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Valley of Words to host its 11th webinar coming Sunday

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newspost
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Dehradun: “Valley of Words is pleased to announce its partnership and academic collaboration with the National Digital Library of India(NDLI) based out of IIT Kharagpur and its two thousand affiliated book clubs to extend the reach of reading, scholarship and digital connect. NDLI will also be a partner in all our forthcoming monthly webinars.

The June edition which is planned for Sunday, , the 20th June will feature Jairam Ramesh’s new offering : The Light of Asia : The Poem that defined the Buddha . This is a unique book – for it is thew biography of an epic poem. The Pandemic has been a blessing in disguise for this cerebral Parliamentarian who has been very prolific in his writing over the last few years.

He first wrote Indira Gandhi : A Life in nature, and followed it with Intertwined Lives : Indra Gandhi and PN Haksar. The Light of Asia was penned by Edwin Arnold, who also wrote the Song Celestial (A transcreation of the Bhagwat Geeta) which was much admired by Mahatma Gandhi. But the book in discussion is the one which shot Arnold to global pre-eminence as a scholar of Buddhism and Hinduism. Ramesh talks about this book and both the bouquets and brickbats received by it. While Indologists, Buddhists, Sanskritists and scholars of religion lauded it, those who were deeply embedded in the Christian tradition and the infallibility of Jesus saw this as a conspiracy, and sought to demolish its thesis.

Three eminent writers and scholars will be in conversation with Jairam Ramesh coming  Sunday between 3~4 pm. These include Professors Malashri Lal, a distinguished scholar, translator and writer herself. Currently she is member of the English Advisory Board at the Sahitya Academy. Her specialization lies in literature, women and gender studies, and she has to her credit around fifteen books including The Law of the Threshold: Women Writers in Indian English.

Prof Siddiq Wahid whose forbearers were with His Holiness the Dalai Lama in Lhasa before he moved to India, describes himself as Academic by temperament; professor by vocation; activist by choice; dissenter by compulsion. He has headed the Institute for Chinese Studies, and was a Fellow at the CPR.

Deepankar Aron, an alumnus of IIT Delhi, recognised with the Presidential Award for his contribution as an Indian Revenue Service officer, is also a passionate traveller and a consummate photographer and writer. World Heritage Sites of Uttarakhand, his first pictorial book was published in 2010, and his recent book ( also featured in this series) is On the Trail of Buddha—A Journey to the East, a sojourn in search of the spiritual, philosophical, and cultural linkages that bind India to the East Asian civilisations—the book explores the ‘ancient India’, beautifully preserved in the traditions, art, and architecture of China, as also in Mongolia, Korea and Japan, to where it spread from China.

This will be the eleventh edition of the webinar scheduled from 3~4 pm, and all previous webinars are available on the YouTube and FB page of Valley of Words.

Looking beyond the pandemic

By
Dr. Tania Saili Bakshi
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Dateline Tehri: While most folks have concentrated efforts to fight the pandemic, others have broken new ground by going to villages in the hills with the mission to clean water tanks that are the lifeline of those who live here.

Virendra Verma with his team have taken up this task after getting permission from Dhanaulti Deputy District Magistrate, Sandeep Tiwari, IAS. With shramdaan and their personal contribution for travel and equipment, these young men has set about cleaning water-tanks, big and small. Water borne diseases will no longer haunt an unsuspecting public.

Thus far, over the past few weeks, the team has been able to clean forty water-tanks. Starting from Gram Panchayat Siya, they have moved on to other places in the Jaunpur block like Bungalow ki Kandi, Jinsi, Nawadidhar, Lagwal, Rayat, Bhatoli Bhedian, Binau, Kherad, Bichhu village panchayats.

Along the way, others have joined Virendra and his team. They have no hesitation in entering these tanks. It is no easy task to clean the sludge accumulated over the years, then washing the tanks thoroughly and liberally sprinkling bleaching powder in and around the tanks. This ensures that the locals get clean water for drinking, cooking and bathing etc.

Recently, under the Gaon Gaon Jal Jeevan Mission, new pipelines replaced the older ones, but the concrete tanks once built, were not on their radar. While local representatives blame the concerned department for its apathy most of them refuse to help or assist the team in any which way.

Today, Virendra Verma and his team wish to continue this noble deed before the rains set in. What is required are funds to go towards travel and for buying essential equipment that is required to clean up as many water tanks as possible.

Please contribute:

Name: RITIK JOSHI, ACCOUNT No: 15042413000192, IFSC: ORBC0101504

Shekinah Mukhiya: Angels comes in all sizes

By
Dr. Tania Saili Bakshi
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Dateline Dehradun: Dehradun’s pride, 15-year-old singer Shekinah Mukhiya, the finalist of Voice India Kids and Superstar Singer is familiar with the strain of success.

Shekinah and her dedicated team have been helping out people with serious health issues, the homeless and now those innumerable families that have been affected by the pandemic which started in March last year.

Reza Khan, Sonam Rason, Vikas Mukhiya and Shekinah Mukhiya

This shining star and her team distributed a month’s ration to some hundred-odd families in Mussoorie, where Shekinah was born and raised before she moved to Dehradun. Ration includes cooking oil, rice, flour, spices, sugar, tea and lentils. Basically anything that will sustain homes in times of unemployment stretching over months due to the pandemic.

This is Shekinah’s 5th such campaign. Her alma-matar Colonel Brown School, Hopetown School and her growing number of fans on social media that she garnered from across the globe given her gifted voice have joined together to fund her numerous noble causes.

And this is not the last we hear of her charity work. Shekinah along with her father Vikas Mukhiya has adopted a school in the outskirts of Doon Valley where they hold free music classes. Last December she took part in a musical event to raise funds for the homeless in Dehradun and even distributed free blankets, in the heart of winter.

From Jubin Nautiyal to Urvashi Rautela, from Raghav Juyal and now a fifteen-year-old Shekinah Mukhiya, truly Uttarakhand’s artists have stepped up to the line and risen to the occasion. Small wonder then that they are making headlines for giving back to the community in these truly extraordinary times.

Urvashi distributes oxygen concentrators, ration in Kotdwar

By
Dr. Tania Saili Bakshi
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Urvashi hands out food packets post the cyclone in Mumbai

Dateline Pauri: Actor Urvashi Rautela has been one busy bee. Despite a rather hectic back-to-back shoot schedule the young lady has managed to take time out from her work schedule and do her bit to help out during the pandemic and post the cyclone that hit Mumbai recently.

Under the banner of “Urvashi Rautela Foundation”, an organisation initiated by the talented lady, Urvashi, her team and family have been doing their share of helping out the society and those in need not only in her hometown Kotdwar, in Pauri Garhwal but  also her karm-bhoomi i.e. Mumbai.

While the actress’s father Manvar Singh Rautela was recently seen distributing ration to daily wagers in Kotdwar. The actress was busy handing-out food packets along with masks to children affected by cyclone Tauktae in Mumbai.

Keeping herself abreast with the happenings in her hometown Kotdwar during the pandemic,  Urvashi took an instant call to distribute free ration amongst families of daily wagers. Not only that, the actress even donated twenty seven oxygen concentrators to Uttarakhand Covid hit regions and wishes to do more for her home state.

Previously, Urvashi had contributed her earnings from her song “Versace Baby” to the Covid-19 Relief Fund and The Palestine Red Crescent Society. She even restarted her YouTube Channel to donate revenue from the social media handle to the Covid-19 Relief Funds in India to help the nation fight the pandemic.

Tibetan youth distribute bagful of smiles

By
Dr. Tania Saili Bakshi
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Dateline Dehradun: Keeping alive the ideals of Lord Buddha on Buddha Purnima, half a dozen volunteers of the Regional Tibetan Youth Congress Dekyiling, Dehradun Chapter completed a relay of distributing free dry ration across their hometown Dehradun, for three days in a row.

Over five hundred bags of ration have been distributed amongst migrant and poor families in a heartfelt gesture by the Tibetan youth to help ease their troubles. From Raipur to Rajpur including Bhaga Singh Colony the team keeping all Covid-19 protocols in place, helped by the local police handed out dry ration packets to those who stood in queue.

The bag consisted of 5 kgs of flour, 2 kgs of rice and a kilogram each of lentil, onion and potatoes including cooking oil.

Talking to Newspost, Tsering Tobgay,  General Secretary TYC Dekyiling said, “India is our home too. And it is our responsibility to help our brothers and sisters in their hour of need.” Further adding, “Our intention was to distribute dry ration to the needy ones, especially migrants who rely on daily wages as source of livelihood.”

Collecting donations from the Tibetan diaspora and specially from Tibetan families settled in Dehradun, the Regional Tibetan Youth Congress Dekyiling managed to put together these bags of dry ration which brought relief, even though temporary, to those who have been hit the hardest by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Regional Tibetan Youth Congress, Dekyiling founded in 1983, is amongst the 87 chapters of Tibetan Youth Congress, in Dehradun. Since its regional inception, RTYC as its otherwise known, has been  the voice of Tibetan youth in Dehradun area, committed and involved in a united struggle for free Tibet.

Munsiyari Tulip Garden: God’s own Paradise

By
Dr. Tania Saili Bakshi
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Dateline Pithoragarh: Come summer and Munsyari’s Tulip Garden is blooming away in all its glory, a dazzling display of colour that gives us some respite in these otherwise gloomy  Covid days.

This year around too, at an elevation of nine thousand feet at Munsiyari, Dr. Vinay Bhargav, IFS & DFO, Pithoragarh with his multi-skilled team has managed to double the Tulip crop and given us a sea of tulip flowers to behold.

The location’s elevation and weather makes it a perfect combination for Tulip bloom in the region which you will see for half a year. Some twenty thousand bulbs, of five varieties: Queen of Night, Hakuun, Laptop, Abba Red and Close to Red Impression’s were brought in from Netherland. Under tulip trial project twenty thousand tulips were planted in and around Pashupatinath Temple, in Chandak region, some seven kilometers from Pithoragarh in 2019 on a trial basis, the first crop bloomed in the summer of 2020.

This year around, the bumper crop at Munsiyari leaves us spell-bound. Experiments with respect to altitude, season, new daughter bulbs and breaking of dormancy, has yielded a bumper crop. The target of a longer bloom season, a better flower size and ideal stalk length with a better life span has been achieved. The backdrop of the snow-laden Panchachuli mountain range makes this riot of colours, a sight to behold and a ‘must-visit’ post the pandemic.

Talking to Newspost, Dr. Vinay Bhargav tells us: “Results are phenomenal! This time there is more self-sufficiency for now and greater sustainability for the future.” Adding, “Tulips being a native wild species of Kumaon Himalaya, we were confident of better results, but this is an astounding deliverance. We can now showcase more than six months of Tulips’ bloom in a year.”

The Tulip Garden is a joint vision of the Forest Division with the Tourism Department, assisted by the Horticulture Department and Rural Department. The working model came up with the basic objective of preventing migration, promoting livelihood opportunities and developing self-employment in community owned business model.

Urvashi YouTube channel earnings for COVID-19 relief fund

By
Dr. Tania Saili Bakshi
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Dateline Mumbai: Urvashi Rautela is once again making headlines and that too for the right reasons. The face of many recent musical videos which have broken both national and international records, the actor has decided to relaunch her YouTube channel and donate its funds to the Covid-19 relief fund in India.

The young talent had first launched her YouTube channel in the year 2011 when she was crowned the 17th ‘Miss Tourism Queen of the Year International.’ Her first video on the channel was of her being crowned at the ceremony. Since then Urvashi’s career has reached newer heights giving her little time to update her YouTube Channel, but all that is set to change.

The actress had earlier announced that she would be contributing her earnings from “Versace Baby” to the Covid-19 Relief Fund and The Palestine Red Crescent Society. Urvashi’s international debut album “Versace Baby” alongside the Egyptian singer-actor Mohamed Ramadan is a song  loved by people across the globe.

In the little over three minute video which Urvashi shared yesterday from her YouTube channel has garnered close to fourteen thousand hits and counting. It films her skydiving feat from 30,000 ft in Dubai.  Talking about her experience she writes, “Skydiving one of the most exhilarating experiences of my entire life. If you’re even considering skydiving, I highly, highly recommend it. I would do it multiple times in a heartbeat!!

On the work front, Urvashi Rautela will be making her Tamil debut with a big-budget sci-fi Tamil film,  playing the role of a microbiologist and an IITian. She will also appear in a bilingual thriller “Black Rose” along with the Hindi remake of “Thirutu Payale 2.” Urvashi is starring in web series “Inspector Avinash” alongside Randeep Hooda, which is a biopic based on the true story of super cop Avinash Mishra.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5lwOJMLMTY

Mussoorie: No more tangled webs

By
Dr. Tania Saili Bakshi
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Dateline Mussoorie: Good news from pandemic hit Mussoorie. As the town tries to limp back to normalcy after the second wave, Mussoorie’s Mall road has managed to get a much-overdue facelift. No small thanks are due to the UPCL or the Electricity Department for this stellar effort.

Seeing the before and after images of the underground laying of electric cables and wires carried out along the Mall, gives the residents of Mussoorie something to smile about. The ugly mess of the tangled web of electricity cables, wires and lines dangling overhead are now a thing of the past courtesy the electricity department.

Under the first phase, the underground laying of electricity lines was carried out in the year 2015, a whopping cost of Rupees 374 lakhs to lay these wires across town from the Mussoorie Library end all the way to Jhulaghar, over a distance of some three kilometers.

Five years down the line, under the second phase, work began in mid-September 2020 with a target of 900 meters extending from Masonic Lodge Bus-stand to Sai Mandir along the Mall at a cost of 189 lakhs. This took about six months from start to finish. Done and dusted, the pleasant effect is on display for everyone to see.

What remains is a patch of some 800-900 meters extending from Sai Mandir to Shishu Mandir School. If all goes according to plan, this too will see completion in the third and final phase.

Mussoorie SDO, Pankaj Thapliyal tells Newspost: “We got immense support from the local administration as well as the police department which made it possible to complete this work without any glitches. Following all Covid protocols in place during the lockdown, work carried on seamlessly as there was almost no traffic to worry about. We went ahead and managed to finish the task at hand.” He adds: “We are certain that in the coming months, the final stretch too will also see completion.’

Renowned environmentalist Sunderlal Bahuguna passes away

By
Dr. Tania Saili Bakshi
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Dateline Dehradun: The pandemic claims an environmental gem from Uttarakhand. 94-year-old Sunderlal Bahuguna breathed his last in AIIMS Medical Hospital, Rishikesh today morning. He was suffering from Covid-19 induced Pneumonia.

Khaadi kurta-pyjama and a white headscarf, this man needed no introduction. Gentle, passionate, soft spoken, veteran Padmabhushan Awardee Sunderlal Bahuguna brought the Garhwal Himalaya into the limelight internationally with this headstrong campaigns against liquor mafia, the 1973 Chipko Movement of the Bhagirathi and the Alaknanda Valley and the Anti-Tehri Dam agitation which lasted nineteen years. He fasted twice: 49 days and then 74 days against the coming up of the Tehri Dam.

Sunderlal Bahuguna and his wife Bimla Devi were amongst the last residents to leave Old Tehri when it sunk in the waters Bhagirathi and Bhilangana.

Born on 9th Jan 1927 in a hamlet near Tehri, Bahuguna ji finished schooling from these hills and then moved to Lahore to finish his B.A. honours in Political Science. His love for the mountains couldn’t escape his blood and he found himself drawn to the hills where in 1957 he found his companion and greatest support in Bimla Devi his wife.

From a freedom fighter at 17, to being the General Secretary of the Congress, the octogenarian had seen it all. But being a social worker or an environmentalist gave him immense pleasure as he strongly believed that a social worker saw a vision for generations to come, but a politician was shortsighted and lived only for the moment.

In my last interview of the old sage at his abode ‘Ganga Kutir,’ next to the Tehri Lake, he spoke with a twinkle in his eyes when I asked him what kept him going? He said his magic-formula was ‘3-A formula: Austerity, Alternative and Afforestation,’ words of wisdom spoken by someone who spent his life living by example.

‘Help Me’ a WhatsApp group making a difference

By
Dr. Tania Saili Bakshi
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Dateline Dehradun: Since the first Covid-19 wave in 2020 to now the second, many nameless, faceless Covid heroes have emerged from our community across the hill-state of Uttarakhand.

Adding to the long queue of help-groups is a WhatsApp group of like-minded women called ‘Help Me,’ based in Dehradun. Started towards the end of April 2021, the group, like many others, came up with the sole agenda of wanting to help those in need.

For the past many weeks ‘Help Me’ has been working relentlessly to make a difference in the lives of our frontline workers, from the crematorium to the hospital staff, Covid vaccination centres and even Covid positive patients recuperating in the district.

The idea behind ‘Help Me’ they tell me is, “Our’s is an informal, like-minded friends and family members group who came together with the sole purpose to help during these extraordinary times. We want to to do our bit and help as many frontline workers as we can.” Stating further, “we got in touch with officials on the ground to get the exact number of people in need and have been sending out home-made meals to staff as well as refreshments and water to our frontline warriors for the past few weeks and counting.”

Mood-boosters protein rich snacks make up these daily refreshment packets that contain cookies, buns, potato chips along with water bottles that bring a smile on the face of the receiver. Other than that, these dedicated women, moved by the plight of the staff manning the Raipur Covid Crematorium in the outskirts of Dehradun have been sending wholesome meals to sustain them through the never-ending day.

‘Help Me’ is looking for donors in order expand their circle further so that they are able to reach more such people in their hour of need.

Please make your donations @ +917906202376 (Paytm)

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