दोस्ती दोस्तों से क्या हसीन पहलू बयान करती हे, पतझड़ में सावन सा खिला करती हें,
लोग हमसे जला करते हें तो जला करे, हम तो लोगों के बीच भी दोस्तों को ढूंडा करते हें।
Pranab
Reshared by Puspita
मुलाकात किसीसे अनजान सी लगी, होंटो पे मुस्कान नकली और आँखे शरारती लगी,
खोए रहते हे सपनो की दुनिया में, मगर पहली बार हमे दोस्ती जरुरी सी लगी।
Pranab
Reverie
Some things are hard to pass off as memories. They are part of our system, very much alive, very much the “We”. If someone mentions the word school I find myself in DMS uniform in the sprawling campus , guarded by the eucalyptus, standing among friends under the huge banyan tree beside the gates. Feeling so protected… The assembly brings all the patriotism into your singing “hind des ke niwasi”, closing your eyes and in loud hoarse voice but “full di se”. Oh what a beautiful morning it is!! chatters on a world of topics, annihilates the noises of the heavy traffic outside. Enter Hanan sir, all quiet! His aura is such that the birds on the trees seem to stop chirruping and listen to his instructions laced with anecdotes. Meanwhile the fourth period starts and the food arrives in style. The big gates allowing our beloved foodie entourage to enter, much to the excitement of us, the royalty. The aroma and the tingling of the metal plates makes the restless all the more restive. No gourmet cuisine can match the flavours of our gupchup nana and sahu aluchop. Studies are the sad part ☹, not quite a good student but never having a regret about it. So engrossed I am in the playful atmosphere of the school that I am never thinking what I am going to do in future. Get low marks… baba says ”don’t worry, you ‘ll do better next time. I didn’t worry and the next time never came. The school picnics would stir up excitement of experiencing world tour, no studies before to decide as to how I am going to enjoy and no studies after just discussing how I enjoyed ☺ The phone rings. I look at myself. Where’s my uniform. My friends?..... Somewhere the voice of our monitor echos… ”three cheers for Karamanga team”, hip hip hurray!!! See didn’t I tell you, there is nothing called past…☺
Jyoti becomes nostalgic...
दोस्ती का मतलब हम क्या जाने, मतलबी दुनिया में हम जीते हें, हमसे कभी रूठ न जाना यारों, बस आप लोगों की वजह से ही इस दुनिया में जीते हें ।
Pranab
Archana, as Yashoda mai, sings about the divine friendship between Krishna and Sudama
ये हसीन रात यूं ही गुजर जाएगी, कल का सूरज नया पैगाम लेके आएगी, दिल का रिस्ता तो हमे दोस्तों से हे सालों (year) से नहीं, दोस्ती हमारी सलामत रहे और ये जिन्दगी यूँही गुजर जाएगी ।
Pranab
Dear Friends,
First of all wish you all again, a Very Happy and Prosperous New Year, to you and your families. With the Grace of Almighty may all your dreams come true...Lots of good wishes to all of you always...
I am so privileged to be a part of Dms 92. If I want to say something in one sentence, that is just I want to thank all of you from bottom of my heart for giving me an opportunity to be a part of this group. I can't express the moment when I was introduced into the group. It was about one year back, no one can measure the height of my happiness… thinking I got my school friends back, it was unbelievable for me. Never thought it can happen again but it has happened and I have found some divine souls in you who cares, who are concerned, who love and take care, who pray for others... So proud to see all these things…
Let me just share the most exciting moment of them all, the moment when I came to know about Vikram, who was traveling to New Zealand and visited me here in Dunedin. You all know I am insisting everyone to visit NZ. It’s not possible for everyone I know but I was always thinking at least someone will visit sometime… And that wish got fulfilled. One night I got a call from an unknown number. It was Vikram, out of the blue!!! and he was visiting New Zealand with his wife. It was such a great surprise for me. Next day they were at my place for a couple of hours. You can’t imagine how I was feeling…I was just out of world ☺ It was just like a dream...I met my school friend after 1992, after almost 24 years.
The best feeling now I have ... over and above being school friends, we all are human beings. So let's keep our friendship, our relationship binding forever. Let’s exchange and share our love, compassion, care & affection with each other. Hand in hand let's give our best to the suffering society ...Life is very precious let's make it more precious by sharing our happiness ... Love you all...
Thank you,
Wishing you the very best
Heartfelt message from Archana
आप जैसे दोस्त नहीं तो जिन्दगी मे क्या रह जाएगा, चलना हे बहुत दूर, अकेले हें तो जिन्दगी में क्या रहे जाएगा । जिन्दगी का सफर सबको अकेला तये करना हे, मगर आप जैसे दोस्तों का साथ हो तो रेगिस्तान में भी फूल खिल जाएगा ।
Rose Day जैसा कोई दिन नहीं होता है, सुंदरता का कोई मोल नहीं होता हे, ये तो बस खूबसूरत दिलों का प्यार जताने का तरीका हे, दोस्तों के दिल में खूबसूरत एहसास जगाने का तरीका हे ।
Pranab continues with his masterpieces
Dear Friends,
Today one year ago, we launched the 'Prabhatitara' website. Thanks to all of you, it is a living thriving entity.
It has been a journey worth remembering, of tear jerking nostalgic moments brought out and preserved in digital space, of grownups who melted down into their childish-selves in the company of school mates, of our childhood friends who opened up their hearts and left us enthralled and entranced in their soulful voices as they sang, sans inhibitions, of artists, poets & shayars who floored us with their talents, of adventurers whose wanderlust seeped into our veins as we watched (and sometimes tried to emulate) their journeys through nature's paradise...we saw it all and absolutely loved it...and the best part, it's all there for us all to go back and relive and continue reexperiencing as and when we find time from our busy adult lives, once in a while. And of course the explosion of GT's that happened in the foreground and got recorded for posterity, on the site.
The beginnings of the website and how it all took form...is an interesting combination of stories and 'stars-aligning'. I must mention Gyana as the primal source of the very idea of a website for our batch...perhaps going back to the days of dms92 yahoo group which he and Raghu admin'd. Then a tragic loss of lives, of our batchmates and that is perhaps where the idea of a website burst forth again...and of the dire need of everyone of us to stay in touch and try to reach out when somebody was in need, in future. Sometimes just the thought of collective association of kindred souls, is all we need to hold on to dear life, when all seems dark. Many of us realized it during those times. Several attempts were made to come up with ideas about the site and implement it...but gradually it faded away again.
Finally whatsapp came along (thanks to Ravi, Bishwa, Asish et al) and with it Gyana and the group founders went on overdrive trying to reach out to other batchmates and bringing them into the fold. Still remember the epic searches by some of our friends, to find long lost people and then the rip-roaring welcome traditions into whatsapp as each of them tiptoed back into the class. Simultaneously, through all these activities in whatsapp, the discussions on a website where we could store permanently all our memories, past and present, as a group, was being frenetically discussed and argued in the background. It was a tossup between building a site from ground up vs a plug & play type of website that had the programming/backup/maintenance, being managed by the site host and us working on the frontend layout and content. And we were again locked on which route to take. Having had a photo site of my own for over 5 years, I had a rudimentary idea of how the latter type sites worked and Gyana had some solid ideas on sections/layouts and themes. As we went back and forth and things came to a stand still...enter Vikram!!! who I feel, had the most critical role in turning the key to the launch of the website.
Vikram had a faint idea about our desire and discussions on building/launching a site. One evening, Vikram called me up and in a short 5 mins chat basically said..."Pratyush, just go ahead with whatever content and ideas you have and launch it, otherwise you guys will be endlessly discussing and nothing will materialize. Later you can think and modify". And that's it...I launched the site and sent you all the email announcing it. Later Gyana and I went through multiple iterations of the layout over few months (and the process continues till today) and redid the internals of the site several times to bring it to the form it is today. Throughout all this one thing we struggled on was, how to integrate a music section into the site. And this is where we reached out to Swastik and Prasanta for help. They told us about our options, how to create music videos and upload them. And thus came into being the Karamanga Team (with DB being brought in for his techie skills and deep interest in photography). Later we felt the team was lacking a female member's perspective, and requested Archana to join, who graciously accepted.
Some common traits run through all the Karamanga team members...minimal desire to be in the limelight while working studiously in the background (I unceremoniously hog the limelight always for the work everyone does!), passionate about some kind of hobby besides work and/or technically strong on ideas and trouble shooting. And lastly some degree of commitment to find time for the site related work. Would personally thank all of them for their time and effort on keeping this site going. Team members sign on to a covenant on joining and try to follow it to the extent possible. For those of you who haven't seen it, here's a snapshot of the covenant
Of these, I would highlight the last point, transparency with regards to money matters. Smugmug is a San Francisco based family run company of avid photographers and techies, that hosts our site, a paid site, and we make sure all the donations and spending related to it (Vikram, DB, Yashodhara, Sweta, Suhel, Gyana were the 1st year sponsors. Pragyan, Vikram, Suhel & Raghu were the sponsors for 2017...our sincere thanks to all of the donors) are accounted for and 100% visible to all Karamanga team members at any time.
All said and done, the site owes its continuing existence to you all, our DMS92 schoolies :) and I hope you will continue participating in the upkeep of the site by your content contributions, visits to the site and comments and opinions. We cannot go back to being together like in school but via this website, we can somewhat pretend to be together and be in touch with each other...that's the hope, rest is upto you all...
As Gyana put it so beautifully in one of his writeups... about the group in general "..like the Midnights children’s dream world dms92 is our dream world, a parallel world, which never sleeps, which is never serious, a never ending recess, you can get into its dream world any time you want to switch out from the real world.
This dms92 group is like the dream world of Midnight's Children…."
Let's visit this dream world as often as we can.
In the words of the famous poet Harivansh Rai Bachhan,
... धीरे धीरे उम्र कट जाती हे... जीवन यादों की पुस्तक बन जाती हे
... कभी किसीकी याद बहुत तड़पाती हे... और कभी यादों के सहारे जिन्दगी कट जाती हे
... किनारो पे सागर के खजाने नहीं आते... फिर जीवन मे दोस्त पुराने नहीं आते
... जी लो इन पलों को हस के दोस्तों... फिर लौट के दोस्ती के जमाने नहीं आते...
Some stats on "Prabhatitara" (consists of Smugmug and Wordpress sites) in its 1st year of existence
Smugmug site: ~37,000 unique site visits in one year, ~10 GB of content on the site (excluding content on the sister Wordpress site), 350+ embedded songs/monologues, ~2,700 photos uploaded
Wordpress site: 60+ posts, multiple followers/likes by bloggers across the globe (especially of our "Khantisuada" & "Shayari" sections)
Pratyush
Finally to end with a video of photo collages...
Recollections, reconnections & celebrations