JNU-Open Table Tennis Tournament

The Brahmaputra Hostel hosted the JNU-Open Tables Tennis Tournament for the Year 2005 from February 18-20,2006. The response was good, with a number of enthusiastic participants from the various hostels in the campus. In a significant new development, it was for the first time since the tournament came into being two years ago that events for women were also held.

The tournament was inaugurated by Dr. Hari Ram Mishra (Senior Warden) and Dr. Khwaja Ekramuddin (Warden, Recreation). All events were held within Brahmaputra Hostel premises. The total number of participants, both men and women, was 34. The winners of the events were.

— Singles winner (Women) — Nidhi Lakhotra (CPS/SSS)

— Singles Runners Up (Women) — Sachi Joshi (CGS/SLL&CS)

— Singles Winner (Men) — Peter Ki (CIPOD/ SIS)

— Singles Runner Up (Men) — Le Tien Hien (CESP/SSS)

— Doubles Winners (Men) — Suresh (CSRD/SSS) Martin Kamodang (SOC/SSS)

— Doubles Runner Up (Men) — Valte (SAS/SIS) and Peter Ki (CIPOD/SIS)

— Mixed Doubles Winners — Suresh & Sivakorn Krissanasuvan (ZHCES/SSS)

— Mixed Doubles Runner Up — Bijen (CPS/SSS) & Nidhi Lakhotra, (CPS/SSS)
 

“Tawajjo” A Visual Poetry Exhibition

Recently JNU experienced the relish of ’Visual Poetry Exhibition’ from February 20-25, 2006 under the banner of ’Tawajjo’. The objective was to create social awareness and peace through visualizing poetic message to the world. ’Twajjo’ selected some thematic poems of Dr. Govind Prasad, Muntazir Qaian and Hanif Khan. The picture of thematic poetry was designed and framed by Hanif Khan. It was displayed in Devnagri with contemporary topics like Terrorism, Rape, Daughter, AIDS,
Dowery etc. ’Twajjo’ opted to convey its message in the language of poetry because it is read and appreciated by all sections of society. Visitors of this peculiar exhibition found an innovative way to confront with contemporary issues
and they encouraged the effort.

Updates: Student Counselling cum Placement Services

Under the UGC project “Student Counselling and Placement Services”, Group of Adult Education organized number of campus recruitment and counseling programmes on 24th February’2006, GAE held a panel discussion to “Unravel the major stressors at campus” Dr. Nimesh G. Desai, Psychiatrist & Dr. Uday K. Sinha, Clinical Psychologist, from Institute of Human Behavior and Allied Sciences (IHBAS) participated as panelists and had an engrossing discussion with JNU students. Students expressed a number of factors causing stress in their lives; Cultural shock, sexual problems, workload, uncertainty about future etc.. After a patient hearing, participants got fruitful advices from the two Mental Health Experts, who counseled students about de-stressing themselves thus helping them to keep an adaptive temperament in stressful situations.
Under the Placement services programme, Pradan, a renowned NGO came to recruit JNU students with their first recruitment round held on 20 January followed by their second campus recruitment round on 03 March’2006. 10 March, 2006 came Azim Premji Foundation, another NGO, for campus recruitment. A number of candidates were short-listed and will join the respective organizations after the completion of their studies with JNU.

(Aruna Ranga, Student Counsellor-cum-Placement Officer GAE, SSS JNU News January-April, 2006 13)

Preserving our Past. All of it.

In an article in the Hindustan Times on 16 February, Nayanjot Lahiri discussed the proposed elevated extension of the Delhi Metro through the Mehrauli region. Some excerpts….

The magnificent Mehrauli zone and its ruin-strewn surroundings are a familiar sight for all visitors and citizens. Its protected structures lie at the heart of the controversy about the extension of the rail system. What is not understood by
most however is that what warrants preservation here is not just the features of  renown, such as the Qutub Minar or the numerous tombs and mosques under ASI protection, butas B M Pande, retired ASI Director points out so wellthe already endangered Aravalli landscape across which these are scattered. This is already under threat and would have been rendered even more fragile and precarious with an elevated rail system.

The Delhi-Haryana axis of the rocky Aravallis is an area in which ancient relics of all kinds are scattered. The pahadi, as it is locally called, constitutes the northernmost outlier of one of the oldest mountain ranges of India. The hills are comparatively low and of modest proportions because of their eroded character. At the same time, their reddish rocks and vegetation impart a specific identity to this entire are. Anyone who has gone across to see the Lal Kot ramparts and walls would know that large parts of that medieval fortified complex lie in a scrub forest of kikar and babul, flourishing across unconsolidated Aravalli ravines and outcrops.

This is a landscape that encloses enormously rich and remarkable histories of all kinds. Histories that look back over longer stretches of time than the centuries marked by the Gupta kind, who set up an iron pillar in what was later converted into the courtyard of a medieval mosque by the Delhi sultans who created the Qutub complex. Virtually all across this entire terrain are scattered numerous Stone Age sites that go back to perhaps a hundred thousand years ago. There are no structures or walls that mark the presence of pre-historic humans here just scatters of stone debitage where people fashioned stone tools. About fifty of these are documented and published.

Some of these lie in university campuses near the main gate of DU’s North campus, some exposed around the South Campus on the Dhaula Kuan ridge and across JNU’s hills, some also lie in and around the Qutub zone: Lado Sarai and Chhattarpur are two sites where upper palaeolithic material and microliths are known to occur. And this extends beyond the Qutub as well, across the Gurgaon bypass and Manesar as also in the Badkhal-Sohna stretch.

Many of these places which yielded prehistoric tools in the Eighties have been transformed, on one hand by the unstoppable pace of destruction unleashed by stone and sand mining, and on the other by illegal and legal constructions. Those that are least altered, however, are sites which form part of institutional areas where large segments of the Aravalli landscape still lie intact.

The 1,500 acres lung formed by the JNU Campus is an example worth remembering. From its environs have been recovered, palaeoliths used by early hunter-gatherers, and small microlithic scatters left by later groups, as also old ceramics. These have been carefully unearthed by Mudit Trivedi (a student of CHS/SSS). His own drive and enthusiasm have been important in this. But as he says, the extensive prehistoric land use of this section of the Aravallis, that he successfully studied, was because “the university construction is restricted to certain areas of the campus alone”. To put it another way, the past has survived because the landscape in which it is embedded has survived well.

Why are we then not treating the Delhi Aravallis and the past embedded in it as an asset worth preserving? (A) step in that direction would be the mandatory requirement of an archaeologically sensitive environment statement rather than one focused only on monuments to be placed in the public domain by all developers. There would then be awareness of what is at stake, and additional resources (can be) found for safeguarding such landscapes.