Latest news with #StXavier's
Time of India
03-08-2025
- Entertainment
- Time of India
Friendship Day goes old-school style in city
Ranchi: Friendship Day celebrations in Ranchi still carry the warmth of handwritten notes, friendship bands and quirky gifts, long before emojis and Instagram stories took over. Despite the digital wave, the city's youth and grown-ups continue to cherish old-school ways of celebrating friendship. Markets at Albert Ekka Chowk, GEL Church Complex, and Main Road were abuzz on Sunday with teenagers giggling over colourful bands, vintage-style greeting cards, and shelves lined up with mugs printed with quotes like "Partners in Crime" and "Yaari Forever." Arnav Mehta, a Class 12 student of St Xavier's, said, "I came here with my group just like we used to do in school. We didn't want WhatsApp messages this year; we're writing letters. It feels more personal." Shivani Kumari, a second-year B Com student, also said, "We've grown up seeing our seniors exchange bands and cards on the first Sunday of August. Even though we're in college now, the tradition still excites us. I bought scented pens to write individual notes." On the day, greeting card shops saw a welcome revival. At Firayalal, the tiny Archie's-style stalls were surrounded by school-goers and college students hunting for the perfect token of affection. "Friendship Day is that one occasion when cards sell more than phone covers. This year, handmade cards and quirky magnets are trending. I sold over 500 bands in just two days," said S K Tiwari, who runs a gift shop at the GEL Church shopping complex. Get the latest lifestyle updates on Times of India, along with Friendship Day wishes , messages and quotes !
Hindustan Times
28-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Hindustan Times
St Xavier's to celebrate Eunice de Souza's birth anniversary as Poetry Day
MUMBAI 'In dreams, I hack you,' wrote Eunice de Souza and dismantled millennia of Indian mother worship. She knew what she was doing. The face on the cover of 'Fix' (Newground), her first book of poetry, stared out at me in the mezzanine floor of New & Secondhand Book Centre and illuminated the space with its peculiar mix of self-knowledge and challenge. Eunice Desouza - Taught English Literature at St. Xavier's College - HT Photo It was such a special and privileged time, those decades at the close of the twentieth century. Bombay was a nest of singing birds; and its colleges were particularly blessed. Eunice was at St Xavier's; Adil Jussawalla had taught there for a few years. Saleem Peeradina ran an Open-Air Classroom at Sophia College. Nissim Ezekiel was at the University of Bombay. Elphinstone College had Vasant Abhaji Dahake. Jai Hind had Popati Hiranandani and Arjun Shad. Prabodh Parikh was at Mithibai College. You could be walking down the road one day, as I was, and meet Gieve Patel with someone you did not immediately recognise. 'Hello,' Gieve said. 'This is A K Ramanujan and we're on our way to see Nissim Ezekiel.' I had work to do so I told AK how much I admired his work and hurried away. It was stupidity, I should have gone and witnessed this meeting. But we were spoiled by our anytime access to these poets. Late in her life, I met Eunice de Souza at her home. There were parrots, dogs, cigarette smoke and junglee tea. (She had a way of creating Bohemia in Kalina, just as Jussawalla in his later years made a patch of Cuffe Parade into Narnia.) I told her I wanted to do a long interview about her poems and that quintessential Bombay novel, 'Dangerlok' and perhaps something on the great acts of documentation and retrieval that represented so much of her post-retirement life. She exhaled plumes of smoke and said, 'Somehow the writing doesn't seem to matter much now.' I was shocked but I managed to ask: 'What does then?' 'The teaching,' she said. 'That mattered then, it matters still.' 'Isn't that sweet?' sighs writer and publisher Meher Marfatia who was her student. 'I remember her being a mesmerising presence in class. If I were ill or otherwise prevented from attending her class, I would be resentful, counting every lost minute. It wouldn't be about notes or anything like that. It was about how she taught.' Lawyer Reshad Forbes remembers Eunice de Souza for her ability to recite poetry. 'I went out and bought a cassette of T S Eliot reciting 'The Wasteland'. She made poetry come alive; she recited it in a way that was so compelling, you were drawn into the recitation, into the poem. She made it impossible for me to read poetry quietly; I have to read it aloud.' It was the age of the teacher who brought you to literature but it was also the age of the teacher whose tongue was savage. If Dr (Miss) Mehroo Jussawalla could strike you down with 'Gog and Magog, the guardians of the underworld', Dr (Miss) Homai Shroff would eviscerate you with, 'Plum puddings who have achieved mobility through some Darwinian mystery'. 'Stuck dogs,' Eunice would grit out between clenched teeth. She introduced us to Sangam poetry and to Dorothy Parker. She gave us the gift of Jane Austen but she also would savage us. 'This is not a waiting room where you bide your time for marriage,' she would say. And add, 'Learn Chinese cooking instead, it will help your marriage,' says Imran Ali Khan, writer and scholar. From the vantage point of Elphinstone College, we watched with awe the boundaryless behaviour of Jussawalla and de Souza who spent evenings with their students. We were sometimes invited to Baug-e Sara where Dr (Ms) Soonu Kapadia lived for lunch ('There's strawberry fool for afters!') but that was about as Bacchanalian as it got. No nights out, no dive crawling. No wonder Eunice de Souza clashed time and again with the Jesuits—Ali Khan remembers her lighting up under a No Smoking sign—but they must have known how much the divine discontent that fuelled her was working to their advantage. Eunice inaugurated a publishing programme which brought out books of poetry; she ran a literary festival 'Ithaka', named for a Cavafy poem rather than the fabl'd city, but most of all, she dusted off literature and made it exciting. It was no longer something you studied, it was something you became, it invaded your being and changed you completely. You could not walk out of her class without wanting to be someone else, something else. Your city was now a wasteland, your boli carried traces of her drawl, and perhaps she block-printed her sense of style (striking in red and black with a necklace of skulls) into you too. St Xavier's College has made a magnificent gesture in recognising her birthday and celebrating it as a day of poetry. In that, it pays real tribute to the poet, the editor, the columnist, the novelist but most of all to that alchemist of the interior, the teacher Eunice de Souza was. (St Xavier's College Library celebrates Eunice de Souza's birth anniversary on August 1 as 'Poetry Day'. Venue: Reference library, 2nd floor, St Xavier's College. Time: 3pm)
Hindustan Times
21-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Hindustan Times
Diana Penty recalls being catcalled and elbowed in Mumbai trains during her college days: ‘It would scare me'
Actor Diana Penty recently opened up about how she was catcalled while travelling to college by local train. In an interview with Hauterrfly, the actor revealed how people used to elbow her during her commute and recalled facing body-shaming for being too skinny. (Also Read: Imtiaz Ali dropped Diana Penty from Ranbir Kapoor's Rockstar after 3 weeks of workshop; actor says 'he felt I wasn't…') Diana Penty recalls facing body shaming for being too skinny. When asked whether she had ever been touched inappropriately while travelling on a bus or in a crowd, Diana said, "I think every girl in Bombay has gone through this. To go to college, St Xavier's, I used to take the train—the central line from Byculla to VT—and then walk to college. There's catcalling, and people try to elbow you. It became a part of daily life. I was a very shy, underconfident, conscious and awkward girl. I would go into a shell. It would scare me. I didn't have the confidence to elbow back." Diana also recalled that from the time she was a child up until around six or seven years ago, she was skinny and faced body-shaming. "It scarred me. You're a child, and if people keep telling you, 'Oh, you're so skinny, you don't eat?' And some aunties would go up to my mother and say this. She used to get so irritated—like why wouldn't I feed my child? As a child, you start becoming conscious of the fact that you're too skinny. It was awful." She shared that her mother once took her to a paediatric dietician, who advised her to feed Diana six bananas a day—though she only managed four—and still, nothing changed. Diana revealed that she has spent her life trying to gain weight and not be as skinny. She recalled that she didn't use to wear sleeveless clothes and would keep layering up to fit in with others. Diana Penty's recent and upcoming films Diana is currently seen in the movie Detective Sherdil, which also stars Diljit Dosanjh, Boman Irani, Chunky Panday, and Banita Sandhu in lead roles. The film is available to stream on ZEE5. She will next be seen in Section 84, which also stars Amitabh Bachchan and Nimrat Kaur in lead roles. The release date for the film is yet to be announced.
Time of India
23-04-2025
- Sport
- Time of India
Shashruti is India's first amputee swimmer to conquer Palk Strait
1 2 Nagpur: Shashruti Vinayak Nakade added yet another first to her illustrious achievements by becoming India's first amputee swimmer to conquer the Palk Strait — an open sea swimming challenge covering 35km from Sri Lanka's Talaimannar to Tamil Nadu's Dhanushkodi. The 21-year-old from Nagpur took 11 hours and 5 minutes to complete the solo swimming challenge alongside para swimmer Ganesh Balaga of Andhra Pradesh. Both Shashruti and Ganesh were part of a group of Indian swimmers from Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, and West Bengal, who successfully completed the Palk Strait challenge in solo and relay teams, respectively. All the Indian swimmers participated in the challenge under the leadership of Arjuna Awardee and coach of the Indian para swimming team at the 2016 Rio Paralympic Games, Prasanta Karmakar. Born and raised in Nagpur, Shashruti completed her schooling at St Xavier's and Kendriya Vidyalaya, and is currently in her final year at Hislop College. In 2022, she represented India at the Asian Para Games and last year narrowly missed qualification in the triathlon event for the Paralympic Games.
