Ananda Sangbad

A Quarterly Publication of Ananda Mandir, New Jersey

October 2012

NON-PROFIT ORGUS POSTAGE PAIDNEW BRUNSWICK, NJPERMIT NO. 1215

Ananda Mandir269 Cedar Grove LaneSomerset, NJ 08873Return Service Requested

Ananda Mandir Calendar of Events(Dates are subject to change)

Please check our website frequently:

www.anandamandir.orgTel: 732-873-9821

OCTOBER

Sunday, 14, 4:00 am

Sunday, 14, 7:30 pm

Monday, 15, 9:30 am – 1:00 pm

Saturday, 20, Bodhan, Amontran O Adhibas, 4:30 pm

Sunday, 21Puja 9:15 am, Pushpanjoli 11:45 amStuti & Sandhya Arati 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

Monday, 22Puja 9:15 am, Pushpanjoli 12:15 pmStuti & Sandhya Arati 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

12:17 am – 1:05 am

Tuesday, 23Puja 9:15 am, Pushpanjoli 11:45 amStuti & Sandhya Arati 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

Wednesday, 24Dashomi Krittyadi 10:00 am, Pushpanjoli 11:45 amSindoor Khela & Sandhya Arati 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

Monday, 29, 5:30 pm – 9:00 pm

Friday, 26, 8:00 pmNOVEMBER

Tuesday, 13, Puja 5:00 pmPushpanjali & Arati 9:15 pm

We d n e s d a y, 1 4 , T i m e t o b e announced

Mon-Fri, 19 - 23, Time to be announced

Sunday, 25, 5:30 pm

Wednesday, 28, 9:30 – 11:30 am

Friday, 9, 8:00 pm

Friday, 30, 8:00 pmDECEMBER

Wednesday, 12, 5:30 pm

Sunday, 23, 5:30 pm

Ananda Prabhat (Mahishasura Mardini)

Shyama Puja

Tila Tarpana

Maha Sasthi

Maha Saptomi

Maha Astomi

MAHA SONDHI PUJA

Maha Nabomi

Vijaya Dashomi

Kojagori Lakshmi Puja &Satyanarayan Puja

Sahitya O Alochana

Maha Kali Puja

Foundation Day

Jagaddhatri Puja

Satyanarayan Puja

Raas Purnima

Ananda Sandhya

Sahitya O Alochana

Shyama Puja

Satyanarayan Puja

Upon request, the priest of Ananda

Mandir offers services such as in-house

Sradhyas, Rituals associated with

Cremations (Anthesti Kriya), Death

Anniversaries, Pre-weddng rituals

(Nundimukh, Ashirwad, etc), Upanayan

( Pa i t e y ) , A n n a p r a s a n , We d d i n g

Ceremonies & Wedding Anniversaries,

G r i h a P r a b e s h ( B h u m i P u j a ) ,

Consecrations of new cars (New Car Pujas)

and others.If you have needs for any of the above

or more, please feel free to contact

Biswabhai @ 732-873-9821

Dear Friends:

I am sure if you visited Ananda Mandir in the recent weeks you would have seen bulldozers and heavy construction equipment in the field cleaning up all the grassy areas and trees in the far boundary of our property in preparation of site work for construction of parking lot and the foundations for expanded temple as well as the new community hall. It is an exciting moment for our community that we have been planning for the last 2 to 3 years. The bank loan was finally closed on July 16th, 2012 for $3.5 million. We raised $600,000 last year and will need to raise another $400,000 this year to meet our initial contribution of one million dollar as a part of our commitment to the bank. While we are excited to see the beginning of our dream of a fully functional heritage center come true, we have many challenges ahead.

To raise the needed funds, we organized our Annual Fund raising Luncheon on Sunday, September 23rd, 2012 from 12 noon to 5 pm. As of the time of writing this article, our volunteers and BOT members have been calling every member of the community for enlisting their help in the fund raising effort. Thanks to those few families who made the second installment of their large donation pledged last year for this construction. We still need to raise another $200,000 from rest of our membership like last year. We earnestly look for your generous donation at the same level as last year so that we can meet our financial obligation to the bank by the

end of this year. We are confident that we will reach our goal with your help.

I am proud of our Bengali community that has come forward to show that it can also build a heritage center like other Indian communities. This is an investment for the future of our children and grand children. We all came with empty pockets to this new country with big hopes and dreams like every other immigrant community in America. We established ourselves, prospered in our careers, raised children; now it is time to build our heritage center where we can come and freely celebrate various religious and cultural activities without worrying about the rules of a landlord from different culture or religion. We can enhance our cultural classes with better curriculum and facilities so that our children and grand children can learn the language, the music and the arts of our rich heritage. It will be our contribution to this mosaic society so our culture will not be forgotten as new generations come.

We have many challenges ahead - completion of the construction in time and within budget. We need to develop sound fiscal policy to administer the center so that we can pay off the bank loan in a reasonable time. We need to expand our activities in many more areas than what we are currently doing to make the center fully functional. Please talk to the President, Chairs of various functions and BOT members to give your ideas. Tell them how you can help and which committees you would like to join. Please get involved. The future of the center depends on your engagement to make sure that we are on a path that serves the community at large and helps us grow. Please send your comments and suggestions to our Chief Editor Pronoy Chatterjee or President Dr. Dipak Sarkar.

Special Religious Services:

Ananda Mandir Expansion – An updateBy Ashok Rakhit , Chair Construction Project

Ananda Mandir Expansion

Ananda SangbadOctober 20122

E D I T O R I A LFund Raising! For what?

What could be more important for Ananda Mandir

today than sending the words out on its multimillion dollar

expansion to accommodate hundreds of more devotees at the

temple and providing the community with the state-of-the-art

auditorium for performing arts and other socio-cultural

activities? The construction has begun, turning the dream into

reality. There is no more stipulation, no more imagination; it's real

that soon this place will become 'The Cultural Center' for all the

Bengalis in the area, members and non-members alike.If you now step into the property of Ananda Mandir at

any weekend, you will see the tractors and bulldozers strewn

around on a vast piece of leveled ground bordered with

greeneries at a distance. By next year there will lay a sprawling

temple with a spiritual dome at the top, adjacent to a partly

finished framework of a new building that we would call our

community center. The complete construction of the building is

expected to be over in next two years.It's a happy beginning for all the members of the

community and a triumph of those who worked hard for years to

raise fund, planned the architectural design, convinced the

township to clear its approval and successfully closed the loan

from the bank. It's also a deep satisfaction for those who have

generously contributed to the construction fund with the hope

that one day it can lead to attain the glory of the community.It's well and good, there is joy and happiness, for the

start of a beginning of a two-year's tough journey to the

successful completion of the construction. However, beneath

this euphoria lies a strenuous anxiety on meeting the financial

obligation that had to be committed to the bank for securing a

3.5 million dollar loan. In order to complete the task that had

such a joyous beginning, the Board of Trustees of Ananda Mandir

has been working diligently behind the scene burning their

midnight oil to come up with a plan to secure another half a

million dollar now, before the end of the year. Now is the opportunity for all, who have long sought for

a decent temple of our own and a community center for our

socio-cultural activities, to come forward and join hands with the

Board of Trustees of Ananda Mandir in meeting the dire need of

half a million dollar now, today, not tomorrow. We praise the Fund

Raising Committee for already getting the pledge of a few

hundred thousands dollars from a handful of families. We now

call on you, the writers, reporters and readers of Ananda Sangbad

to join with the group to fill the gap. You may send your

contribution, whatever you can or wish, to the fund, which would

be an investment for the future of our heritage, for strengthening

our bond in the community and the identity of our roots. It's not

just for us only, but for our next generation and the generations to

follow.

Sincerely,

Pronoy ChatterjeeEditor-in-Chief

ANANDA SANGBAD

A Periodical Newsletter Published By

ANANDA MANDIR(A Tax-Exempt, Non-Profit Organization)

269 Cedar Grove LaneSomerset, NJ 08873

Ph: 732-873-9821Website: www.anandamandir.org

Designed & Printed by NABADIGANTA PRAKASHANI

Kolkata, West Bengal, India

Editorial Board:

Editor-in-Chief

Pronoy Chatterjee

Assistant Editors

Guru Chakravarty

Debajyoti Chatterji

Co-Editors

Amitabha Bagchi

Bhaswati Bhadra

Biman Bhatta

Subrata Bhaumik

Jayashree Chatterjee

Sushmita Dutta

All queries, articles, news reports

and letters should be directed to

the Editorial Board:

Phone/Fax : 732-651-8802

E-mail: pkc_usa@yahoo.com

For general information, please

contact the following

Executives of Ananda Mandir:

Dipak Sarkar

President

Jaiprakash Biswas

Vice President

Suprasad Baidyaroy

Vice President

Chanu Das

Treasurer

Suranjan Choudhury

Secretary

Chitra Mondal

Assistant Secretary

Acknowledgement

The Board of Trustees of Ananda

Mandir expresses its appreciation to

Santosh and Ambalika Mukherjee

for financially sponsoring this

publication.

Didn't Receive Your Copy of Ananda

Sangbad?

If you are a Life Member or an Associate Member

but didn't receive your copy of Ananda Sangbad, it

may be because we do not have correct address on

file for you. Please send an email to Guru

Chakravarty (guruchakravarty@yahoo.com) with

your correct address, and we will send you another

copy.

2012 Gayatri GaMarsh Memorial

Awards

For Literary Excellence

Two cash awards will be given each year to

recognize outstanding works published in North

America-based literary magazines within the last

five years. One award will be given to an author of

Bengali works, and another will be given to an

author in English. Each award will consist of $500 in

cash and a certificate.

The materials for both English and

Bengali categories have been received and they are

being processed by the Award Committee

"The winners will be announced in the

next issue. Stay tuned!"

In case of questions, contact Pronoy

Chatterjee (pkc_usa@yahoo.com) or Guru

Chakravarty (gurucharavarty@yahoo.com)

Ananda Mandir Seniors Forum"Seniors Helping Seniors"

Invites retirees and near-retirees to participate actively in Forum meetings and activities.

Future Meeting Dates:Sunday, September 30 (1:00 pm – 2:30 pm)Sunday, November 04 (1:30 pm – 3:00 pm)Sunday, November 25 (1:30 pm – 3:00 pm)

No meeting will be scheduled in DecemberMeeting Date/time may change for various reasons.

Please call Debajyoti Chatterji (973-586-2505 hom; 908-507-9640) to confirm date/time ahead of the meetings.

Dear Members of Ananda Mandir,As you all know by now, the cultural events presented by Ananda

Mandir (musical shows during Kali Puja, Durga Puja, Live Mahalaya to name a few)

have gained great popularity in our community of music lovers. One such routine

event is the monthly event ANANDA SANDHYA, presented usually on second

Friday evenings. This is the wonderful platform where our community musicians

get a chance to showcase their talents.

Are you interested to do an Ananda Sandhya program at Ananda

Mandir as a solo artist, or present a group program? If you have attended any, you

know that this is a 2 hour program of high quality. If you are “WILLING, ABLE, AND

CAPABLE”, please contact our cultural secretary Arun Bhowmik at

arun.bhowmik@hamonusa.com, or call him at 908-672-1452 for details. We look

forward to hearing from you.”

Turn to page 05 Turn to page 05

Ananda Sangbad October 2012 3

Heritage Day A Great Success! “Bon Bhojan” – Picnic at Ananda Mandir

A n a n d a M a n d i r celebrated Heritage Day on

August 19 with much pomp and excitement. Children and adults participated in Prabhat Pheri (morning procession), holding Indian and American national flags in their hands and singing Bande Mataram and other patriotic songs. After the procession the Indian flag w a s h o i s t e d b y o u r president, Dipak Sarkar. National anthems of India and the US were presented by Manasi Stoker. Dipak Sarkar talked about the purpose of observing Heritage Day, and Amitava Sengupta explained the meaning of different colors of the Indian flag and of the “Wheel of Ashoka” in the middle of the flag.

The celebration was continued inside the temple with a variety of cultural programs. The students of Reeta Baidyaroy, the well-known artistic director of Ritam Academy of Indian Dance presented two dances. The first was "Akhilandeshwari" a dance dedicated to Parvati, the supreme divine Mother. The participants Jazmine Dev Prana & Mahasweta Gayen gave an excellent performance in this duet. The second dance was 'Meera's Dream." Set to two popular Meera bhajans, Subha Samanta danced beautifully as Meera, and Mahasweta Gayen was adorable as Krishna. Both dances were much appreciated by the audience.

Aratrika Dey, impressed the audience with her sweet rendition of several patriotic songs. When she finished her encore presentation of “Aye Mere Watan Ke Logon”, there was not a dry eye in the audience.

The next part of the program featured our own Ananda Mandir Volunteer Choir, consisting of Susmita Biswas, Lopa Das, Chitra Mondal, Soma Rakhit, Ranjana Sanyal and Rik Sen. In this maiden appearance of the choral group, the members demonstrated talent, enthusiasm, and team spirit – to great enjoyment on the part of the audience. We hope to see this talented group in many of our future events. Following the choral group, Amitabha Sengupta recited several poems.

The last part of the program was by Geeta Sudha Music School. Both young children and adults participated. Chorus participants were Anwesha Sen Gupta, Ruhiks Chatterjee, Shreya Ghosh, Poorna Chatterjee, Roshni Mukherjee , Saurav Pramanjk, and Sanhita Pramanik, and their performance was commendable. Partha Sengupta , Aparajita Sen Gupta and Jaya Chatterjee impressed the audience with their patriotic songs like “Ekber Bidaya De Ma” and “O Amar Desher Mati”. Tabla accompaniment by Gokul Panda added rhythm for all the singers. All in all, Heritage Day celebration was a grand success, thanks to the overall planning and coordination by Rita Bhowmik and Krishna Dutta Roy. At the conclusion of our cultural program, everybody joined the Ananda Mandir Annual Picnic. A separate report covers the details of that event in this issue of Ananda Sangbad.

Lovely week-end afternoon, lush green outdoor, the autumn sky

painted with few strokes of soothing clouds keeping the noon pleasantly cool,

you are hungry and you are served with hot, perfectly fried “luchis” , “alu-potoler

torkar”, “singara” and “jeelebi”, what else a Bengali would ask for, and then

naturally followed the “jamano adda”, croonings of popular Rabindra sangeet in

chorus, some memebers getting into outdoor games like vollyball, badminton

and the whole bunch of joyous kids jumping into the swings, slides and other

games. That was the picnic at Ananda Mandir on Sunday, August 19, 2012. “Who cooked this lovely “Shorshe Begun?” asked some members.

“Suprasad da” said another member. Suprasad Baidyaroy deserves a good

round of applause from all of us for those typical Bengali items he volinteers to

cook during most large gatherings at Ananda Mandir. He does that with joy

which probably blends into the tastes that come around. With him this year,

Anupam Saha, Joyprokash Biswas, Chanu Das and Saurav Ghosh were the

organizers of the picnic and incharge for delivery of “Bon Bhojan” menu that

was pre-publicised on Ananda Mandir website and met our expectations. Items

for lunch were - Singara, Veggie Burger, Luchi, Alu-potoler torkari, Jeelebi and

dinner included - Polao, Chholar Daal, Pakora, Paneer with Alu, Shorshe Begun

and Chatni. Special menu for kids had Macaroni Cheese. Corn on the cob and

Pizza. And, of course for our health-concious appetite, there were a variety of

freshly cut fruits like cucumber, pineapple, canatalope, watermellon served

with a concoction of grapes and blueberries. Thanks to all who volunteered to

prepare the “luchis” in hundreds, and kudos to all who helped in making the

picnic yet another successful event at Ananda Mandir. If you have missed it this

time, please join in next year.

Reported by Krishna Dutta Roy Reported by Sushmita Dutta

Discovery of “God Particle” in July 2012By Pronoy Chatterjee

Bengalis in Recent Physics NewsBy Amitabha Bagchi

Why was there a big commotion about the discovery of a new particle that became hot news in almost all the major newspapers in the world on July 4, 2012? We had been hearing about new particles all these years since a new discipline was carved out of the general physics and named “Particle Physics.” Why is it so much publicity this time? What is the uniqueness of this particle? Let's take a look at it.

The particle is called Higgs-boson and it also has a nick name, “God Particle,” coined by Nobel Laureate Leon Lederman. Apparently, the scientists first expressed it as “goddamn particle,” because it appeared like an illusion, hard to find in the nature although, in theory, its existence had been predicted decades ago. Later, to make it sober, the name was revised to “God particle,” and because of the word God, it apparently got so much media attention. Many people thought it had something to do with God; maybe its existence would in turn prove the existence of God. Alas! It has nothing to do with the existence or non-existence of God. Nonetheless, it's a particle, which was predicted in the 1960s as a carrier of mass that gave the mass to all the particles that created our material universe. It is a vitally important elementary particle that existed in theory so far.

Talking about the particle physics, we started believing that atom was the ultimate particle which was indivisible. Later it was discovered that's not the case,

Satyendranath Bose with Einstein

A number of Bengalis, both in India and abroad, have been prominent in physics news in recent months.

First came the news in May of Shouryya Ray, a German 16-year-old born of Bengali parents, who apparently solved a mathematical problem first posed by Sir Isaac Newton more than 300 years ago. The early news reports quoted the Sunday Times of London to say that “Shouryya Ray [had] worked out how to calculate exactly the path of a projectile under gravity and subject to air resistance.” He discovered a complete mathematical solution that would obviate the need for numerical calculations using computers with approximate or partial solutions.

There was a lot of initial hoopla over the news. Ray won a research award for his efforts and was labeled a genius by the German media. But then there was a more sober assessment of his work by a pair of German mathematicians. They put the young man's research in context and pointed out that (1) Newton did not pose a problem per se but merely set it up as a differential equation, and (2) the exact solution of the differential equation in the form of a series has been known to experts. The mathematicians do state, however, that Ray is fully deserving of the research award and all the accolade for the “exceptional and remarkable methods” used by a high-school student. (For additional details, see http://www.huff ingtonpost.com/2012/06/21/16-year-old-genius-shoury_n_1616085.html).

Next came the announcement on July 4 jointly by two research teams (CMS and ATLAS) at CERN that they had independently confirmed, through their experiments at the Large Hadron Collider, the formal discovery of a previously unknown boson of mass between 125 and 127 GeV/c2. (For comparison, the mass of a proton or Hydrogen nucleus is a bit below 1 GeV/c2.) This is the first solid (if incomplete) experimental evidence for the existence of Higgs boson – a proposed elementary particle in the Standard Model of particle physics. Elsewhere in this issue, Pronoy Chatterjee has a lot to say about the Standard Model, its predictions and the discovery of the so-called “God Particle.”

Ananda Sangbad4

income-based formulae. Some senior apartment complexes may provide limited

meal and housekeeping service for additional fee. Residents may enjoy amenities

such as club house, library, transportation to doctor's office, etc. No home care

support is provided. Since rent to be paid is based on income, average cost for a

senior apartment in NJ is not a meaningful number.

Part 2: Housing With Health Care Support

In-Home Care-Giver Services

At some stage in their lives, seniors living at home may find that their

medical conditions require them to seek services of a personal care attendant on a

regular basis. They then face the choice of living at home or in a facility that can

provide personal care on a contractual basis. Not surprisingly, many seniors prefer

to live at home and arrange the services of a home health care aide. In most

situations, home care is a less expensive alternative to institutional care like

“assisted living”. Besides providing help with medical matters like giving

prescribed medicines at scheduled times and taking blood pressure, home care

services can include other support like shopping, laundry, cooking and

companionship. The challenge is to find a qualified (and affordable) care-giver.

Home care agencies are usually the sources for such care-givers. Services of a

skilled or a semi-skilled care-giver can be arranged for patients of all ages, and

care-givers can be hired on the basis of daily, monthly or hourly visits – and even on

a round-the-clock, 24-hour support basis. Note that insurance companies,

including Medicare may or may not pay for home care services, and patients

should check with their insurance carriers before hiring care-givers. Cost for home

health care aides in New Jersey can range from $30 per hour for hourly

arrangements up to $3000 or more on monthly contracts.

Adult Day Care Facilities

When an individual requires personal care or medical support at home

over an extended period of time, the care-giver may need occasional relief.

Similarly the patient may benefit from visiting a safe and friendly place where

he/she can socialize with others and engage in supervised and structured

activities appropriate for his/her medical condition. Adult day care centers,

operated by non-profit organizations or commercial establishments, can provide

such coordinated programs of professional support for adults in a community-

based group setting. As the name indicates, these are care facilities and are open

during normal business hours during weekdays. These facilities do not provide

When children grow up and leave home and seniors begin to think about

retirement, many begin to wonder if they should downsize their home to cut

expenses and reduce home upkeep hassles. If there are health issues to consider

as well, this question about future housing options becomes more pressing and

complex. In this article, we discuss briefly the housing options available to seniors -

- and list useful references for further research.

Part 1: Housing Without Health Care Support

Active Adult Communities

“Active Adult Communities” have become popular housing options for

people 55 years or older who enjoy “active life-styles”. These are usually large,

planned housing developments, often with facilities like guard-gated entry, club

houses with swimming pools, exercise rooms, tennis courts, libraries, etc. You can

buy individual homes in these communities, and some complexes may also offer

condos or townhouses. You pay a monthly maintenance fee to the community

association, and the association takes care of outside maintenance such as lawn-

mowing, snow-cleaning, etc. The monthly fee also includes access to the club

house facilities and programs.

You should note that most “active adult communities” do not allow

anyone under18 years of age to live permanently in your home, and you can sell

your home only to someone 55 years or older. “Active Adult Communities” do not

provide any medical facilities or home care service nor do they provide restaurants

or dining rooms.

There are at least four active adult communities within five miles of

Ananda Mandir: Four Seasons Sterling Pointe, Renaissance Raritan Valley,

Somerset Run, and Canal Walk. If you are interested in any of these communities,

you should seek the help of a professional real estate salesperson regarding

availability, price, club house and other amenities, number of bedrooms and

bathrooms, association dues, etc.

If you would like to find “active adult communities” in other parts of NJ,

you may find the website www.activeadultliving.com/NJ/newjersey.htm useful. It

provides summary information on over 330 active adult communities in the state.

Senior Apartments:

Senior apartments are housing arrangements subsidized by Federal

and/or State governments for low to moderate income seniors with certain age

restrictions. Rent is usually determined by government agencies and follow

Highlights of Recent Puja ActivitiesReported by Krishna Dutta Roy

Housing Options for SeniorsBy Debajyoti Chatterji

October 2012

Ananda Mandir's puja calendar for the May to August period was a very busy

one indeed.

We celebrated Phalaharini Kali Puja on May 20. We had a sizeable gathering

that evening because this was a very special puja. During his lifetime, Shri

Ramkrishnadeb worshipped Shri Ma Sarada Debi as Shadoshi (in Bengali it is said as

“Shoroshi”) on this puja day. Phalaharini Puja is celebrated in West Bengal as a major

religious event. On May 20, after puja, arati and Anjali were performed and then prasad

was distributed.

June was a very active month for us. Besides the monthly Shyama Puja and

Satyanarayan Puja, we celebrated Shri Shri Jagannath Maha Prabhu's Rath Yatra on

June 21. On this auspicious day the rath (chariot) was pulled by devotees while

chanting hymns and singing devotional songs, accompanied with instruments like

khol, kartal and dhol. It was a very colorful parikrama. The chariot was nicely decorated

with flowers and other items. Although June 21 was a weekday, there was no shortage

of devotees. After the Rath Parikrama, puja, arati and anjali were offered. Manisha

Chokravorty sang a number of devotional songs. On this occasion, we also arranged a

mela (fair) where we sold house plants, snacks and other items while vendors sold saris

and jewelry from their stalls. This Rath Yatra Mela brought back sweet memories of

similar fairs from our childhood days in India. At the end there was the special

attraction of good food.

On June 26 we celebrated Bipad Tarini Puja. June 29 saw the return of

Jagannath Mahaprabhu to His home from His aunt's home (known as “Ulto Rath” or

Chariot Return), and this event was celebrated with much enthusiasm and excitement.

In the Month of July, there were no special celebrations other than the

monthly Shyama Puja and Satyanarayan Puja.

In August we celebrated Jhulan Purnima and Rakhi Purnima. On Jhulan

Purnima, Shri Krishna and Shri Radha were set on a swing (jhula). In the evening

Bhagabat Geeta Path and Naam Kirtan were done by Monisha Chokroverty. Same day

in the morning we performed Baastu Yagna and Yatra Puja to mark the beginning of

the construction of our community center and the extension of our temple.

On August 9, we celebrated Janmastami to observe Lord Krishna's birth.

Celebrations started from early morning with Krishna Naam jop. Devotees performed

12,000 naam jop by taking turn. Puja, Stuti and Aarati continued until 9:00pm.The

celebrations ended with delicious food cooked by our Food Committee members.

Janmastami celebrations spilled into next day's monthly Anada Sandhya

program. Our Youth Group led by Bhaswati Mallik presented a very enjoyable program,

“Krishnanjali”. It offered a great variety and featured very talented young artistes from

the Ananda Mandir community. Bhajans were performed by our youth group with the

accompaniment of instruments and dances. Songs were presented in Hindi, Bengali

Sanskrit and English. Noteworthy vocal artistes were Bhaswati Mallik, Sudipto Mallik,

Renee Dutta Rostad, Malika Bhaumik Sadowski, Tania Roy Chowdhry, Shreya

Chowdhury and Adam Sadowski. They were very ably supported on various

instruments by Egil Rostad, Adam Sadowski and Sudipto Mallik. A dance program by

Brinda Guha and Riya Das Gupta added a special feature. Narration was given by Arun

Bhowmik. The whole presentation was very enjoyable, more because it was totally

organized by our Youth Group.

Aghor Chaturdasi and Shyama Puja were celebrated on August 16 and 17,

respectively. The monthly Satyanarayan Puja was celebrated on the 26th of August.

Turn to page 08

(Editor's Note: Ananda Mandir Seniors Forum is developing an “Information Sourcebook” for use by the elder members of the community. This article is from that Sourcebook. Please note that this article is only intended to provide useful information, not professional advice.)

Discovery of “God Particle” in July 2012By Pronoy Chatterjee

Ananda Sangbad 5

magnetic field.Peter Higgs proposed that particles normally exist in the nature

maintaining a symmetry, but, as mentioned earlier, there is also a field pervading in the nature that breaks down the symmetry and that's now called “Higgs field.” The cause of symmetry break down has an effect on certain boson particles viz., gluon, W & Z particles and graviton but not photons. Those bosons which get affected are identified as “Gauge bosons.” Gauge bosons are gluon, W & Z particles and graviton. Photons do not interact with Higgs field and they are not called gauge boson.

As gauge bosons move at a high speed (with high kinetic energy) in Higgs field they get slowed down because of the symmetry breakdown effect of the Higgs field. Due to the slowing down process, their kinetic energy is proportionally converted to mass as per the law of conservation of total energy and Einstein's famous equation of E=mc2. Thus, gauge bosons gain mass derived from the reduction of their kinetic energy and they are now called “Higgs-boson” particle. Higgs-boson, carrying mass, is believed to interact with other particles giving them mass and that's the way all elementary particles acquired mass and therefore all the matters that we see have mass.

Higgs-boson was predicted in the 1960s but was never proven of its existence. Conceptually, Higgs-bosons were formed within a millisecond of the Big Bang and they imparted mass to other particles. However, Higgs-boson's life span is considered as infinitesimally small and it has an exceedingly high mass for its relatively small size. Scientists could not artificially produce it with the available equipment for decades until recently. So there was no proof that such a particle existed.

Then they built a multibillion dollars huge cyclotron, called Large Hedron Collider or LHC (a particle smasher) located at the Franco-Swiss border at an European research agency CERN at Geneva. In LHC, they speeded up a particle at an immensely high velocity before smashing with another speeding particle coming from the opposite direction and created this long sought Higgs-boson particle, the source of mass of all particles in the universe, which lived only a septillionth second. Bravo to the modern digital technology that captured its track almost instantaneously. Finally, the Higgs-boson or God particle was discovered. It may not have anything to do with the existence of God, it certainly tells us how God gave our identity by imparting mass.

This is a triumph of immense magnitude. Salute to the modern physicists, engineers, technicians and managers who made it successful and thanks to the Governments and private foundations which funded this project. CONGRATULATIONS to Peter Higgs and our own Satyen Bose for their breakthrough scientific theories. Satyen Bose passed away many years ago but Peter Higgs enjoyed the celebration of this final moment when at CERN they announced the discovery of Higgs-boson on July 4, 2012.

Peter Higgs will probably get the Nobel Prize soon, but Nobel is not given to any one posthumously, so Satyen Bose's name will not be associated with the prize. Nonetheless, he is our hero, he is the pride of India, his imagination and his theory contributed in unraveling a big mystery of God's creation of the universe. We bow our heads in his memory.

atom could be split into proton, neutron and electron. Subsequently, it was further discovered that they were not the ultimate particles, but they were built by quarks and leptons that include electron and its equivalent but neutrally charged neutrino. Now finally physicists are telling us that all the matters that we see in this universe, including celestial objects, stars, planets, etc., all are built with these fundamental particles - quarks and leptons. But confusion still remained over the question that at the time of Big Bang when the universe was evolved and particles formed where did they get mass from?

Well, it needs a brief discussion to grasp this issue. The physicists tell us that the universe is built with two uniquely different kinds of things:

Elemntary paticles, such as, quarks and leptons which are the building blocks of the universe and are called fermions; and forces, such as weak force, strong force, electromagnetic force and gravity which interact with the elementary particles to create and maintain the structure of material universe.

Then it was theorized that the forces couldn't exist or interact by themselves, they would have to piggyback on certain particles and those particles were characteristically different from quarks and leptons.

These kinds of thoughts subsequently gave rise to a concept that the universe is really structured with two kinds of basic particles, called:

? Fermions, viz., quarks of 6 types and leptons of 6 types and their nature was defined by Femi-Dirac statistics. The name “fermion” was given by Paul Dirac in honor of Enrico Fermi who with Paul Dirac developed the statistics of these particles.

? Bosons, viz., gluon that carry strong force, W & Z that carry weak force and photons that carry electromagnetic force and their nature was defined by Bose-Einstein statistics. The name of these particles “boson” was also given by Paul Dirac in honor of Satyen Bose who initially developed the statistics of those particles that later was modified by Einstein.

Fermions and bosons make up the whole universe; as well as gravity, which is still vaguely defined as associated with a particle named graviton, which is also a variation of boson. Fermion and boson are entirely different kinds of particles, the former has mass, the latter does not have mass but it, under certain conditions, carries mass and imparts that mass to fermion and that's the way all fermions gain mass. Physicists around the world widely accepted this concept and developed a mathematical model in early 1970s, called “Standard Model” that took care of the elementary particles and forces of the nature. The 'Standard Model' of particle physics is one of the greatest achievements of theoretical physics.

Now is the question on how bosons, whose main function is to carry forces, acquire their own mass? There comes a great theory by Peter Higgs. He said that though it was assumed that there is a uniform field where the particles exist in symmetry, there is also a field pervading in the entire universe where the symmetry breaks down. That field is now called “Higgs field.”

The phenomena of symmetry and symmetry-breakdown in another field can be explained by a simple analogy as follows: if we distribute iron filings evenly on the floor, there exists a symmetry, but if we place a small magnate in there, some iron filings will form clusters around the magnate and hence the symmetry breaks down. In this case, the symmetry breakdown occurs because of the appearance of a

October 2012

Continued from page 03

Continued from page 03

Bengalis in Recent Physics NewsBy Amitabha Bagchi

Interestingly enough, the word “boson” harks back to the seminal work in 1924 by the Bengali physicist, Satyendra Nath Bose (1894-1974), on the statistical mechanics of light quanta or photons. He had sent his derivation of Planck's Law (of Black-Body Radiation) by statistical methods to Einstein, who was so deeply impressed that he translated the manuscript into German and had it published. Einstein then proceeded to generalize the derivation to the statistics of the ideal monatomic gas. A key element in the derivation was the assumption that multiple elemental entities (photons, ideal gas atoms) could stay indistinguishably in the same state. This was followed within a few years by wave mechanics and the Pauli Exclusion Principle that posited that particles like the electron had a very different property: two of them could never occupy the same state simultaneously. This led to an alternate formulation of statistical mechanics for such particles by Enrico Fermi and Paul Dirac. Dirac coined the term “boson” to describe the first kind of particles, which we now know are characterized by integral spin, and “fermion” to describe the second class of particles which are characterized by half-integral spin.

The apparent discovery of the Higgs boson led to a flurry of articles in the Indian press bemoaning the fact that Satyen Bose did not receive the same acclaim and recognition as his European contemporaries who worked in the same field.

The final recent news concerned the announcement in August of the award of a new prize in “Fundamental Physics” by Yuri Milner, a Russian billionaire and a physics drop-out. Of the nine recipients of the first year's prize, each worth $3 million, seven work in the United States, one in Europe (in the outskirts of Paris), and one in India – the Bengali physicist, Ashoke Sen, currently at the Harish Chandra Institute in Allahabad.

Ashoke Sen, born in 1956, studied at Presidency College, Calcutta (Bachelor's), IIT Kanpur (Master's) and SUNY at Stony Brook (Ph.D.). He is widely recognized and respected for having made seminal contributions in an esoteric branch of theoretical physics known as “String Theory.”

The simplest way of looking at String Theory is that it attempts to reconcile quantum mechanics (or quantum field theory) and general relativity. In that sense, it is sometimes viewed as the Theory of Everything (TOE). It assumes that elementary particles (i.e., electrons and quarks) are not 0-dimensional objects but rather 1-dimensional oscillating lines (“strings”). Over the period of several decades, the theory has evolved from multiple Superstring theories to an eleven-dimensional theory called the M-theory. It has obvious appeals owing to its scope, but it is currently handicapped by the absence of “novel experimental predictions at accessible energy scales.” The theory, as a result, has fervent advocates as well as highly respected detractors. (See for reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/String_theory.)

It is sensible to view String Theory in the context of the physicists' long search for the holy grail of a “Unified Theory” that would explain the interaction of all fundamental forces (strong, electromagnetic, weak and gravitational) and elementary particles (e.g., quarks, leptons) in terms of a single field. In the early twentieth century, Einstein and many others tried unsuccessfully for years to unify electromagnetism and gravitation (per the General Theory of Relativity) into a “Unified Field Theory.” Sheldon Glashow first successfully advanced a partially unified Electro-Weak theory that encompasses electromagnetic and weak interactions. But its unification with strong interaction has not yet been successful; thus strong and elecro-weak forces coexist peacefully in the Standard Model. Unification of quantum mechanics and gravitation presents its own enormous challenges. String Theory provides the most promising approach to unification at present, but it does so by going from the 4-dimensional space-time of Einstein's relativity to an even more arcane 11-dimensional M-theory.

Ananda Sangbad6

Every four years, the summer Olympics bring

an inevitable recrimination and despondency to

countries like India rather than any sense of

achievement or goodwill. Greece, the founding country

of the Olympic Games, to whom we will be forever

grateful, got a grand total of two medals. The Olympic

motto is Altius, Fortius Citius which means higher,

stronger and faster.

The Summer Olympics are an uncomfortable

test where the brawn of every country is measured and

dissected in front of the entire world. We have an

embarrassing largesse in terms of population and

corresponding paucity of medals. So what stat is more

important? The population of a country, the athletic

resources or a function of how many people are playing

the sport? One stat that is quite irrelevant for the most

part is the population of a country.

The Indian sub-continent has a certain artistry,

a certain flair in sports that is subliminal but

unfortunately also ephemeral. It is also important to

keep the flame alive regardless of the medals won. It is

important to enjoy a sport in the context of the artistry

and the grace and not be disappointed when it may not

match up against international competition.

It requires an analysis of the games to realize

what is feasible and what is patently infeasible. Roughly

classified, the summer games are split into the

categories listed below:

Swimming and Diving

Gymnastics

Track and field

Collaborative Games like soccer, field

hockey, tennis

Skill like archery, shooting

Martial arts like wresting, boxing, judo

Assorted like Dressage!

In the first three categories, India is a non-

factor and truly a marginal player. These are progressive

development activities which require training from a

young age till the athletes are ready for extreme

competition. It seems that the only way for India to

compete in these disciplines is to import athletes of

Indian origin from abroad where they have benefitted

from training and competition.

Let's drill into Swimming and Diving. I analyzed

the city of Chennai for the number of swimming pools

there. There are about 20 swimming pools in the

Chennai going by a variety of searches. Most of these

are recreational in nature and the number of pools that

are of Olympic standards are closer to five, probably

lesser. Chennai has a population of roughly 5 million

people. Hence there is 1 Olympic pool for every 1 million

people. This statistic is played out in every metropolitan

city in the India.

Essentially this is a no contest when the Indian

National records are compared with US High school

records. The US boys are vastly superior to the Indian

national swimmers. This is due to a lack of infrastructure,

lack of coaching and the complete absence of any

regulated system of competition in India. I do not know

of any school in India having a swim team and most

people cannot swim. It is quite meaningless to compete

in such a discipline.

The analysis on diving is quite futile. I have not

seen any diving facility in India. If the government has

some facility it may be feasible to train divers if there was

government sponsorship. From what I have seen, diving

skills stem from training in gymnastics which again is

extremely weak in India.

In athletics, where raw power and speed is

required, like in the short distance sprints, the people in

the Indian subcontinent are completely outclassed.

Again the fastest sprint timing for US boys is comfortably

better than the Indian National champion's record.

Strangely enough, many of the Indian records were set

5 to 30 years ago (800 m- Sriram Singh)! The track stars

need a level of physical conditioning and strength which

starts from the school system. Having seen first-hand

the level of training that goes into all track and field in

the USA it would be almost impossible to compete with

this level and training and the physically stronger body

structures. Yet, I do think that we have a shot at the

middle distances from the 400m through the 1500m.

Milkha Singh and P.T. Usha came close to winning

medals in the 400m and the 400m hurdles and there are

some recent athletes who have made headway in the

400m.

Counter-intuitively though sometimes

training is less of a determinant in the short distances or

the long distances than raw talent, as we see in the

Jamaican sprinters or the Kenyan long distance runners

who dominate. The USA despite all its training, all its

history, is being relegated to an also-ran status in these

events especially in the men's competition.

When I was in school, we had a schoolmate

who was a National Table Tennis champion. His name

was V. Chandrashekhar, whose career and life was

tragically altered by a botched knee operation. He was a

few years senior to us and is part of our Alumni

association. But his sport, his legacy was absent on the

school premises. There was no table tennis board in

school when we were there. This meant that all his skills

were developed outside of school premises and none of

his skills was ever handed down to the students in the

future batches. Hence no tradition existed. On the other

hand, my school had huge playing fields but non-

existent coaching in any sport. I played most sports in

my school but with no training or proper equipment. The

sport I did not play at that time, cricket, seemed to be the

only one which had sufficient equipment and also

probably the most amount of interest.

In my opinion, the following parameters are

determinative in the success in international sports. The

examples below I give are for the Indian sporting system.

Resources – Most Olympic events need a

resource base to train on. Most of these resources are

freely and widely available mostly in developed

countries. An example would be swimming pools which

is a scarce resource in India. On the other hand, the

abundance of resources in US colleges available to

athletes has greatly influenced their success.

Committed or participating athletes – The

population of a country is immaterial, if there is not

enough participation in a sport. It could be commercial

or even casual but it requires a pool of dedicated players.

A good example is beach volleyball. India has some of

the best beaches in the world but nobody plays beach

volleyball which was developed in USA and Europe.

Organized competition – Other than certain elite sports,

most sporting events have hardly any competition

outside of school boundaries. The only way to raise the

bar is through collaboration and competition.

Governmental Resources – The Chinese

communists always seem to do it this way with much

success but their success is not worth the human and

psychological cost of regimentation and deprivation of

family from their lives.

Prodigies – I think our early international

prodigies were Ramanathan Krishnan in tennis and then

Prakash Padukone in badminton. They embodied the

true brilliance of the Indian sports genius. Sania Mirza

and Saina Nehwal are the latest in that breed of

prodigies. Even Mary Kom is a genius, unheralded and

supreme in her field of women's boxing. Their

development and achievement are their sole individual

achievement and they did it with very little assistance

from the government and their development was

entirely due to private resources.

Parental involvement – This is probably quite

discounted but almost every athlete in the USA and

many other countries would admit that the involvement

of their parents financially and with their time and

encouragement has been invaluable in their progress in

the sporting career.

This brings me to the point about where the

Indian genius can shine. The sportsmen and sports-

women in the Indian subcontinent will find it hard to be

the fastest, the strongest or the one with the most

endurance. What the subcontinent can challenge the

rest of the world is on spell-binding skill and smarts and

partnership. Collaborative Games require smarts. These

are games like field hockey, tennis and even soccer.

These are the games where you do not have to be the

biggest or the strongest. The smartest could control the

game with a few good players. Brazil and Mexico showed

the way in soccer this Olympics.

Yes we seem to have lost our way and so many

other countries are ahead of us. Indians and Pakistanis

used to play a brand of field hockey which was

mesmerizing. The recent Olympic matches that I saw

reminded me more of soccer than of traditional hockey.

India has come in dead last amongst the 12 teams that

competed. A debacle proclaimed Indian news outlets.

An even bigger international public fiasco was the

composition of the tennis doubles team. Paes and

Bhupati's public dueling made it evident that a dismal

result was inevitable.

I recently watched a US high-school soccer

game. One team was comprised of who could typically

be termed as all-American kids. They were strong, tall

and fit. The other team primarily comprised of South

American immigrants, small and light of their feet. It

was a mismatch; the smaller immigrants ran circles

around their stronger rivals and won that match. That is

the lesson we need to learn. We can still win by using

some old-fashioned dribbling jaadu. I could be wrong,

because the rules and the game like field hockey seem

to have been skewed to favor the kind of power play

which suits the European and the Australians.

It is also very encouraging to see the growth in

interest and positive results in skill based sports like

shooting and archery. Indians were seeded number one

in the world in some cases and it certainly speaks of the

quality of our archers and marksmen. They did not

perform as well as they could have in this Olympics. But

it is the Olympics, it is an exceptionally difficult

competition.

In Martial Arts, India has had good success in

wrestling. This is probably because we have had

tradition, training and good competition. Luck, pluck

and skill probably played a part in that success.

It is important for a country to persist,

experiment and not to always measure success by the

medal tally. Training, collaboration and competition is

all part of a healthy sports program. There are only three

medals in every event where every country in the world

is a potential competitor.

By Tathagata GhoshAltius, Fortius, Citius

October 2012

Ananda Sangbad 7

As I drive to work every weekday morning at 6 – 6:30 AM, I tune in to my favorite radio program. It is the morning bhajans in the EBC Radio 1170 AM, hosted by Sangeeta. Commuting to work using your car is a routine for most people. True, many people use public transportation whenever that option is available, but a vice of the suburbia living is having to drive, through multitude of traffic lights and fighting off offensive drivers. Anytime I mention to my friends that I drive 35 miles one way to my work, I get a sympathetic look – “Oh no, poor Guru, how can you live with that?”So, I hasten to add that I really enjoy my driving because I am listening to my favorite radio program.

Yes, I enjoy the morning bhajans program called “Man Mandir” greatly. One of the reasons of my loving it is of course the great coverage by the host. Sangeeta seems to be quite knowledgeable about the popular religious practices of Indians, namely, prayers of Lord Shiva, Guru Saibaba, Sikhism, Ramji-Hanumanji and others. She has dedicated the Mondays for Lord Shiva, because she says a lot of people observe the day as Lord Shiva's day. Similarly, specific days are set for Saibaba and for Sikhism. In between bhajans, Sangeeta ad-libs about the religious practices, albeit in a somewhat stumbling way, instead of reading a script. But I definitely like to listen to her every morning. What's more –it keeps me from thinking about the job and getting all stressed up.

The second reason of my interest in the bhajans is, interestingly enough, physiological. It is an intriguing explanation that may not appeal to some, but it is based on medical reasoning. Here I am quoting the words of a medical practitioner who meditates at 4 am every morning:

The practice of meditation early in the morning has been performed by Hindus for centuries. The early morning time is called the “Brahma Muhurta”. The Pituitary, the master gland which controls all the endocrine or hormone secreting glands of the body is active in early morning. The pituitary is controlled by a portion of the mid brain...the hypothalamus. Hypothalamus controls all the emotions of human system. We can control our emotions better when the

pituitary secretes all the stimulating hormones. In addition, when we practice meditation with positive thoughts, there is secretion of two natural substances from brain - encephalin and serotonin. These two are natural tranquilizers and thus we sense a feeling of tranquility, a sense of well being. This can carr y on for the entire day for those who practice meditation regularly.

So, there you go. I listen to bhajans in the morning because I enjoy them and it is a good positive thing to do.

The afternoon period during my return home is generally a talk-back type of radio show called “Evening Drive Time” that is apparently promoted by the EBC management to attract commuting listeners. I have no fascination for this program because the hosts generally lack the creative intelligence to hold an interesting dialogue. Still, there is no shortage of listeners calling back, and it is generally about “nothing”. But when Kulraaj Anand, the director of the station comes in, time to time, that's another matter. First of all, Kulraaj has a great voice that is quite attractive, and his delivery, especially in Hindi, is ornamental and pleasant to listen to. He generally takes over other hosts in that time slot whenever special guests come in. For example, a few days ago, he was interviewing the popular politician Upendra Chivukula who was at the Democratic Convention at Charlotte. The next day, he was talking with the famous Bollywood musician Bappi Lahiri, who was at the EBC studio. Kulraaj is a versatile speaker, and can mimic voices of different personalities. Almost all commercials broadcasted in this radio are created by him, where he is the main actor. Sometimes he is a salesman, sometimes an indecisive husband, sometimes a traffic police officer giving a ticket, and many other characters.

So what else happens in the EBC Radio! Well, being a Bengali, I like to tune in the program “Prabaha” – the 10-11 am slot every Sunday for Bangla music. Abhijit Sanyal runs it very timely and entertainingly. Although this is not a commuter time program, I like to listen to him because his coverage reminds me of the “Anurodher Aasar” that I grew up with in the sixties. He

mixes his presentation with songs from modern and olden eras, film, Rabindrasangeet and sometimes quizzes about who is the singer or what film is it, and thus holds our attention. But no matter what the host does, the inevitable thing that comes with the programs is the dreaded commercial break. It runs for about 8 minutes or so at the start of the hour and for another same period at the half-hour time. But luckily, not all commercials are dreadful. I like to hear about opening of new restaurants, announcements of programs in Durga Mandir, current mortgage rates etc. In fact, I did refinance my mortgage when I heard the voice of my long-lost friend Naren Chawla who was advertising his mortgage finance business in EBC Radio. It is interesting to note that all commercials during the Bengali program are Hindi based, meaning no Bengali companies have come forward to help with this Bengali production.

An interesting medical information program called “Heartbeat” happens on Saturdays at 12 noon, hosted by Dinesh Singal, MD. A lot of good information is covered in this show, particularly in the fields of cardio-vascular diseases, diabetes, and many other things. If I am driving around that time, I keep my ears open for this program. I remember one diabetes specialist from India, who was introduced by Dr. Singal as the largest researcher in the world, meaning studying the largest number of diabetes patients.

A really good musical program is run by Dev Joshi on Tuesday afternoons, called “Sangeet Ke Anek Rang”. I don't get to listen to him much, but my wife does, and she is very appreciative of his program, because he really does research on his materials. He gives out a lot of background information about his “theme” of the day, be it a singer, a composer or an actor.

So, listening to the radio, as people did in the olden days, is alive and thriving even in this day of sophisticated technologies. From the two-way conversations that I hear in the radio clearly tells me that the recent first generation “Techies”, are very much in tune with it. I hope that EBC Radio, or any other Indian Radio for that matter, prospers with time, widens the timing of coverage and increases the range in distance for the benefit of commuters.

RADIO – A Commuter's Best Friend

Do you drink grapefruit juice?

By Guru Chakravarty

By Jerry GaMarsh

October 2012

Woke this morning, face was redGuess it's time to take my Pred.

Must eat first, I'll eat an egg,Hope Neurontin helps my leg.

Before I eat, I need to takeProtonix so my tummy won't quake.

In the kitchen, can't recallwhy I walked in here at all!Plaquenil is just the thing

for the brain fog that Lupus will bring.OH...the egg, that's right! But now

Can't remember where the oil is anyhow.Shrug, I'll just have some bread

Can't remember--did I take my med?I can now take Tylenol three

Makes me goofy, but pain-free.Now it's time for Aprazolam--

keeps me calm but WHAM! BAM!Trazadone will have to wait,Can't take that until it's late.

Guess I'll go and lie down too--Until the next time my meds are due.

[Unknown author]The above poem references an unknown individual who obviously has many

medical problems but taking this many medications could lead to even bigger problems. The question I would ask is “do these drugs interact with each other or with anything else this person might eat?”

It is a bit of a segway, and the title of this article may seem a bit bizarre but the answer to the question could kill you. Read on.

Amy Karch, R.N., M.S., of the School of Nursing at the University of Rochester Medical Center wrote a paper in 2004 concerning a man taking a statin drug who moved to Florida for the winter and began drinking two to three glasses of grapefruit juice each day. Two months after he had gone to Florida he suddenly had muscle pain, fatigue and fever, and went to the emergency room. He had become critically ill as a result of an interaction between grapefruit juice and his cholesterol-lowering medication. The patient ended up going into kidney failure and ultimately died. How did this happen? It is only one of a string of incompatibilities that may occur between grapefruit (and Seville oranges, tangelos and pomolos) and many prescription drugs on the market today.

Although doctors are unsure which of the chemicals in grapefruit is responsible for the problem, the most mentioned is furanocoumarin. It doesn't react with the statins but it does bind an enzyme in the intestines known as CYP3A4. This enzyme reduces the adsorption of certain medications. The result is that the medication passes from the gut to the bloodstream in some cases resulting in abnormally high and dangerous levels. The list of drugs affected this way is extensive and includes calcium channel blockers (Procardia), immunosuppressants (Cyclosporine), benzodiazepines (Valium) and psychiatric drugs like Zoloft.

While still on the subject of statins, it is interesting to note how many are unaware of the fact that statins interfere with the body's capability of producing CoQ10, a coenzyme required at virtually every level of enzymatic activity in the human body. CoQ10 also contributes to heart health by lowering triglyceride levels in the blood.

Turn to page 08

Ananda Sangbad8

Housing Options for Seniors

personalized medical care; their services are usually

limited to transportation, social activities, snacks and

meals and personal care. In some facilities, limited

amounts of therapeutic service are offered. Cost

depends on many factors, and insurance companies

may or may not pay for these services. Please check with

your insurance carr ier. Your social ser v ice

representative may be able to provide useful

information in this regard.

Continuing Care Retirement Communities

Continuing Care Retirement Communities

(CCRC) or Life Care Communities (LCC) offer “a

continuum of care options” in a residential campus

setting. Available housing and living (and health care

support) options can range from independent living to

assisted living, to skilled nursing homes and hospice

care facilities. Since these options are available in one

campus, individuals (and spouses) needing medical

support can move from one level of housing and living

option to another and then to another, if and when the

need arises for more intensive medical support.

Level 1: Independent Living:

Seniors who do not need yet need medical care but like

the idea of being in a “continuing care retirement

community” may find the option of renting a 1 or 2

bedroom apartment within such a community for

“independent living” – with the privilege of 24-hour on-

site supervision and worry-free maintenance. Such

living arrangements usually – but not always -- offer

meal service in a restaurant-like setting and laundry and

housecleaning help. Also included in monthly fees are

some social activities such as group recreation and

classes. Insurance, including Medicare, rarely pays for

this type of housing arrangement, and seniors must pay

rent (and optional charges, if any) from their own funds.

Average cost for independent living apartments in NJ is

in the $3500 to $4000/month ($42,000/year to

$48,000/year) range for a couple. In some

communities, a one-time initiation fee may be required

as well. While the monthly fee may appear steep, please

note that this kind of arrangement frees the senior and

his/her spouse from burdens such as property taxes and

home maintenance like lawn care, snow removal, etc.

Level 2: Assisted Living:

“Assisted living”, as the name suggests, is a

housing arrangement that offers apartment-style

housing with dining and housekeeping services -- and

personalized health care support (e.g., helping with

timely dispensation of medications) as well as

assistance with daily living tasks such as bathing,

grooming, dressing, eating, etc. While these kinds of

facilities provide “living assistance”, they do not offer

skilled medical support like nursing or physician visits.

Assisted living facilities can be found within Continuing

Care Facilities or as free-standing entities. Assisted living

quarters usually consist of 1 bedroom apartments – and

the healthy spouse is usually not allowed to live in these

apartments. Average cost in New Jersey is reportedly in

the range of $5000 to $5500per month for one adult

resident ($60,000 to $66,000/year). If the resident has

long term care insurance and qualifies under the terms

of his/her policy, the insurance carrier may pay a part or

all of the costs involved. Medicare usually does not

cover long term care in an assisted living facility. – Some

assisted living facilities offer specialized programs for

individuals with Alzheimer disease or other related

memory impairments.

Level 3: Nursing Homes

Nursing homes in most states are licensed,

regulated and certified by state agencies because they

offer not only room and board and personal care

support but also skilled medical service such as nursing

and protective supervision. Average cost of nursing

homes in New Jersey can be as much as $ 7500 per

month per person ($90,000/year). The cost depends

on the type of care needed:

sBasic Care: Personal Care, ambulation and

personal safety

s Skilled Care: Above plus regular services of a

registered nurse for medical procedures or treatments

s Sub-Acute Care: Above plus specialized service

for patients who has had acute medical condition and

needs greater support. (Service at this level is similar to

sub-acute rehabilitation care).

Medicare, Medicaid and private health

insurance may cover certain number of days of nursing

care. Amounts not reimbursed by insurance must be

paid from the patient's private funds.

Level 4: Hospice Care

When a patient reaches a stage when his/her

physician believes that the patient is likely to die within

six months from a terminal condition and continued

medical intervention will not benefit the patient, the

physician may recommend the patient go into hospice

care. Hospice care can be given at home, in a nursing

home or a hospice facility. The objective of hospice care

is to give the patient a compassionate and supportive

environment to spend his/her last weeks and months in

a dignified manner. No further medical treatment is

provided but pain management, spiritual support and

family interactions are encouraged so that the patient

may die as peacefully as conditions could possibly

permit. Usually hospice care is fully covered under

Medicare, Medicaid and most private insurance. There is

virtually no cost to the patient or the family for hospice

care.

Useful References:

“Alternatives for Seniors”, a comprehensive

booklet (approximately 100 pages in length), is

published twice a year by a company, Residential

Marketing Concepts, Inc. It lists numerous NJ-based

home healthcare services as well as facilities offering

adult day care, independent living, assistant living,

nursing home living and hospice care. Latest issue of

this booklet may be available in your local library or

senior citizen center. If you wish to get a personal copy,

please write to Alternatives for Seniors, PO Box 833,

Southfield, MI 48037-0833 (Phone: 800-350-0770).

Are there assisted living/nursing homes

catering to the dietary and other needs of the ethnic

Indian community in NJ? We are aware of one such

program at this time (no doubt more will come along in

the near future): ArtistaCare Indian Program. AristaCare

manages several continuing care retirement

communities, and in some of these communities (in

Alameda Center/Perth Amboy, Cedar Oaks/South

Plainfield, and in Whiting) they have launched a program

to provide long term care to ethnic Indians, while

providing Indian food, translators, entertainment, etc. If

you are interested, please contact Mukund Thakar,

President, AristaCare Indian Program (Cell: 732-829-

9178).

October 2012

By Debajyoti Chatterji

Continued from page 04 Continued from page 07

Do you drink grapefruit juice?

By Jerry GaMarsh

Significantly decreased levels of CoQ10 have been noted in a wide variety of diseases in both animal and human studies. A CoQ10 deficiency may be caused by insufficient dietary CoQ10, impairment in CoQ10 biosynthesis, excessive utilization of CoQ10 by the body, or any combination of the three. Insufficient levels of CoQ10 may result in liver damage, muscle weakness or nerve pain, which are all serious side effects experienced by more than a few individuals taking statin drugs.Medical conditions such as heart attack, cardiac arrhythmia, angina, hypertension, coronary heart diseases, congestive heart failure, and atherosclerosis have been associated with low levels of CoQ10. Dr. Mehmet Oz recommends 200 mg of CoQ10 daily for anyone using a statin drug.

But enough about statin drugs. Another problem you should be aware of is bacterial. Or to be precise, antibacterial. When you go to a doctor's office or are admitted to a hospital for treatment or surgery, a strange thing may happen. The treatment or a prescription may cause problems as bad as the original medical condition. Case in point: C. diff.

In the past few years I have had two family members and three friends who have had to deal with Clostridium difficile after surgery. The main problem stems from the antibiotics given post surgery to prevent infections. There are a myriad of different bacteria in the human intestinal system but the problem of C. diff is becoming more common, more serious and harder to treat. The irony is that only somewhere between one and three percent of healthy adults harbor small amounts of C. diff in the gut. Despite the insignificant numbers of this bacteria, over 300,000 cases of C. diff related diarrhea are reported each year in the United States. It is important to realize that C. diff can be transmitted to and spread by the hands, utensils and foods through poor hygiene practices. Moreover, although any antibiotic may create a suitable environment for

C. diff to establish itself and flourish, some of the most widely used antibiotics such as broad spectrum penicillins are also the most likely to alter gastrointestinal bacteria. When C. diff multiplies, it produces toxins that attack the lining of the colon resulting in diarrhea and inflammation. The symptoms may range from mild to severe and can progress to be life threatening, especially to those over 65 and patients already weakened by other medical conditions.

The good news is that many clinical studies have been done and after the offending drugs have been withdrawn, it has been found that probiotics reduce the risk of diarrhea from antibiotics. A review of over 60 clinical studies concluded that probiotics are associated with a 42% reduction in the risk of diarrhea due to antibiotic administration. These include Lactobacillus acidophilus and Lactobacillus casei which significantly reduced the incidence of C-diff and other antibiotic induced diarrheas.

All of the above may seem quite frightening and a bit out of the ordinary to the average reader but the matter of fact is that an informed patient is better prepared, along with the doctors involved, to make sound decisions concerning his or her health. Of primary importance is reading and understanding the instructions which the pharmacy includes with your prescription. Modern medicine has experienced a quantum leap in improving the general health of mankind as seen by an almost doubling of life expectancy in the past hundred years. And the really important news is that research into the treatment and control of cancer, heart disease and other life threatening conditions are ongoing with new findings being reported continually from Johns Hopkins, Mayo Clinic, Harvard Medical School and Tufts Medical School just to name a few.

But the point and bottom line of this article will remain the same. Be knowledgeable about your medications and medical condition.

It is your life.

“More equality and the equitable sharing of the planet's finite resources are our only chance to save the planet for the future.” -Kumi Naidoo, International Executive Director of Greenpeace

Greenpeace is an independent organization that is devoted to protecting our environment. It is active in 41 countries all over the world and has close to 2.8 million supporters. Greenpeace was started in 1971 when the founders of the organization came to know of the U.S. underground nuclear testing that was to take place at Amchitka, a tiny island off the West Coast of Alaska. So they sailed to Vancouver, Canada in a small fishing boat. They said they were going to "bear witness” to what would be done in this biodiverse area. The nuclear testing ended later that year and the island was later declared a bird sanctuary.

I worked with Greenpeace in New York for a month as a Frontline Representative. My job was to raise funds for Greenpeace campaigns and to spread awareness about issues that many of us know only vaguely about. The job involved fundraising on the sidewalks of one of the busiest cities in the world, which in itself was a huge challenge.

My first week at Greenpeace involved rigorous training and on and off site canvassing practice. Our first day began with an orientation on the background of Greenpeace and the motivation behind what the organization does. As frontline representatives, we had essentially the most fundamental job at Greenpeace: raise money for the campaigns and spread the word. The basic tenets of the job were developing basic canvassing skills and then honing them. Extensive practice on how to approach people and then pitch a campaign to that person was done.

We were divided into groups with experienced canvassers in each group. We worked on our body language (no slouching, always smile whether it is 90 degrees on the street or pouring rain). We were each asked to chose a campaign that we would pitch (mine was deforestation), and asked to develop a skeleton for our pitch. Once we had developed confidence in this, we went to canvas on site.

Warm ups were conducted (fun as well as challenging; pitching an experienced canvasser is the hardest thing to do!) and then we would start the day.

We were trained to work with people who would outright object to what we

were saying, and also trained to always be polite, no matter what! Various workshops were conducted by the more experienced canvassers, and training sessions were always open to anyone who wished to hone their skills.

I faced numerous challenges. Sometimes people would not stop at all; many would just show a lot of enthusiasm but not actually want to do anything about it. Many people assumed I was a hippie, and told me to “peace out”. But those challenges were immediately worth it when a passerby would stop, listen and then tell me that I was doing a great job.

During my time with Greenpeace, I also had the opportunity to go for outstation canvassing in Bar Harbor, Maine. Apart from the fact that the town itself was beautiful, I also learnt how to work with (in this case, pitch to) people from a different part of the country.

One of the methods that Greenpeace uses to campaign, and the one that I find most interesting, is creative advertising. When Greenpeace was campaigning against the toy company Mattel for contributing to deforestation, the advertisement (it can be viewed on You Tube) showed Ken telling Barbie how sad he was that she came in packaging made from endangered trees!

I had wonderful coworkers who never failed to cheer me up and always rallied around me. That is perhaps the most important thing that I learnt from the job: the fact that team spirit is always the best spirit. There was always a laugh, a pat on the back and words of encouragement. It was wonderful to be able to share your small personal triumphs with a group of dedicated young people who were doing what they could, everyday, to save the planet.

I started working with Greenpeace on the 4th day after arriving in the United States. I was always made to feel welcome, with my coworkers painstakingly explaining the subway system and showing me tourist spots in Manhattan.

As an environmental educationist, teacher and resource developer, I enjoyed my time with Greenpeace because I learnt more about how to put across ideas and issues to different types of people. I learnt how to command a person's interest (imagine speaking to someone on a sidewalk in Manhattan at rush hour!). It was an interesting way to begin my first visit to the United States and one that I am not likely to forget!

My Experiences With GreenpeaceBy Paroma Sengupta

Ananda Sangbad 9October 2012

Ananda Sandhya -A Monthly Evening SoireeReported By Arun Bhowmik & Guru Chakravarty

Recent Sahitya O Alochana Sessions at Ananda Mandir Reported By Subrata Bhaumik

Ananda Sandhya has truly

become one of the best

r e g u l a r l y s c h e d u l e d

programs at Ananda Mandir,

that involves not only the

music-loving members of the

community, but also the

young second generation

members who regularly

perform at these events.

Whereas the youngsters must

be coaxed or sometimes even

forced by the parents to come

to the puja events, the musical events do just the opposite. For this, generally, the

young students of music teachers are the main performers, so, they bring their parents

along, and so, everyone wins. Our Ananda Sandhya for July 20 featured the students of “SWARA SANGAM

MUSIC SCHOOL”, led by their talented teacher Sri Hemant Kulkarni. The musicians

started with a “Ganesh Bandana”, followed by different compositions in various ragas.

Sri Kulkarni concluded the program himself by presenting a beautiful Bhajan in raag

Bhairavi.On August 10, a day after Janmashtami, a lovely program titled

“Krishnaanjali” was presented during Ananda Sandhya by our second generation

musical talents. This was a tribute to Lord Krishna through music and dances. Jhumpa

choreographed the presentation. Participants were Jhumpa, Shontu, Renee, Egil,

Tanya, Malika, Adam, Shreya, Brinda, and Ria. On September 14th, a special Tabla Recital was presented by the young

Tabla students of our community. It is amazing to see the mastery they achieved with

able guidance from their gurus. Also bhajans and devotional songs were presented by

students of the renowned classical singer Mitali Bhawmik. In October, instead of Ananda Sandhya, we will do ANANDA PRABHAT in the

form of live “Mahishasura Mardini” (MAHALAYA program). That will be on October

14th at 5 am. This annual event has become the "signature" program at the Mandir in

the best tradition of starting off the Durga Puja celebrations.

Sahitya O Alochana is a monthly literary and topical discussion forum under the aegis of Ananda Mandir that endeavors to achieve its motto “Alochana Brings Good Things to Mind.” It held several exciting and thought provoking discussions in the June – August 2012 period. Given below are brief commentaries on those sessions.

June - This session featured a discussion about the works of Rohinton Mistry, the famous Canadian author of Indian origin who was on the Booker Prize shortlist for more than one time. The session was led by Debajyoti Chatterjee and covered most of Mistry's works, which are set in the Indian Parsee community that provides the backdrop for Mistry to develop characters in a tale. It was also noted in the discussion that he would often superimpose the larger Indian milieu on to the Parsee community, and, in the process, intricately paint “a view” of the cultural, social and political fault lines that confront the overall Indian society.

Excerpts from his international bestselling novels and famous short stories including “A Fine Balance,” “Family Matters,” and “Tales from Firozsha Baag” were also read in the session. It was a very good session and was attended by a robust crowd.

July – In the July session, the discussion explored how Philosophy, Theology and mathematical thinking have influenced each other in a variety of ways throughout history.

Specifically, the session examined, on a high level, such relationships and the extension of the geometrical concept of congruence amongst religions with special reference to epistemological work by Ludwig Wittengenstein, the famous Austrian/British philosopher and citation of similarities amongst religions of the world.

It was an interesting discussion, which was led by Dr. Salilesh Mukhopadhyay, a mathematician who wrote a book on the subject.

August – This session was one of the more heavily attended and acclaimed sessions thus far and was entitled "Portrait of the Bengali Mother in Bimal Kar's Janani and Other Short Stories."

The discussion included reading of “Janani”, the famous short story by Bimal Kar, and a review of this unconventional portrayal of mother, which is a far cry from the traditional concept of the role that is expected to arouse awe, reverence, and a sense of purity.

The discussion stirred up serious interactive exchanges amongst the participants who also expressed animated appreciation of such a rare portrayal of mother as an ordinary human being whose aspirations, actions, and emotions are not very different from those of an average person. It was a wonderful session that earned very positive feedback from a large number of attendees.Amitabha Bhagchi led the session.

Future sessions – Quite a few exciting sessions are in the pipeline for the next few months including one devoted to readings of original works by local writers, a presentation on the grammar of Bengali poetry, and a discussion on social media (Facebook), etc.

The friends of Sahitya O Alochana would like to thank Ananda Mandir for its continued support for the forum's contribution to the cultural enrichment of the local Bengali and Indian community.

Program by students of Hemant Kulkarni

Ananda Sangbad10

It was February 2011. Emotions ran high at a

set of very different headquarters in the city of Kolkata.

The then party in power was planning a massive rally at

the maidan, and a lot of effort was being put into the

event because it was the last major rally before the state

elections. At the Calcutta Ladies Golf Club, acting

captain Minakshi Chanda was frantically trying to save

her club's 9-hole course from the after-effects of rallies

held at the maidan, where the club's course was

situated. What had always happened in the past was

that on the morning of a rally, party supporters were

bussed into the city at about 6 a.m., and then left to

assemble at the maidan in the vicinity of the Ladies

Club's golf course. There they washed, cooked a meal,

and got ready for the day. All this ruined the green - the

grass was trampled upon so thoroughly that it generally

took from 5 to 6 months to grow back again. Also, litter

consisting of chicken feathers and a lot else was strewn

all over the place.

That February, Chanda was determined to save

her club's course from destruction. What increased her

resolve was the fact that the club was hosting The Gold

Cup Tournament that was coming up shortly, and, in

previous years, when big rallies had taken place just

before a tournament, the club had earned a bad name

for having an extremely poorly maintained course.

When Chanda visited the office of the party

then in power, she found the officials too busy to listen

to her entreaties. The rally was important because the

upcoming election was a particularly difficult one.

Besides, in a country beset by a myriad problems, the

major ones of which included the painful reality that

most people were not even able to afford a square meal

every day, golf and the state of the green at the maidan

were the last things on the officials' minds. To them,

golf was an elitist sport, and a curious piece of detritus

left over from colonial times. Their spokesperson had

said before to the press that if it was wrong for villagers

to converge on the maidan with their chire and gur then

it was also wrong for the ladies at the clubhouse to be

able to eat on the maidan, and that if it was wrong to dig

holes in the ground to erect stages, then it was equally

wrong to dig holes to play golf. Now their comment was,

“If the club members want to participate in the rally, we

will welcome them. If they want to eat, we will even

provide them food.”

S o C h a n d a w e n t t o s e e t h e J o i n t

Commissioner of Police. '”I want to save my club”, she

told him. He replied that he couldn't do anything alone,

and that the land belonged to Fort William. She would

have to get the help of the military. If they agreed to

help her, the police would do the same. At the offices of

the military's Bengal Division and Eastern Command,

the officers-in-charge agreed to help her, and so Chanda

went back to the police with the good news. At her

request, the day before the rally, the police cordoned off

the area with bamboo staves. So the police and military

headquarters were the third set of offices that were

abuzz with activity that February day before the rally.

On the Sunday on which the rally was held, the

police chief himself came to the Ladies Club and stayed

there from 6a.m. to 2 p.m. The maidan OC and the

maidan police, together with the military, guarded the

course all day, and Chanda, too, kept a close vigil on

what was happening. Meanwhile, the local press had

also given the story wide coverage and pointed out that

in 2007 the High Court had banned cooking in the open

within 3 km of Victoria Memorial, but that that hadn't

stopped any party from turning the maiden into a “giant

kitchen and parking zone” during rallies. Green activist

Subhas Dutta was also quoted as speaking about the

problem, and bemoaning the ravages that rallies in the

past had inflicted on the maidan.

But this time, the golf course of the ladies club

was spared destruction. Those attending the rally met

in the grounds of the Victoria Memorial instead. The

next morning, the Indian newspaper The Telegraph's

headline read: “Golf's V-Day is Victoria's Pain.” Many

club members, who usually avoided going to the club

after a rally, flocked to the maidan once they heard the

good news. The club's management had postponed

announcing the dates for the Gold Cup Tournament.

Now they proceeded to do so with alacrity. In another

statement to the press, Chanda told The Telegraph that

she believed that the party holding the rally had

“instructed its cadres to co-operate with the

administration” and spare her club. “We are thankful to

them”, she added. The police and military authorities

chimed in by saying that they had been able to prevent

the mauling of the green due to a “team effort”.

In the two rallies that followed, the Trinamul

victory rally in July last year and the same party's rally in

July this year, the Ladies Golf Club course was spared

again. Now Chanda feels confident that a lasting

precedent has been set for the future.

This whole episode raises a number of

interesting questions.

The first one deals with the game itself. In a

country like India, where the average monthly

household income is about Rs 5,000, golf is not a sport

that everyone can afford to indulge in. The fees that the

Ladies Club charges are much less than those of the

Royal Calcutta Golf Club, but they are steep

nevertheless. There is an entry fee of Rs 40,000 and a

monthly fee of Rs 350. Members also have to pay a daily

fee of Rs 30 whenever they play on the course. Of course

golf is a costly sport in any part of the world due to the

high maintenance fees that are required for the upkeep

of a golf course. But in a country where the disparity in

income between the different economic groups is so

stark, questions about maintaining such a sport are

bound to arise.

Then, though the Ladies Golf Club is part of

Kolkata's history, it is part of that portion of the country's

history that Indians would rather forget - its colonial

history. The club was established in 1891, a date which

will be remembered in the history of golf because

Calcutta's ladies club was the second women's golf club

to be established in the world and the first in Asia. But in

1891, Indians themselves were far more concerned with

other pressing matters like protesting the anti-Indian

proposals of the then Secretary of State for India, Lord

Cross. Then again, the club was formed by a group of

British women because women were not allowed to be

members of the Royal Calcutta Golf Club. But it was

membership for British women that was being

advocated- not Indian women.

But the arguments for keeping a golf club

going in a country like India are equally sound. Golf is an

internationally recognized sport, and so why should

Indians be discouraged from playing it. As for it being a

colonial sport, sports like cricket and football were also

introduced to the country by the British. Besides, in part

due to the pace at which it is played, golf is an

internationally recognized sport for people who have

achieved a certain degree of success in their careers.

This makes it an excellent game to play for networking

and other career and business-related purposes. Today,

some Indian businesswomen members of the club are

reported to be making use of these additional

opportunities as well.

Another factor on the plus side is that golf is

being brought to the masses in a wonderful way at the

Ladies Club. In 2009, golfer and coach Indrajit Bhalotia

started a golf academy called Protouch for youngsters

between the ages of eight to fourteen from Ek Prayaas, a

school for children from the slums. These children

come from homes that lack many basic necessities; but

they are being introduced to a sport that their parents

would never dream of being able to play. Bhalotia says

he is giving them a chance to learn a trade – that of

becoming caddies. These youngsters are given free

training and equipment, and for many of them, the

training makes them optimistic about what they can do

with their lives. In an India Today article, eleven-year-old

Tanishka, one of the children being trained by Bhalotia is

quoted as saying, “I love to play-----I want to be a

champion one day.”

Indrajit Bhalotia has taken the game to

children from the middle class as well. With the help of

golfer Vandana Agarwal, he has started a yearlong

program, also at the Ladies Golf Club, for children from

middle class families who would normally be exposed to

cricket. In order to enroll for the course, these children

do not need to have mothers who are members of the

club. They pay an annual fee of Rs 800, and they are

trained in the sport on the weekends. The equipment is

loaned to them free-of-cost. The Ladies Golf Club has

also hired Anwar Wahab, a reputed physical trainer, to

help train them.

Then there is the question of the preservation

of the maidan itself. This is a matter of vital importance.

The maidan has been called the “lungs of the city” for

obvious ecological reasons. Every city needs its parks

and stretches of green for climatic and environmental

purposes, and so it is good to note that green activists

like Subhas Dutta are concerned about the need to keep

the maidan's grass in good condition.

But political parties also have to be able to

hold rallies, and so require a place to assemble their

supporters. The use of the Victoria Memorial grounds

and the consequent devastation of those grounds is no

answer to the problem. It would be good for political

parties and the city authorities to work together towards

solving this problem.

The life of a city is constantly evolving and

things change with time. They have to. But there are

some needs that have to be addressed by the residents

themselves. Hopefully, this will remain an example of

an instance where an optimistic individual with a lot of

initiative like Chanda can initiate much needed change.

A Political Rally, Kolkata's Maidan & The Calcutta Ladies Golf Club By Jayashree Chatterjee

October 2012

Ananda Sangbad 11October 2012

Otho Google Uvacha By Sushmita Dutta

An exploratory report on Google Search

As enl ightening phrases in

Bhagavat Gita begin with “Otho Sanjaya

Uvacha” in Sanskrit, meaning “Thus Sanjaya

said”, Ananda Mandir priest Biswajyoti, with

his unique sense of humor said “Otho

Google Uvacha”, “Jai ho” when I presented a

report on “Sri-phal” after a quick Google

search. Google has become the most

popular search engine, which understands

Sanskrit words like Sri-phal and also

understands pure Bengali words like “Joba”,

“Shorshe begun” and “Alu Posto”. On joba

word search we get multiple links to the

flower pictures and related gardening

information and, of course, searches on

“Shorshe begun” and “Alu Posto” display

links to recipe web pages like “Bong Mom's

CookBook: Alu Posto and Musurir Dal for lunch…”

One of the most significant factors of Google search is the speed at which

search results are displayed. How does Google make this happen? What contributes to

Google's success? With some such notes, this is a special report on Google Search for

Ananda Sangbad readers. Enjoy!

First of all, what made Google so popular? Here is a very broad overview that

justifies a “market niche” where Google fits in very well.

From the Electro-mechanical era (1840 – 1940) when we first learned that

information could be converted into electrical impulses to our journey through the

discovery of punch card computing system introduced by IBM when we knew how to

store and retrieve information (the electronic era -1940 to present), we have come a

long way. Now, as Bill Gates terms it, we are living in an “Information Era.” The advent of

personal computers in the late 1970s and then the easy and cheap access to Internet

in the early 1990s brought about a change in our life style. We embraced technology in

our daily living. Crossing all borders, boundaries, races, classes and language barriers,

Global Communications Networking brought distant information to our desktops

making us information hungry. We realized the power of re-usable information, and

Google stepped into the scene just at the right time with a very dedicated and focused

goal – “To organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and

useful.” That's Google Corporation's mission statement, and I think that vision made

Google.com the world's best search engine site leaving competitors like MSN and

Yahoo far behind.

How does a search engine work? Without getting into technical

terminologies, I will make it rudimentarily simple for all readers to understand.

Google's co-founder and CEO, Larry Page, describes a search engine as one that

understands exactly what people mean and gives back exactly what people want.

Google delivers just that and here is a quick recap of how the Google search engine

mechanism works.

Search engine is a process that applies programs to search documents

related to specific keywords that are typed-in by an information seeker like you and I.

The search engine then displays documents that match the searched words. For

example, the word “Joba” has data linkages within the World Wide Web that archive the

flower pictures, nursery information, and even persons named Joba. And as such, a

whole bunch of information related to “Joba” is displayed on its search result page.

Fundamentally, a web search engine like Google.com helps find and retrieve

information from the vast repositories of information (data) that reside within the

World Wide Web. Searches through databases of web-based documents, site

locations, links, images, icons, videos and texts are initially gathered by a robot (a

program that runs automatically without human intervention) which returns

searched data over to a central repository where information is indexed and then

displayed over a searched result page. Such search engine automated programs are

called Crawlers, Ants or Spiders. There are some manual processes as well like human

submission of data and a hybrid of automated and manual processes.

A search engine crawler is an automated software, which is programmed to

visit web sites related to a search word; gather primary information and related

information (metadata - data related to data) from linked pages, sub-linked pages, and

sub-sub linked pages; analyze the way web pages relate to other pages; and then

return all that information to a central data repository. To make it more simplistic,

visualize yourself as a web search program

c a l le d ' C r a w le r. ' Yo u h a v e b e e n

programmed by your master called

'Google' to read the alpha-numeric

(alphabets and numbers) values of

searched words and then go around the

web (which has a defined boundary) to see

which web pages relate to the searched

words. You then locate web pages, their

associated links to many other web pages

housing a whole bunch of data on the

searched words and you return to Google

to deposit all that information over a data

repository. Your gathered information

containing links (URLs), text documents,

images, videos etc. are then indexed under

specific categories just like a library catalog for

ease of 'search finding' and then displayed over a search result page on search

requested by a user. That's how all web-based search engines work.

Here the term metadata needs a bit of clarification because it's one of the

key factors which help populate a searched result page. Search engine's automated

programs like Crawlers read primary information and information related to the

primary information (metadata). For example, our search words “Bengali Music” relate

to a list of sub-level information like Rabindra Sangeet, Shyama Sangeet, Baul etc. And

then sub-sub level information relates to Rabindra Sangeet artists, Shyama Sangeet

artists and Baul artists. Related information to these terms link to record companies

like HMV, SAREGAMA etc., and then further related layers of information include

linked web pages displaying availability, price tags, shopping carts etc. So, for two

searched words - “Bengali Music”, we see pages and pages of searched information.

If we type a word or a phrase which is probably unknown, Google relates the

search to already crawled and indexed links that match the typed words and displays

results. For example, I typed two very Bengali words - “Ogo Shuncho” and Google

instantly displayed information like – (this is funny) “Two lovers on a Chittagong

beach, gesturing towards the vendor: Ogo Shuncho” and then, “Shyer Sengupta's blog

- Ogo Shuncho”, and, link to a Bengali's Facebook page captioned “Ogo Shuncho.”

Amazing!

One may question reliability of searched documents provided by search

engines. No search engine, including Google, can be held responsible for linked

documents. In this era of freely available information with multiple views, opinions and

interpretations, one has to be a subject matter expert to make a distinction between

reliable and un-reliable content. However, Google does offer a service page where we

can report dead links, spam and objectionable content found on Google search result

pages.

What makes Google more efficient than others is the algorithm (defined

logical steps) applied to search engine programs like the crawlers ants or spiders.

Founded in California, Google has many other products besides Google.com that run

on web technology. With offices in more than 60 countries, 180 Internet domains,

Google search is available in more than 130 languages. People across the globe write

content in their own language contributing to the universality of Google.com. The

corporation's report says, “We build products that we hope will make the web better

and therefore your experience on the web better…we want to make it simpler and

faster for people to do what they want to online.”

One new addition that I found on Google's search page is interesting. For the

past several years, there has been a display on Google.com home page which reads “I

am feeling Lucky”. If you mouse-over that phrase now, you will see “I am feeling

puzzled”, “I am feeling playful”, “I am feeling hungry” and some more similar phrases.

I was curious to know about this and found that “I am feeling puzzled” links to puzzle

pages, “I am feeling playful” links to Google games and “I am feeling hungry” links to

restaurants which are paid information. Behind all these search results, there is a

money game somewhere. Google makes money from numerous search result paid

displays and advertisements, which are related to the search words that you and I type

not knowing that we are actually helping Google make money. As they say in

Economics, “There is no such thing as a free lunch” - whatever information Google

delivers to us is paid by someone, somewhere out there existing in our huge network

called the World Wide Web. Reap the benefit

With the wireless industry's expected boom, Google has launched a $120 million project to construct buildings screened against external radio waves, which can be used to test advanced wireless projects.

Ananda Sangbad12

Religious ToleranceBy Mandira Chattopadhyay

October 2012

Contrary to the seeming fundamentalist tone of the country, more and more Americans believe “many religions can lead to eternal life” according to a recent Newsweek article. Thirty percent of the Americans call themselves “spiritual, not religious.” The article goes on to quote the Rig Veda, "Truth is One, but the sages speak of it by many names." A Hindu believes that there are many paths to God, and that none is better than any other; all are equal. Such views are obviously at odds with the traditional conservative Christian Sunday school teaching that their religion is true and the others are false. From that perspective Jesus said, “I am the way, truth and the life. No one comes to the father except through me.”

Recently, I came back from a trip to Prague. I learned that defenestration (the act of throwing someone out of a window) was used in a number of occasions as a means of religious conversion. In 1419 the Hussites threw Catholics out the window for their beliefs. In 1618, when a Hapsburg-backed Catholic clergy tried to reclaim land under imperial order, members of the Czech Estates argued that it was not the church land and convicted two government officials, sentencing to throw them from the high castle windows. They landed on a pile of manure (some say this was divine intervention) and escaped serious injury. This defenestration has been captured in a lot of paintings in Prague. Today, people do not have to depend on piles of manure to save them from their religious beliefs.

While in Prague, I met two monks from the state of Kerala, India. They were traveling to Prague and a few other European cities to teach meditation. The monks reported that many were interested in Hinduism. They described their visits to the houses of a few Czech people who worshipped Lakshmi and Ganesha and explained that as a result of the Communist domination of the Czech people some years ago, they had quit going to church. I also met International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) supporters in Prague, who showed me how they were decorating the Ratha (the Holy chariot of Lord Krishna), for the upcoming Ratha Yatra (the journey on the chariot) on the Charles Bridge over the river.Likewise, far away in Africa, in Rwanda, the ethnic strife there has died down, but religious tolerance isn't assured. A filmmaker and journalist friend, Ananya, went to Rwanda this summer to see the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide fifteen years later. She discovered that Rwanda has become the safe ground for peace.

While working in Rwanda Ananya encountered other filmmakers and enjoyed conversing on controversial issues. They talked for a length of time about the ethnic intolerance between the Hutus and Tutsis, which they claimed has now come to an end. Nevertheless, at dinner she was surprised to hear a Christian Evangelist filmmaker suddenly comment “Let's all pray that we do not pay any respect to the elephant-headed god of India.” She could hardly believe such a bald insult stated so directly in her presence during an otherwise friendly setting. The insult infuriated Ananya so greatly that she immediately grabbed the filmmaker's plate and dumped the contents into the trashcan. Ananya's response caused uproar, but people really admired the courage and audacity of this young woman. “I will never allow this kind of derogatory remark from anybody especially since we have come to work as International filmmakers.”

Vltava

Though Hutus and Tutsis live in harmony, other forms of intolerance still

exist. Apparently, one or the other group will always try to assert an upper hand.

After the genocide, Rwanda government tried to erase the horror from peoples'

minds. Recently some TV programs tried to revive that story in form of fiction and

that has inspired some of the new filmmakers to remember the past. Ananya

received a scholarship from the government of Netherlands to find out what the

native Rwanda filmmakers are producing while still remaining in the fear of airing

that horror. The radio in Rwanda back in 1993 was dominated by the Hutu majority

who demonized the Tutsi minority leading to widespread fear and distrust. Now the

same radio has apparently become the instrument of peace and reconciliation. In

the eyes of the public, Rwanda is a peaceful country now, but do they have full

religious tolerance? The question isn't only for Rwanda, but for all countries and all

religions.

The recent shootings of six Sikhs, peacefully worshipping in their gurdwara,

in Oakcreek, Wisconsin by a gunman with ties to the white power movement show

that not all share in the apparently more tolerant mood of the nation. His motives

are a mystery, but it's clear he saw their temple as something alien, un-American.

The terrified visages of young children, men, and women were broadcast on

television. The children ran to warn the rest of the congregation. The women in the

kitchen were preparing the Langar, the communal vegetarian meal of daal, yogurt,

and roti, a staple of Sikh services.

While some of the children might eagerly change out of their Indian garb

into jeans, they likely enjoyed the tranquility and peacefulness of the women

draped in white, chanting hymns. A new generation of Indians seems able to pursue

western careers in such fields as law and medicine, and still maintain the Bhangra

beats of their heritage. No doubt some of their acquaintances object to overt signs

of difference, uneasy over those who dress and talk differently. It's hard to know how

to respond to such attitudes. They ask everyone to be more like them, forgetting

their own idiosyncrasies that they refuse to see as such. They believe everyone

should mold themselves to their ways and forget their own, forget those of their

parents--and their parents' parents. They believe everyone should forget their own

stories and accents, and take up those stories and accents that they feel more

familiar. Apparently, they feel it's easier to forget one's parents in order to blend in

better.

It is heartening to see that others in the surrounding areas in Oakdale were

quick to send their support: people of all skin colors and faiths gathered to hold vigil

with candles and white head scarves. The Sikh community was surprised by such

expressions from their neighbors, surprised by the profusion of flowers, well wishing

and even large sums of money. Thankfully, the shooter's hatred failed to destroy the

community. Rather than breaking it apart, he pulled them--and everyone--closer

together.

Summer Internship Program for College Students And High School Seniors

Ananda Mandir has launched Summer Internship for college students and high school seniors. This year it

recruited three interns in biological science area . It will continue recruiting the internship for the next year

again. The program will include learning and helping research works in the areas of biological science,

physical science and engineering at various laboratories in New Jersey. Additional internship opening will

be in the area of pharmacy in New York City. Some internships are paid, others are voluntary. Paid interns

have to be minimum 18 years old and US citizens or permanent residents. For the next year's internship,

application with resume indicating the area of internship interest should be sent to Dr. Pronoy Chatterjee,

e-mail: pkc_usa@yahoo.com by the Spring of next year.

Ananda Sangbad 13October 2012

SOUTH ASIAN THEATER FESTIVAL

Reported By Dipan Ray

Editor's Note: Dipan Ray may be contacted at

(info@epicactorsworkshop.com)

November 15, Thursday

Theater Festival Kick-off of SATF with a wine and

cheese reception, followed by a play reading

session in a workshop format, entitled, New Voices

from New Generation, directed by Gargi Mukherjee

and Sibusiso Mamba. This is an open-forum session

where the intent is to create a dialogue with our

youth and gain their feedback on the play. A free

event.

November 16, Friday

Panel Discussion with audience Q & A on Theater, a

Salve for a Repressed Society. A free event.

November 17, Saturday

Aadhe Adhure, written by Mohan Rakesh, directed

by Amol Palekar, and produced by Natyabharati of

Washington, DC

Gandhi and Sarahad, directed by Sailesh Trivedi,

produced by Shakuntal Arts, New Jersey

thNovember 18

Chaos Theory, written by Anuvab Pal, directed by

Veda Kumariguda, produced by Nazarra, a South

Asian Theater group in Columbia University

Bhopal, written by Rahul Varma, directed by

Joanna Sherman, produced by Bond Street Theater,

New York and Epic Actors' Workshop, New Jersey.

Ananda Mandir Board of Trustees has established

a program to recognize

Outstanding VolunteersIf you are a Life Member and believe

that someone deserves this recognition,

please feel free to e-mail nomination to

Pronoy Chatterjee

(pkc_usa@yahoo.com)Details of the program and the nomination

form can be seen in our website www.anandamandir.org

Ananda Mandir is pleased to announce the

launch of a program to award financial

grants to support

Community Service Projects aimed at helping the South Asian community in the Greater New Jersey area

Project Proposals Are Welcome From Organizations and Individuals

Please visit www.anandamandir.org

for program details and application requirements

or

Contact: Pronoy Chatterjee (pkc_usa@yahoo.com) or

Debajyoti Chatterji (debsmee572@gmail.com)

Ananda Sangbad14

Annual summer picnic of ICC was held on Sunday, 29th July at Loantaka

Brook Reservation, Morristown from 10AM to 4PM. This is the fourth time that we

went to this picnic spot. It is a very nice location with excellent facilities. The picnic

was free for the members, and for non-members there was a nominal charge.

Members came in flocks and enjoyed fun and food all day. There were soccer,

musical chair, children's race and other sports and games. The morning started with

jhal-muri, donuts and hot tea. Soon there was a variety of snacks available.

Meanwhile grills were fired up and juicy spicy chicken legs were on the grill. The day

was balmy but sunny. To alleviate the balminess there were four fans blowing air and

guests were at ease and relaxed. Around noon the kids lined up for hot dogs, chicken

drums and pasta. Adults had goat curry, hot parboiled rice, 'masoor daal' and green

salad on their menu. There were a variety of beverages. Post lunch there was ripe

watermelon to juice up the mouth, followed by ice-cream. We all enjoyed the ICC

picnic of 2012.

The Executive Committee is planning for the upcoming Durga Puja. Durga

Puja being the biggest event on the ICC calendar, the EC members are putting in

extra hours and efforts in making the event a grand success. This year our Durga Puja

will be taking place on Oct 27 and 28. We have started the process of fund-raising

through advertisements in our Annual Durga Puja brochure. The two-day

celebrations are being planned out in detail, prime artists are being lined up, menu is

being firmed up, and rehearsals are starting. E-mail announcements have gone out,

invitation cards are ready, and web site WWW.ICC-GS.ORG has been updated. We are

ready for the grand Puja. On behalf of the Indian Community Center of Garden State

(ICC-GS), I cordially invite all to our Durga Puja celebrations. There will be special

Bengali community dinner on both days. One of the biggest attractions will be the

cultural program with an exciting line-up of famous artists from Kolkata. So please

come, worship and enjoy.

I C C C o r n e rBy Prabir Sarkar

Lehrein: A Musical Extravaganza

On July 23rd of this year, NJPA embarked on a new venture: a singing

competition which was one of a kind. Lehrein 2012 was intended to bring together all

music enthusiasts to showcase their singing prowess in reality show style with high

drama and action.

The singers were grouped by age, the competition was open to all, and the

contestants could choose any genre and the song that best represents their vocal

abilities. There were about 35 participants in all and each was given a total of 4

minutes. The judges for the competition were Mr. Arun Bhowmik, Sharada Khadivalli

and Partha Sengupta who are all highly trained and well-known figures in Indian music

in the tri-state area. They were so overwhelmed with the amount of talent presented

to them that it was difficult for them to decide on the winners.

Part of the fascination of singing competitions is the lovely, flawed idea that you can

use to extrapolate the current and future states of music. And this is exactly what

happened when the contestants performed in this platform for discovering new

talent.

Avani Deshpande in the children's category won the coveted award for

singing “Jao, jao nand ke lala.” Her rendition to this Lata Mangeshkar classic with her

soft delicacy had everyone speechless.

raised in a

house full of music, where his love for singing was only encouraged. "My parents were

very much musical, and we always had music in the house," says Dharamrajan, who

grew up singing along popular songs and bhajans. His rendition of Shanakra Nada

Sarira Para in Telegu, a devotional offering to Lord Shiva with his scintillating

techniques and virtuosic flair mesmerized the judges and the audience alike. The

winners of this competition not only will get an opportunity to perform at future

community events, but received trophy and cash prizes.

However this was not all. The audience was then entertained by Torsha

Sarkar, an Indian idol finalist in an electrifying performance. Her energy and rocking

performance wowed the audience and had them dancing all along. Her melodious

voice had touched the hearts of Indian idols fans over the years.

Singing is not about being professional. It is about joy and expressing

yourself and NJPA will continue to work hard to increase the level of success and talent

in the competition year after year and intends to gather more support from the

community.

NJPA's Annual Picnic

We need to take an extra day off every now and then. Taking the time to

recharge the batteries – and this is exactly what NJPA family did in its traditional annual

family picnic on August 25. It was a time to rejuvenate the body and refocus the mind

at the beautiful pristine settings of Beechwoods Park in South Brunswick. A

combination of food, fun, gossip, reminiscence, and cementing of bonds makes this

picnic special and unique year after year.

NJPA has gone social. Please connect with us on Facebook (under NJPA

Parivar) and do not forget to check us on http:// njpa.net.

Looking forward to seeing you all at NJPA's Kali puja to be held on November th10 at Judd Elementary School, North Brunswick.

The winner in the adult category Subramanium Dharamrajan was

By Kankana Sengupta

N J PA C o r n e r

Kallol's summer picnic held on August 18, 2012 at the Merrill Park Grove 3C in Woodbridge Twp, New Jersey turned out to be a very successful event. Even though I could not be there myself physically due to my present health condition, I learnt from a few attendees that the event was quite enjoyable. One important point was that this year a larger number of younger generation members joined the picnic. I imagine our annual picnic's one big selling point is the quality and quantity of the food items. The elegant menus of breakfast, lunch, dinner, and the beverages that got served that day were fabulous. The merriment began at around 11 in the morning and lasted until dusk. The eagerness displayed by our participants for the sporting activities such as volleyball, cricket, and the musical chair was outstanding. The airwave was filled with contemporary music by our Committee DJ. Right before the evening dinner was served, the picnic committee very affably gave away various prizes to the children as well as the adults recognizing their skills and fervors.

Kallol's Durga Puja, the biggest event of the year, is scheduled to commence on Friday, Oct 19 and last through Sunday, Oct 21 at the Ukrainian Cultural Center in Somerset, New Jersey. Every year this three day event is the most impatiently awaited by our community members because it delivers the highest level of contentment to all of our friends and families. And with all the preparations going around, we are not expecting anything less this year. Mata Vandana during the day, community dinner in the afternoon, and variety entertainment programs in the evening are primarily the key features on which our Durga Puja activities are hinged on.

On the following Saturday, October 27, we will hold the Lakshmi Puja at the John E. Toolan Kiddie Keep Well Camp, Roosevelt Park, Edison, New Jersey. Like every year, it will be the experience of a pleasant evening as if being in a family circle surrounding.

Our last event of 2012, the New Year's Eve Party, will be held on December 31, Saturday. The venue for the event is not finalized yet, but the Executive Committee expects to settle the issue very soon. We promise it will be the pinnacle of thrill for the year, and thus a not-to-be missed event for anyone. All updates on our future activities will be regularly posted on the website www.kallol.com. So please visit this link every so often to stay informed, and please make your best attempt to join us at all our upcoming events. Stay well and enjoy the life.

Kallol Corner By Biman Bhatta

October 2012

Ananda Sangbad 15

Global Bengali Entrepreneurs Network

A Bold New InitiativeAnanda Sangbad readers may be interested to learn that an

ambitious initiative has been launched by a group of US-based Bengali entrepreneurs to promote investment and job creation in the land of our origin, Bengal.

Global Bengali Entrepreneurs Network (known as GBEN) is a not-for-profit, voluntary and non-political association of Bengali entrepreneurs across the globe. The primary objective of the organization is to facilitate informal networking opportunities among Resident and Non-Resident Bengali entrepreneurs worldwide with the sole purpose of building, expanding and fostering business ventures in Bengal. By 2015, the Global Bengali Entrepreneurs Network (GBEN) aspires to bring in at least:

? Ten small to medium size business ventures in Bengal, initiated and facilitated by GBEN

? A total $15M+ of investment in small to medium businesses in Bengal, facilitated by GBEN – and thus create 5000+ skilled and semi-skilled jobs in Bengal. For more information on GBEN, please visit www.globalben.org and register to get updates on the plans and activities of the organization. Additionally, GBEN is keen to receive your comments and ideas – and welcomes phone calls (855-257-9320) and email (pchakraborty@optonline.com).

Source – Pijush Chakraborty, Debol Gupta and Sanjoy Nandy - Entrepreneurs affiliated with GBEN

A m a n w i t h

vision and courage

p i o n e e r e d t h e

revolution. Mumbai,

called Bombay then,

had no idea of what

was about to take

place. On April 21,

1913, at the Olympia

theatre, Dadasaheb

Phalke premiered

the first ever full-

length film, Raja

Harishchandra. A silent film based on the legend of King Harishchandra,

it was released for the masses on May 3, 1913.

Ten decades have gone by. Today, the nation is paying a tribute

to the date that Phalke had immortalized with the first public screening

of his film. India being a nation where more than 1,000 films are made in

various languages every year, the medium's growth deserves a special

narration for those who wish to understand what cinema in the country

is all about.

Indian film industry was prolific in terms of the number of films

being made every year. But the man who showed the power of Indian

cinema to the world was the celebrated Bengali filmmaker Satyajit Ray.

Ray's epic Pather Panchali (1955) was awarded for being the 'Best

Human Document' at the 1956 Cannes Film Festival, establishing him

as a major international filmmaker. Till today, it is considered to be one

of the greatest films ever made. (Source – NGI Magazine )

WASHINGTON, September 5, 2012 – World Bank Group

President Jim Yong Kim today announced the appointment of

Kaushik Basu as the institution's new Chief Economist and Senior

Vice President.

Basu, an Indian national, most recently served as Chief

Economic Adviser of the Government of India, Ministry of Finance,

while on leave from his position as Professor of Economics and the C.

Marks Professor of International Studies at Cornell University. He also

served as Chairman of Cornell's Department of Economics and

Director of Cornell's Center for Analytic Economics and headed the

Program on Comparative Economic Development.

"Having worked in a Ministry of Finance, in addition to his

impressive academic achievements, Kaushik is uniquely suited to

help us offer evidence-based solutions and advice to client countries

and provide innovative excellence in leading our development

research,” said World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim.

“Kaushik brings first-hand experience from a developing country and

will be a terrific asset to the institution.”

Basu, who holds a PhD from the London School of

Economics, founded the Centre for Development Economics at the

Delhi School of Economics in 1992 and is a founding member of the

Madras School of Economics. He has held visiting professorial

positions at Harvard University, the Institute for Advanced Study,

Princeton University, the London School of Economics, and M.I.T.

Basu is a fellow of the Econometric Society and has been

awarded India's National Mahalanobis Memorial Award. In May 2008

the president of India awarded Basu one of the country's highest

civilian awards, the Padma Bhushan, for “distinguished service of

high order.”

Basu begins his term October 1, 2012.

Source: Press Release from World Bank

October 2012NEWS YOU MAY HAVE MISSED

CINEMA @ 100 Celebrating 100 Years of Indian Cinema

Ananda Mandir's membership category changes for the second quarter of 2012

World Bank Appoints Kaushik Basu Chief Economist

Ananda Sangbad16 October 2012

T h e A w a r d a n d Recognition Committee of the Board of Trustees of Ananda Mandir is pleased to announce that the board accepted and approved the committee's nomination of Manjuli Ray as the “Outstanding Volunteer” for the third quarter of 2012.

Manjuli Ray, popularly known as Manju di, had made Ananda Mandir her home and served as a very dedicated volunteer during its infancy. In the mid 1990s, she and her husband,

Late Nirmal Ray, both became involved in plans to build a Bengali cultural center in NJ. In 1998, they had moved to North Brunswick to be closer to Ananda Mandir, which they were both very eager to support. After Nirmal Ray passed away in 1999, she chose to stay in NJ, because she wanted to continue to volunteer at Ananda Mandir. Living alone, she spent almost all of her time working for Ananda Mandir at the time.

Manju di played a major role as a Founder, as Chairperson of Puja Committee, as Assistant Treasurer, and taking care of all rental activities by various cultural groups using Ananda Mandir's facilities. She also helped the construction committee for meeting financial commitments on time. A number of times, she showed up at Ananda Mandir at odd hours to write checks to the vendors, be it the concrete supplier who would not deliver the concrete to the site without receiving a check, or to attend to other emergencies. At other times, she would be called to open the door of Ananda Mandir to let people in for their cultural classes. Many of us got assignments almost every week from Manju di for Puja preparations. After pujas, Manju di collected money, always asking for extra donations.

Since 2005, Manjuli Ray is living in the Pacific Northwest, where her two children are settled. Health related issues made her children bring their mother near them. There would never be a more passionate advocate than Manju di for the success of Ananda Mandir.

The Board will continue to recognize one or two “Outstanding Volunteers,” every quarter selected from the nominations received from the Life Members of Ananda Mandir. The application form for nomination is available at www.anandamandir.org (see announcement elsewhere in this newsletter)

Outstanding Volunteer of Ananda Mandir

Manjuli Ray

Two well-known members of the Ananda Mandir community, Sudipta Bhawmik and the late Prabir Saha, were honored at the recently held North American Bengali Conference in Las Vegas, NV, with Distinguished Service Awards by the Cultural Association of Bengal, the

host organizers of the conference.

Sudipta Bhawmik, “the soulful voice of Bengali immigrants”, is a prolific playwright whose original works have been staged to rave reviews not only in many parts of the US but also in India. “Ron”, “Phera”, “Taconic Parkway”, “Rajar Chithi”, and “Cassandra – or the Story of a Chair” are just a few of his plays that have enthralled audiences everywhere. Sudipta is also an accomplished actor, director and cartoonist. An active participant in literary

panels and other activities, his pioneering blog, NYNJBengali.com, has attracted a large and loyal following. We congratulate Sudipta on the recognition given to him at NABC and wish him continued success in the future.

Prabir Saha was a tireless community leader who played central roles in organizing and nurturing many Bengali organizations in the NY-NJ area such as Ananda Mandir, Hindu Milan Mandir, ICC, and Cultural Association of Bengal (CAB). He held leadership positions in many of these organizations. His untimely death in 2011 left a big void in our community, and we miss him dearly. In honoring him posthumously, CAB brought honor to itself and to his memory.

Ananda Mandir Members Honored at NABC 2012

Sudipta Bhawmik

Late Prabir Saha

Reported By Debajyoti Chatterji