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Showing posts from March, 2018

PORTRAIT - Drawn by Sourodeep Sirkar

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PORTRAIT I was drawn accurately by my dear friend, Sourodeep Sirkar. I thank him for his amazing artwork and for putting me into his artistry.

The Last Train

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The Last Train Ritam Saha 22nd February 2018 The last train stood on Platform 3 with it's lights on and thick smoke rising in a single black column from the funnel on top of its engine. A young boy in shorts stood in the smoggy night, his eyes hooked onto the last crowd of office-goers boarding the train to go home. At any minute now, they would all depart on this last train and the station would be quiet for the night. From his position in the corner of the platform, he had a fairly good view of the entire train. It's doors were open. Typical . Doors were never closed on these local passenger trains. He watched as people crammed into the compartments, pushing and shoving their way through. Like every other day, this last train too, was chock full. The digital clock on the platform read 11.27 PM. The train was due in 3 minutes. His attention was suddenly diverted by the sight of the portly stationmaster sauntering onto the platform from his room in the station

Promotion

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Promotion Ritam Saha January 21st, 2018 In our country, a child’s capability is adjudged by his report card. Here, a 39 is looked upon with disgust when a child does not pass and a 99 is looked at with equal or greater disgust as the child failed to get full marks. In later stages, when schools allow subject choices, the science stream is often perceived as the stream where all the “knowledgeable” people go, to be defaulted as doctors or engineers when it's time to make a career choice. Here, young students are brought in aplenty and their wings and ambitions are clipped before they are immersed in complicated formulas, laws and numbers. For Aahan, his mother had decided when he was only eleven that he was going to be a doctor.  When it was time for him to select a stream in high school, or rather his parents to select him a stream, (the subject choice form demanded only the parents’ signatures) he was put into science. “My boy’s studying science!” announced Aahan’s prou