Kal Ke Kalakar

Raag Rang Presents “Kal Ke Kalakar”
on 20th March, Saturday, 2010.

Time 3-30 p.m. to 5-30 p.m.
Ariaki Dandawate on vocal,
Getiara Zaidi on Sitar
and
Brinda Guha’s Kathak presentation.

Venue: Universal Unitarian Congragation of Princeton
(Fahs Theater)
50 Cherry Hill Road, Princeton, NJ 08540
Admission: NonMembers:
$12 (Kids below 10 Years: $7)
RaagRang Members: $10 (Kids below 10 Years: $5)
RSVP will be appreciated.
For details Contact: 908-429-1120,609-890-4890, 908-240-8289.
Email: bhawmikm@gmail.com, mayuresh.khare@gmail.com, devang42@yahoo.com

Ekti Ganye Thaki

ECTA has launched the pre-production work on their new play “Ekti Ganye Thaki” (We Live in a Village). The name of the play has been borrowed from one of Rabindranath Tagore’s famous poems, “Ek Ganye”. Currently the team is going through workshop sessions and theater games before delving into the rehearsal process that will start from March. The play will be staged during the months of June and July 2010.

Sahitya O Alochona : Barnomoy Jibanananda

Sahitya O Alochana will be held on Friday, February 19, 2010, 8.00pm at Ananda Mandir. Topic for this session is “Barnomay Jibananda” featuring a discussion on Jibananda Das’s works including, poem, short stories, fictions, etc. Ms. Dhriti Bagchi will be the discussion leader for this session. Active participation from the attendees in the discussion including reading of Jibabananda’s poetry or prose is highly encouraged.

Please also note that the topics for the next two sessions (March and April) will likely be the following:

1) Jhumpa Lahiri’s work – discussion leader (To Be Declared)
2) Bengali Drama in North America – discussion leader Sudipta Bhawmik

NABC 2010: Kaivalya Kumar Gurav, the Pride of Kirana Gharana

Pt. Kaivalya Kumar GuravKirana Gharana holds a very special place amongst the traditional styles of North Indian Classical vocal music. Widely recognized to be founded by Ustad Abdul Karim Khan (although opinions differ amongst the musicologists) from the village of Kirana (or Kairana) near Muzaffarnagar in Uttar Pradesh, Kirana gharana has given us several excellent performers of the Khayal style of singing including masters like Pandit Bhimshen Joshi, Pandit Rasiklal Andheria, Ustad Amir Khan, Ustad Mashkoor Ali Khan and many others.  In July 2010 at the North America Bengali Conference (NABC 2010), Kallol of New Jersey will be presenting yet another exponent of the Kirana Gharana, Pandit Kaivalya Kumar Gurav. Continue reading

Google Bengali Transliteration

Want to write in Bengali? Google now offers transliteration service from several Indian languages including Bengali. Visit http://google.com/transliterate and set up the language to Bengali using the drop down menu on the upper left corner. Then start typing in Bangla using your roman keyboard.  For example, type in “manush” and hit space button and the transliteration software will convert it to its corresponding Bangla in a unicode compliant font. To switch from Bangle to English (or vice versa), just press Ctrl+G (in Windows) or Cmd+G (in Mac OS).  If the transliteration engine does not generate the word you want, just press the “back” or “delete” button, and it will provide you with multiple choices. The tool also offers you a dictionary that can provide you Bangla word equivalents for most English words. You can select the correct word and insert in the document.

However, this system is still in its infancy and has several limitations. For example, you cannot save the documents you create using this system. Currently Google transliteration is offered only in Gmail, Blogger, Knol and Bookmarklet. Even Google docs is not supported, let alone Microsoft Word or any other word processor. Choice of fonts is also limited. I hope Google is working on these issues and make transliteration a truly useful system. Till then we’ll have to work within these limitations.

Thanks Google!

RON to be Staged by Natyabharati of Maryland

Natyabharati presents

“RON”

(in Hindi and English)

a play by Sudipta Bhawmik

Hindi translation by Kaushik Datta and Stuti Banerjee

Directed by Suma Muralidhar

April 3, 2010

at F. Scott Fitzgerald Auditorium, Rockville Civic Center, Rockville, MD.

Cast: Jay Tipnis, Suresh Kodolikar, Meera Narasimhan, Rajiv Paul, Madhuri Subramaniam, Subhojit Sen, Pranav Pandya and Chetna Gola

Looking for Actors

Once again we are looking for Bengali speaking male actors for ECTA’s upcoming new play to be staged in June and July of 2010. The character is that of a middle aged man. Previous acting experience is desirable but not a must. Must be willing to commit to ECTA’s rehearsal schedule. Rehearsals will be held in central New Jersey. Interested people must contact me at the earliest. To know more about ECTA and its productions, please visit http://ectainc.org.

Online English to Bengali Dictionary

Are you looking for the right Bengali meaning for a English word? Do you often hunt for Bengali words and their spellings when you know the exact English equivalents. Look no further. Try out http://doroja.com.  The developers of this site has taken an ingenious approach. They have scanned an entire English to Bengali dictionary, broken it up into pieces (for each word) and created a searchable database which links up the words you type in with the appropriate snippet. Thanks to  Raishul Islam Russell for developing this useful site. Give it a try when you can.

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