The Befrienders of St Paul’s Cathedral

Kolkata’s Cathedral: St Paul’s

The iconic buildings and grand edifices of Kolkata are intricately woven within Kolkata’s cultural fabric. Much Kolkata’s character and attitude is shaped by these edifices, as much as its distinctive beauty. One such is the magnificent Pre-Raphaelite structure of St Paul’s Cathedral, the Diocese of Calcutta. Designed to resemble the 12^th century Canterbury Cathedral of England, St Paul’s was commissioned to replace St John’s Church as the cathedral for the growing European community in 1800s. With its majestic tower, stained glass windows, the grand Parish Hall, beautifully manicured garden and a well-stocked library, St Paul’s is one of the important landmarks on the face of Kolkata.

The Cathedral Friendship Centre

Since its inception, St Paul’s has been playing a seminal role in Kolkata’s cultural progression. With its patient kindness and love, it has always kept its doors open to all—the locals and the tourists, the pilgrims and the laity, the happy and the troubled, the young and the old. People came back time and time again in search of a safe house to St Paul’s Cathedral. The quiet walls of the cathedral beckoned many, and many came seeking peace, mercy, relief and love. Mostly people came seeking a friend to talk to, to seek some advice, to unburden.

Last year, after the painstaking efforts of Rev. Nigel Pope, the Presbyter-in-charge of the cathedral, St Paul’s Cathedral, in partnership with the St Peter’s Church of Derbyshire, and with incredible help from the Westminster Abbey, The Bishop of Derby, The Diocese of Derby and Ruth and Adrian Whitehall, set up the Cathedral Friendship Centre on 21^st August 2016.

The Friendly ‘Befrienders’

In this one year the Cathedral Friendship Centre has extended its friendship to several. People of all faiths or no faith, troubled or lonely can come to the centre to read, listen to music or talk to one of the wonderful ‘Befrienders’ (the volunteer friends from the Cathedral). Over this one year the befrienders have helped many, and many have, thus, come back to the centre to share their experiences and help the troubled.

The Friendship Centre with its befrienders and coordinator-in-charge remains open to all from Tuesday to Saturday. Mondays are off days and Sundays are half days.

Call it slow or call it old-fashioned with want of opportunities, Kolkata is more than a city of glitz, glamour and urbanised industrilization. Its beauty lies in its compassion, its simplicity and its warmth. Its history is as rich as its present—a proof that the edifice of St Paul’s and its community bear by itself.

Sanjha Chulcha Opens Kolkata’s First Food ATM For The Underprivileged

Want to donate food for the underprivileged? Join hands with Sanjha Chulha and donate food to Kolkata’s first food ATM and help feed the impoverished.

Food ATM

Wondering what’s a food ATM? Well, it’s a refrigerator which acts as a food bank that restaurants or food joints keep by the street to store excess food or leftovers that they give away to the needy or the underprivileged.

Sanjha Chulha’s Food ATM

Sanjha Chulcha restaurant in association with the Rotary Club, JITO and Round Table India launched a food ATM on this Independence Day as an innovative answer to food wastage and hunger. Come and leave your leftovers and excess food in this fridge, installed in front of Sanjha Chulcha’s Ladies Park outlet, for the needy. This fridge with an inbuilt camera helps the restaurant keep a tab of the space available for storing drop offs.

Budget Meals For The Needy

Keeping up with the spirit of feeding the impoverished, Sanjha Chulha has also launched budget meal packs, which customers can buy and donate to the poor and the hungry.

Come let’s get together with Sanjha Chulha and make the ‘Hunger Free Kolkata’ project a success.

Botswana's No 1 Ladies' Detective Agency

A few weeks back when a teacher of mine recommended me to read some of Alexander Mccall Smith’s writings, I set out to look for a book which will be best for me to step into his oeuvre with. So, I picked his 1998 released novel, The No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. Precious Ramotswe’s intelligence and affability combined with McCall Smith’s witty narrative got me hooked so much that by the end of this book I was itching to read the next instalment of the series.

Set in Botswana, The No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency is one of its kind in the entire country. Following her father’s death, Mma Ramotswe used her inheritance to set up a detective agency because she unwaveringly believes that ‘women understand what’s happening. They are the ones with the eyes.’ Ramotswe along with her assistant Mma Makutsi and a small white van set out to solve cases and help people ‘solve the mysteries in their lives’. Though business starts off slow with small cases involving con men, embezzlers and rebellious kids, it does not take too long to pick up momentum as the perceptive and quick-witted Mma Ramotswe bags important and high-profile cases in her kitty. Through the tribulations of the ingenious cases, cups of bush tea and Mr JLB Matekoni remain as constant friends to Mma Ramotswe.

Precious Ramotswe with her easy and patient demeanour and a keen understanding of the human psyche comes across as a detective, au naturel. Her progressive and feminist ideals does not come in conflict with her traditional African values, compassion and grace. She is a patient feminist who puts an arrogant man in his place with her intelligence and sharp wit and her amicable disposition. Mma Ramotswe is a confident woman who is not only sure of her looks and her colour, but also of her self and her identity as a feminist. She is unlike the stereotyped sleuths who are endowed with atypical qualities, for her judgement is tempered with compassion and human understanding—the Moretsi case for instance.

If Mma Ramotswe’s character is instrumental in keeping the readers glued to the book, McCall Smith's
narrative is no less in making the novel such a success. The narrative’s inspection of human character, foibles and pressing issues of the society is deceptively covert by Smith’s lucid language and easy humour. McCall Smith let’s his protagonist use sly humour to cut through chauvinism, patriarchy and superstition. The narrative is interspersed with actions from Mma Ramotswe’s curiously interesting present and thoughtful ruminations from flashes of her painful past, thus, striking a delicate balance of wit and philosophy, of humour and pathos.

While some may dismiss McCall Smith’s handling of the pressing social issues as trivial, it is undeniable that his protagonist, nonetheless, comes across as a nosy realist who hesitates for no two seconds before plunging headlong to address such issues in her own capacity. The plot doesn’t follow the whoddunnit genre, nor does it involve sensational crimes, indomitable criminals or the maddening chases. McCall Smith’s novel relishes the slow-paced life of Gabarone, the challenges that form the kernel of the mundane, and studies the foibles of human character in a different light, unlike most detective novels. The novel, at best, stands out as a optimistic and humorous commentary on human life, character and society. 

7 Things That Happen When You Go On A Social Media Cleanse

To go on a social media cleanse for a week is not everybody’s cuppa tea! It needs strength of will and character, and a really messed up mind for one to dare take up such a purifying task. 

So a week back, someone (read, someone special) I have taken a liking to did a brutal turnaround, and my peace of mind fell victim to a game of Russian 'Love' Roulette! I yearned for a comfortable place to wallow in and some dusting of ‘inner peace’! So I took to a week-long cleanse—a social media cleanse! 

But then starts the side effects. Here’s a few to be warned of.

1. Your fingers start twitching desperately. 

     

    Your fingers be like a druggie without your smartphone. You start missing the smooth touch of your 'smart ass' phone!

2. Notifications desert you.

You want to dismiss Bae! So you look forward to your bros and chickas to pump you up, between bouts of 'leave-me-alone-for-heaven's-sake' mode. But dammit! there's no scope for notifications. You are just left to syncing your email a dozen times in a minute. Self-esteem plummets at it's lowest low. 'I-am-not-important-enough' mode is on.

3. You become a sad, but creepy stalker.

You hope for crush to miss you, but there are no messages or calls! You are clueless. You roundly end up stalking your crush online (incognito mode). All social accounts stalked at least five times a day.

4. Dangers of drunk texting!

When you can't get enough of stalking your crush, you drunk text your crush! Well because all the other modes of stalking are just plain useless.

5. On the plus side, you get to eat warm food!

Social media absence accounts for zero fancy food photographs and the no risk of drool dripping out of your mouth. You enjoy lots of scrumptious satisfying meals that are eaten while still warm.

6. You undergo Selfie-withdrawal Complex.

A rather difficult problem, but you slowly start realising how much your skulking personality, racoon eyes and mopey looks are bad recipes for selfies. What do you do when your membership of the selfie nursery (social media platforms) have been taken away. You go to a shrink to get over 'selfie-withdrawal complex'.

7. The Epiphanic moment — Life is okay without Memes 

You suddenly realize the lame ass memes on social media are half as funny as the amazeball funny friends you have. You wonder how did you miss this for so long!