made possible by a donation by Avijit Sen, a member of Ananda Mandir, to honor his late mother in law, Gauri Sen Gupta. The program is administered through the Awards & Recognition Committee of Ananda Mandir, Somerset, NJ. Two cash awards would be offered each year to recognize superior writing skills of school age children and kin of Ananda Mandir members. Following are the basic rules that govern the award administration.

1) The first place winner will earn prize of $300, and the second prize is worth $200.

2) It is available for only school age children and kin of Ananda Mandir members. The contestants for the awards need to reside in the US, and preferably enrolled in a high or middle school.

3) A contestant will need to be nominated by a member of Ananda Mandir or be self-nominated following the nomination rules set forth herein.

4) Potential contestants over 18 years of age will be automatically disqualified.

5) Number of submissions is limited to two (2) per contestant per year. Only English prose (essay, story, report, article, etc.) would be considered, and the length should be limited to 2,500 words.

6) Submission of published article in any magazine (school or others) is highly encouraged although unpublished work will be accepted as well.

7) Nominations should include short biography of the author and his/her connection to Ananda Mandir.

8) Deadline for nominations (with copies of the submissions) for the 2017 awards is July 31, 2017. Awards will be announced and presented in Fall 2017.

9) All nominations will be made using the Nomination Form downloaded from Ananda Mandir’s website. For copies of nomination form, please contact Subrata Bhaumik and /or Pronoy Chatterjee at the following email addresses. Completed forms should be supported by the submitted piece(s) of work of the young author.

10) Nomination forms will be available on Ananda Mandir’s website and distributed via email.

Please send nominations (with supporting documents) to Subrata Bhaumik Bhaumik.subrata@gmail.com (preferred way) Or at 32 Scheurman Terrace Warren, NJ 07059 In case of questions, please email Subrata Bhaumik (Bhaumik.subrata @gmail.com) or Pronoy Chatterjee (pkc_usa@yahoo.com).

PARKING INSTRuCTIONS "Ananda Mandir management urges all members and visitors to park their vehicles in the paved parking lot behind the new Community Center building.

Effective immediately, parking near the temple or the along the main drive is prohibited. Please help Ananda Mandir abide by Township Fire Department restrictions. Thank you for your cooperation."

April 2017

15

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Ananda Sangbad

April 2017

Winners of Kishalay Award for Writing Excellence (2016) Ananda Mandir is happy to announce the winners of annual “Kishalay Award for Writing Excellence” for the year 2016. The award has been recently established for US based high/middle school attending children of Ananda Mandir members and their kin.

Aaryana Rajanala

Kolinkar Roy

First Prize

Second Prize

Aaryana is a freshman at the Bridgewater-Raritan High School. She has lived in different parts of the country, including Michigan, Missouri, and New Jersey. She is a multitalented youth who engages in various school activities including choir and Model UN club. In addition to writing, she has a keen interest in music and loves to sing and play the violin.

Aaryana started writing after she moved to New Jersey when she was in fourth grade. She is an ardent believer of continues improvement, and as her writing skills advance, she constantly goes back to her old works in an effort to refine them. Her writings are based on a simple observation: many things happen in life, much of which cannot be controlled. However, she enjoys having complete control over the events of her stories.

Her stories are told through characters with whom the readers can relate to in the hopes that they will make them reflect on their own lives.

Kolinkar is a 6th grader at Melvin H Krepps Middle School in East Windsor. He has an enormous love for reading and writing. Besides writing he has serious interest in many other pursuits including instrumental music and tennis. He began writing at the tender age of six and occasionally wrote a few pieces for his own pleasure. Writing to an audience came through in 4th grade when he developed two editions of a playground game manual to inspire and engage his fellow students in joining a sports activity.

He further honed his writing and organizing skills in 5th grade by creating a monthly school magazine (called Mushy Magazine) that was designed to entertain his friends.

It is filled with funny comics and is divided into individual sections for achievements, humorous stories, and for trading cards that the participants had made during the month.

Membership upgrade at Ananda Mandir Life Member ($1,000 to 4,999) Asit & Aparajita Sen Dilip & Sharmistha Karmakar Partho & Debolina Sanya Pramit K Nag Bratish & Shomali Dasgupta Ajit & Debjani Chaudhuri Tarun Kanti & Mili Ghosh Amitabha & Kankana Sengupta Sri Krishna & Manju Sinha Sougata & Shreya Dasgupta Sankha & Monali Ghosh

Arati & Indrajit Ghosh Bikram Saha Amlanjyoti & Swagata Goswami Ankush Rakhit Bimalendu & Jaya Dasmahapatra Partha Sarathi & Soma Dhar Debashree & Srimanta Mitra A.K. Bhattacharya Samir & Raba Sarkar Sharmili Rakhit SCHWAB Charitable CHUBB Insurance

Subhodev & Aparajita Das Saugat Bose & Shilpa Jain Anindya & Shakuntala Sanyal Sanjay Roy Raja & Mausumi Das MERCK Foundation Sumita Pandit Sujata & Sambhu Mukhopadhyay Sumit Sohan Patron ($ 5,000 – 9,999) Pradip Ghosh Dastidar

Pronab & Suvra Sikder Krishna & Nirmal Kundu Gautam & Ipsita Goswami Tapan Audhya Rahul & Manju Mukherjee Subrata & Seema Bhaumik Grand Patron – Silver ($ 10,000 – 24,999) Priya R. & Sucharita Das Guru & Anita Chakravarty Achintya & Dr. Roopali Bhattacharya

Please note that you can become an Associate Member of Ananda Mandir by donating a minimum of $50. Your subsequent donations of $50 or more are credited to your account. When your total cumulative donation reaches $1000, you become a Life Member.

Your support, small or large, is most welcome and sincerely appreciated.