FLASHBACK

2011-2012

Annual Report by Deepali Aparajita (President, Gandhi Study Circle 2011-12)

From a state of mere passiveness to plunging into a string of activities, the Gandhi Study Circle had an eventful year. With the academic year beginning in the third week of July and every other college society getting busy with their activities by the fourth week (even before that!) itself, we seemed quite dysfunctional.  The lack of money, events, advisory problems and non-cooperative members made everything appear tough for the GSC. However, hard work and patience paid off and by the end of the academic year the Gandhi Study Circle, St. Stephen’s College had a couple of substantial events to boast of.

We ended our phase of dormancy by organizing a workshop on “love”, courtesy Pooja. The workshop was conducted by Mrs. Suman Khanna Aggarwal, the founder of a Gandhian NGO.  Both entertaining and educational, the workshop taught us the message underlying all the teachings of our beloved Bapu. With this, GSC witnessed the addition of twenty new members. Come the first week of September, the feminists had their bit of Gandhi-ism with Tanya getting Mrs. Prema Cariappa to give a lecture on “Development of Women in India”. From discussions on marginalization of women to the politicization of the familial domain, gender battles and so on- we discussed it all. As November approached, we had to get started with serious events, things that really mattered. It is then that we found Ashita, a student of Physics in college who works to make a difference in others’ lives. Thanks to Ashita, we screened a documentary titled, “Tales from the Margin”, based on Irom Sharmila and more importantly the women of Manipur who decided to fight the injustice caused by the AFSPA in the North-eastern states. The documentary screening was followed by a discussion on the same. The event was marked by participation of students from within as well as outside college.

And then came the end of the first semester in the academic year 2011-12. With everyone getting busy with examinations we were back to being inactive. The exams got over by December and Mahvish got busy with the journal work. The new semester brought with it new hopes, hopes for more and better events which included our annual fest, “Satya-2012”. We wanted to do something different this year for the fest, as Anuroop rightly put, “Last year people came and saw, this year they should come and learn”. Something new and substantial meant that we had to come up with a strong theme. After much thought we zeroed down to the theme, “Tribals and their marginalization over the years”. After deciding on the overarching framework, we had to chart out the events and get sponsors for the same (hats off to Pooja for all the hard work). We entered the fest mood with Asmita Theatre’s award winning play, ‘Ambedkar aur Gandhi’ performed in the college hall a couple of days prior to the Fest. (Juni used her organizational skills and got it done in two days).

 It was now that everyone started working harder than they could. And we found our guide in Ms Eva Loreng, our new staff advisor. After a lot of disappointments we tasted our bit of success with a talk by Ms. Medha Patkar and a panel discussion including eminent personalities like Mrs. Amita Baviskar, Mr. Harsh Mander, Mr.S.N. Sahu and Mr. Abhay Khakha (thanks to Anuroop, Pranav and Anshuman). We also had a Mao dance (a tribal dance form from Nagaland). Satya screened “To the Dream Mountain”, a documentary on the educational initiaves in the tribal dominated district of Wayanad in Kerala. This was followed by a discussion conducted by Arun D. Paul, again a Physicist from college, who has worked for the same cause. The quiz on socio-political issues in the seminar room stimulated the festive air with a brilliance unexpected! (courtesy Pranav and the ever so helpful students of first Economics).  

With the events mentioned above, a good fest and even better compliments from both the senior and the junior members, the year couldn’t have been better.  So much to learn over the months (the other members would agree with me) - hard work pays off, we don’t really need a lot of money to organize a good fest, and that Physicists do a lot more than just physics.

RANGZEN 2010