Glimpses of Gitanjali Mango Festival 2010

  

  

 

Mango Festival Contacts

Abhaya Bose, Organizing Secretary (Festival Committee), e.mail: principal.mccs@gmail.com

Abhijit Banerjee, Joint Organizing Secretary (Festival Committee), Handfone: 9748764511, e.mail:abanerjee@ambujarealty.com

Samarendranath Khara, Honorary Advisor for Mango Technical Events, Handfone: 9434510552, e.mail:horticulture.ud@gmail.com, fax: 03523 252287.

Sanjukta Bose, Festival Coordinator, Handfone: 9733005439, e.mail:modella@sify.com

Kaushik Bhattacharya, Festival Coordinator, Handfone 9007014060:, e.mail:kaushikb@ambujareality.com

Raj Basu, ACT coordinator for RTB, Handfone: 9733000444, e.mail:actraj@gmail.com. Fax: 0353 2532313

Festival Office: The Orchid, Uttorayon, Siliguri.

City Office: Modella Caretaker Centre & School, 27-Church Road, Siliguri – 734001.

2nd Gitanjali Mango Festival

2^nd Gitanjali Mango Festival

10^th to 12^th June, 2011. Utsav Complex. Uttorayon, Siliguri

Organized by

Modella Caretaker Centre & School (MCCS) and The Orchid Choicest Enterprises Ltd

As promised last year, this year again the Gitanjali Mango Festival is being held, almost around the same time and ofcourse the same venue. With all your cooperation, the event was a great success last year. There were about 30,000 footfalls, 2000 kilos mangoes handled, 200 mangoes in competition, 35 varieties on sale, 100 competitions and cultural programs organized, all in the three days. Even the tourism stalls received extraordinary response. And believe it, this was the only ‘Mega Mango Event’ for East and Northeast India.

As the festival was dedicated to the 150^th Birth Anniversary of Kabiguru Rabindranath Tagore and 100 years of Gitanjali last year, the title Gitanjali was added to Mango Festival. The name every year will remain the same to remember the Kabiguru’s love for Mango Orchard (Amrakunja) and this year’s theme will also revolve around him and in a greater context will be ‘Epar Bangla-Opar Bangla’, the cultural ties between India’s West Bengal and Bangladesh based on Kabiguru Rabindranath Tagore.

Taking into consideration, the response at the tourism stalls, this year a special travel mart will be organized, Rural Tourism Baazar, based on the theme ‘connecting heritage beyond boundaries’, which will be coordinated by Association for Conservation & Tourism (ACT). The Northeast part of India, which is connected to the country through the Siliguri Corridor or the Chicken’s Neck as it is often called shares about 98% of its borders with Tibet (China), Myanmar, Bhutan, Nepal and Bangladesh, which amounts to about 4500 kms of International border and only 02% with the country. As per the ‘Look East Policy’ of India, the success of this region lies in trade and cultural ties with the neighbouring countries and we believe rural tourism can be a major tool to achieve it. As ACT has organized 02 major policy workshops based on cross-border tourism, the responsibility has been left to them.

The Mango Exhibition and Competition, Mango Eating Competition, Cookery Classes and Mango Recipe Competition, Seminars, Sit & Draw, Picture Postcard Art, Picture Story Writing, Mango Quiz, Ethnic Dress Competition, Face of the Day, Cultural Programs will continue like last year. The new activities which will be added would include Alpana Competitions (revival of a old domestic art form of Bengal), Poster Exhibition based on Heritage Sites of Bengal, A Trio of Films from Shekhar Das will be video projected by the Director himself who will be available for interaction, Ajoy Roy’s documentaries of Bengal and India’s Northeast will be projected by the maker himself and more surprises to come during the Festival.

We shall meet again on the 5^th of June, 2011 at 3PM (15:00 hrs) for the Reception Rituals of the Festival with plantation of Mango Trees at the venue, The Utsav, Uttorayon, Siliguri.

6^th May, 2011                          Abhaya Bose, Organizing Secretary

LEPCHA ENGLISH DAY

An extremely quiet community of the East Himalaya, came into highlight just before the elections when they wanted to boycott the West Bengal State elections and refrain from voting. Working closely with this community, the Lepcha English Day is celebrated every year. A glimpse of 2011.

VENUE : St.Joseph's School, Gitdabling, Kalimpong
Date: 30/4/2011
Chief Guest : Ren. Lynsong Tamsang Lepcha
Guest of Honour : Ren. Tendup Tshering Lama, Regional Director, Asia Venture and Uma Lama
Special Guest: Kalyan Deb (From the balasun experience, Siliguri)

Organised by the students of Night school of Beyong, Samsing, Sidim,Dubling, Pochok and the AV Volunteers from all the night school.

Programme:

Opening & Welcome by Ren. Topden Lepcha, of Lepcha Associaton followed by speech by Father Felix Dsouza, Director, St. Joseph School.
Speech by Regional Director Asia Venture, Ren. T.T. Lama.

Introduction of Judges and Programme.

Presentation by Beyong Lepcha School and AV teachers Jessica, Marini and /emily with their students both English programme by Lepcha students and Lepcha dance by foreigner girls.

Speech by Chief Guest Ren Lyansong Tamsang Lepcha

Present of two computers to Gitdabling School by Mr T. T Lama and Mr Kalyan Deb.

Presentation by all the night school one by one.
Speech by the President of the day, Word of thanks by Father D’souza and Award presentation followed by Lunch.

Haunting Helicopter service in India's Northeast

The partition of the Indian subcontinent in the post Independence period of India has pushed Northeast India into a landlocked area, inconveniently connected by road and conveniently by Helicopter service. Even the Department of Tourism, Government of India has planned Nepal-India-Bhutan Buddhist Tourism Circuit using the Helicopter Service, calling it the Heli-tourism project.

Helicopter service runs presently in several places of Northeast, so far so that because of the demand there locally, tourists hardly have any access to the same. Though this is the only fast service, the same is not reliable enough. The Meghalaya and Tawang accidents taking several lives should have been an eye-opener for all of us and we should have worked on a better and safer operating system. Today the missing of Shri.Dorjee Khandu since the past 03 days has put the whole travel industry of Northeast India in great grief.

Shri.Dorjee Khandu, the Chief Minister of the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh is a strong believer of tourism as a tool for development and to implement all his programs at the grass-root levels, he has started with the mission 'People First'.Only the other day I was discussing with the Gaon Burha (Village Head) at Pakke Tiger Reserve that we must request the Hon'ble Chief Minister to inaugurate the 'Pakke Jungle Camp' and we were jointly planning to meet him in this regard by the middle of this month.

I still remember the date when I had gone to meet him for the first time with Mr.Chowna Mein, when he had just taken over as Chief Minister. I was impressed at his priorities with conservation of nature and attaching people's livelihood with it. Again meeting him at our Pangsau Pass Winter Festival and the Tawang Travel Congress was quite encouraging, specially at the Tawang Travel Congress, when both he and his wife personally looked after all of us, the resource persons, as an host at home. The whole travel industry of Northeast India is praying to the almighty for the immediate return of one of India's most popular and committed Chief Ministers. 

Red Panda Sighting

Red Panda, one of the most beautiful beings of the East Himalaya are fast losing its habitat. The extremely shy animal is extremely difficult to catch a sight of, except the drop of undisturbed nature at the tri-junction of Sikkim East, Darjeeling Hills of West Bengal and Tibet Chumbi Valley. Even if you get a glance, it is impossible to photograph the same. This impossible task has been done by Mousumi, a serious bird watcher, who also runs the site www.jalpaiguribirds.com, during her visit to the Silk Route.

"I always love to explore the Neora Valley-Pangalakha area, a unique area of rich bio-diversity. In a sunny morning I was traveling through old Silk route, as a bird watcher I was busy in searching birds. Suddenly after a narrow turn I discovered that the Red Panda, the one of the rarest animal was just in front of my car over the road. It took a few seconds to realize - yes it is there - and then I started shooting with my camera, I could not mange to get a very good shot but I am happy that I got the opportunity to shoot the animal in the wild".

Calcutta’s forgotten heritage revival interest

Sign-Making Process & other activities planned for Acharya Jagdish Chandra Bose Indian Botanic Garden, to make it an International level destination for visitors in and from Kolkata (Calcutta).

1750 species of plant in a little more than 100 hectares area in Calcutta against 800 species found in entire Europe. A well managed Botanical Garden, established in 1787 as Royal Botanic Garden, which has now been rechristened as Acharya Jadish Chandra Bose Indian Botanic Garden escapes the notice of most visitors to Calcutta (Kolkata). Smita Pandey, an officer with KMDA through her department’s water project came to be introduced to this wonderland, and being a student of Botany herself wanted to bring this treasure to the eyes of the world. Under her leadership an initiative to add certain activities to highlight the heritage of this Garden was started recently. Anuradha Sharma, a civil society member and ecotourism outfit, Help Tourism volunteered to support this effort. The thought process could only start because of the active participation of the Joint Director, Dr.H.S Debnath and his Garden team.

One of the major areas of improvement which is more than necessary is the whole system of signage. Interpretive signs with information on botany or ecology or the story of its travel to this Garden or even any interesting facts to be a part after proper research. The approved sign content is then to be laser-engraved in anodised aluminium sheets, which then needed to be mounted on desk type stands from the ground. Similar signs of indoor and outdoor varieties are to be displayed in several easily visible places. This is the first step to make the Garden interesting, and volunteering programs may be launched to do the research on the signage contents. The signage would be divided into 03 categories namely, welcoming visitors, guiding visitors and informing visitors.

The proposed boards to be similar and more innovative in content, material, design and placement to make this more visitor friendly:

The detailed pictures of proposed models from other Gardens can be found here  

IBG BIKE TRAIL

The main roads in the Indian Botanic Garden are well laid out and a bicycle trail section can easily be marked in the same. Guided tours in the normal Botanic Gardens hours of operation need to be introduced. The trails should be well marked with direction. The first phase of local guides for the purpose have to be trained. Bikes-on-hire have to be made available for visitors along with guides.

IBG Nature trails

Connecting the main road are several nature trails that criss-cross the garden. Such trails need to be marked with proper direction and ‘guided nature trails’ to be introduced and conducted during the regular Botanic Gardens hours of operation. The trails should be made interesting with stories of plants and people from round the country and world, which can also be put on the interpretation boards next to the particular sections.

IBG Ganga River Front

The best part of this historical garden is the water front and none other than the legendary river Ganga. With the Garden on one side and the Garden Reach Shipbuilders and Engineers came up as a small factory in the Eastern bank of Hoogly in 1884. Both these historical sites will be an asset for the river based sightseeing. The KMDA water jetty may be upgraded for the river tours of which IBG will be a major asset. The organizations that run river cruises on the Ganga (Hoogly) have shown keen interest in the same.

 

IBG Heritage Building Conservation

The Garden has several building of heritage value and need immediate conservation. Post conservation the same has to be used to make them living for centuries to come. Amongst the several building that needs special mention is the Roxburg Building. In 1793 after William Roxburg became the Superintendent of the Gardens, he took several actions to make it an international asset, mainly the 2,500,000 items were then made a part of the herbarium collection. His house itself is a treasure for the Gardens which can be developed into a ‘visitor centre’ par excellence with a library cum cafe lounge, outdoor centre, audio-visual hall and Roxburg Botanists Club. The wooden building at the back to be the heritage guest house.

 

Convergence of Interest

The AJC Bose Indian Botanic Garden led by the Joint Director Dr.H.S.Debnath, KMDA led by Smita Pandey, West Bengal Tourism’s Principal Secretary Raghvendra Singh, Vivada Cruises represented by General Manager (Tourism) Lt.Col.(Retd.) S.R.Banerjee, Anuradha Sharma, Association for Conservation and Tourism (ACT) President Ajoy Roy and Help Tourism represented by Asit Biswas has shown keen interest in the process.  

 A trip to the Botanical Gardens is incomplete without meeting the 300+ years Great Banyan Tree, a plan has been made to create a 'light and sound' for the tree to tell the tale of Calcutta (Kolkata). More and more people concerned with this heritage are requested to join the initiative.