Bidhyak Bhattacharya’s classic play “Tahar Namti Ranjana” was made into a famous radio play by the legendary duo Sambhu Mitra and Tripti Mitra. Now Listen to this wonderful drama online at the following link:
http://www.raaga.com/channels/bengali/moviedetail.asp?mid=B0000126
It is available in 3 parts.
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
Kirana 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
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!
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
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.
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.
The
Please join Urhalpool Magazine’s 2nd Annual Award Ceremony on Wednesday. January 27th @6:30PM in Collaboration with: Rabindranath Tagore center, ICCR & American Center, Kolkata
Shakti Chattopadhyay Lifetime Bengali Literary Achievement Award (Rs25,000): Sunil Gangopadhyay
Nirmal Chandra Gangopadhyay Bengali Literary Award for an Young writer (Rs15,000): Mandakranta Sen
Dr. Sishir Kumar Das Award for research in Bengali Literature: (Rs,20,000): Dr. Sibaji Bandyopadhyay
Pushpa Little Magazine Award: (Rs10,000): Bibhab
Urhalpool(www.urhalpool.com) January Issue, focusing on Mexican poets/writers has been released.
Ask a Bengali what in his/her bookcase does he/she treasure most? And the answer will be – the sixteen volume set of Rabindra Rachanabali, that is, the complete works of Rabindranath Tagore. Over the years, the works of Tagore has been one of the key source of revenue for Bishwabharati. However, after the expiry of the extended copyright, publishers were free to reprint Tagore without having to pay any royalty to Bishwabharati. The Society for Natural Language Technology Research (SNLTR) grabbed this opportunity and made the entire published works of Tagore (Rabindra Rachanabali) available online through their website http://rabindra-rachanabali.nltr.org. No longer do you have to carry along with you the heavy volumes, neither do you have to spend money to buy them. Online Rabindra-Rachanabali is free. The website was released to the public on 27th January 2010, at the Kolkata Bookfair. Continue reading
One of the guest performers at the upcoming NABC 2010 is Abdul Bari Siddiqui of Dhaka, Bangladesh. Although Bari is a relatively new name to the Bengali music lovers in this part of the world, he is a well known and sought after musician and composer in Bangladesh. Trained as a classical flutist, Bari finds his passion both in the classical ragas as well as the folk tunes and Baul music of Bengal and has created his own genre of folk fusion by fusing North Indian Classical Music with Baul music. Bari (born 15th November 1954) started his initial lessons in classical vocal music at the age of twelve under Gopal Dutta of Netrokona. Later, in 1981, he was taken under the wings of Ustad Aminur Rahman, a direct disciple of Pandit Panna Lal Ghosh, the famous flutist, and Beenkar Ustad Dabir Khan. Ustad Aminur Rahman spotted Bari during a concert, and offered to tutor him. For the next six years Bari trained under Rahman. Bari also received extensive training from Pandit V G Karnad in Pune. Since 2000, besides playing the flute, Bari started to perform vocal music and his first album “Srabon Megher Din” was an instant hit and won him several awards.