Sharodiya Shiksha

Durga Puja Holidays, College Campus. The Bhawanipur Education Society College (BESC) is one institution where the students are never found wanting for options. An academic version of the “city that never sleeps”, the BESC is choc-a-bloc with activities, 24X7.

Take Sharodiya Shiksha for example. When the city goes into euphoria mode, with everything but skeletal essential services grinded to a halt, the BESC remains not only open but offers a banquet of activity led courses that the students can avail of. Says Prof Dilip Shah, the Dean of Student Affairs of BESC and the spirit behind the much-acclaimed initiative SharodiyaSiksha, “for many students the long gap is a kind of a drag. They miss the campus life with many wanting to use the holidays to catch up on their studies, brushing up to overcome their weaknesses. Some of them also want to utilise the time to acquire new skill sets and it was to address this need of the students that the programme was originally conceived”.

 

 

That the programme has been a run-away success goes without saying and the current version is a case in point. As many as a hundred and fifty students participated in the different workshops that were organised for them, some of them taking part in multiple events. Rifle Shooting was the most attended activity, followed by makeup and Pool / Table Tennis. Other workshops that were conducted covered Guitar and Keyboard; Mandala; Photoshop; Modelling; Photography and Sculpture.

As is customary in the BESC, the workshops were conducted by experts drawn from their respective fields – professionals and practitioners as opposed to career teachers, which leads to a practical, hands on mode of training enjoyed by the students. The line-up of professionals who shared their experience with the students and help make Sharodiya Shiksha the success that it was included Brotodeb (Guitar and Keyboard); Seema Chaturvedi (Mandala); Miraj Ahmed (Photoshop); Rupesh Gandhi (Pool and Table Tennis); Geraldine Russell Ray (Modelling); Deepa Kumar (Makeup); Shoumya Shankar Ghoshal (Photography) and Art Rickshaw (Sculpture).

Said one of the visiting members of the faculty speaking for all, “I would not have believed had I not experienced the raw energy of the campus, that too during Durga Puja. The excitement was palpable, which extracted the best out of us and I am so glad that the BESC is showing the way forward in expanding the horizons of campus life. I am sure that all of us will look forward to being here again, and again”.

(This report has been filed by Souvik Das, Mayank Patwa, SonalBaid and Pratibha Singh, with camera persons Souvik Das, Anurag Sengupta, Nandita Pandey and Siddhant Jha of the Expressions collective of the BESC)