Michael Madhusudan Dutta

Infront of poet's house, Versailles, France

Michael Madhusudan Dutt or Michael Madhusudan Dutta (Bengali: মাইকেল মধুসূদন দত্ত )(25 January 1824 – 29 June 1873) was a popular 19th century Bengali poet and dramatist. He was born in Sagardari (Bengali: সাগরদাঁড়ি), on the bank of Kopotaksho [কপোতাক্ষ] River, a village in Keshobpur Upozila, Jessore District, East Bengal (now in Bangladesh).

His father was Rajnarayan Dutt, an eminent lawyer, and his mother was Jahnabi Devi. He was a pioneer of Bengali drama.

His famous work Meghnad Bodh Kavya (Bengali: মেঘনাদবধ কাব্য), is a tragic epic. It consists of nine cantos and is quite exceptional in Bengali literature both in terms of style and content. He also wrote poems about the sorrows and afflictions of love as spoken by women.

From an early age, Madhusudan desired to be an Englishman in form and manner. Born to a Hindu landed gentry family, he converted to Christianity to the ire of his family and adopted the first name, Michael.

However, he was to regret his desire for England and the Occident in later life when he talked ardently of his homeland as is seen in his poems and sonnets from this period.

Madhusudan is widely considered to be one of the greatest poets in Bengali literature and the father of Bangla sonnet. He pioneered what came to be called amitrakshar chhanda (blank verse). Dutt died in Kolkata, India on 29 June 1873.

In France

In his trip to Versailles, France during the 1860s, Madhusudan had to suffer the ignominy of penury and destitution. His friends back home, who had inspired him to cross the ocean in search of recognition, started ignoring him altogether. Perhaps his choice of a lavish lifestyle, coupled with a big ego that was openly hostile to native tradition, was partly to blame for his financial ruin.

Except for a very few well-wishers, he had to remain satisfied with many fair-weather friends. It may be argued, not without some obvious irony that during those days, his life oscillated, as it were, between the Scylla of stark poverty and the Charybdis of innumerable loans. He was head over heels in debt.

As he was not in a position to clear off his debts, he was very often threatened by imprisonment. Dutt was able to return home only due to the munificent generosity of Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar. For this, Dutt was to regard Vidyasagar as Dayar Sagar (meaning the ocean of kindness) for as long as he lived.

Madhusudan had cut off all connections with his parents, relatives and at times even with his closest friends, who more often than not were wont to regard him as an iconoclast and an outcast.

It was during the course of his sojourn in Europe that Madhusudan then realized his true identity. Perhaps for the first time in his life, he became aware of the colour of his skin and his native language.

Ennio Morricone

Ennio Morricone (born November 10, 1928) is an Italian composer and conductor, who wrote music to more than 500 motion pictures and television series, in a career lasting over 50 years. His scores have been included in over 20 award-winning film's as well as several symphonic and choral pieces. Morricone is most famous for his work in the Spaghetti Westerns directed by his friend Sergio Leone, including A Fistful of Dollars (1964), For a Few Dollars More (1965), The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966), and Once Upon a Time in the West (1968).Born in Rome, Italy Morricone took up the trumpet as a child and attended the National Academy of Santa Cecilia to take lessons on the instrument at the age of nine.

He formally entered a conservatory at the age of 12, enrolling in a four-year harmony programme. He received his trumpet diploma in 1946 and started working professionally, composing the music to "Il Mattino" ("The Morning").
Morricone soon gained popularity by writing his first background music for radio dramas and quickly moved into film.

Nella Fantasia....Oboe
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PygPri0-LNA&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oag1Dfa1e_E

Evangelos Odysseas Papathanassiou

Evangelos Odysseas Papathanassiou (born 29 March 1943) is a Greek composer of electronic, progressive, ambient, jazz, pop rock and orchestral music, under the artist name Vangelis. He is best known for his Academy Award-winning score for the film Chariots of Fire, and scores for the films Blade Runner, 1492: Conquest of Paradise and Alexander.

Vangelis was born 29 March 1943, near Volos, Greece. Largely a self-taught musician, he reportedly began composing at the age of four. He refused to take traditional piano lessons, and throughout his career did not have substantial knowledge of reading or writing musical notation.He studied painting—an art he still practises—at the Academy of Fine Arts in Athens. When he was six, Vangelis's parents enrolled him at a specialist music school in Athens. Vangelis said in an interview with Life, when asked about his lack of ability to read music:

"When the teachers asked me to play something, I would pretend that I was reading it and play from memory. I didn't fool them, but I didn't care."

Chariots of Fire....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKn9pB8YzKI

Claude Monet

Claude Monet (14 November 1840 – 5 December 1926) was a founder of French impressionist painting, and the most consistent and prolific practitioner of the movement's philosophy of expressing one's perceptions before nature, especially as applied to plein-air landscape painting.

The term Impressionism is derived from the title of his painting Impression, Sunrise (Impression, soleil levant).

At the beginning of May 1883, Monet and his large family rented a house and 2 acres (8,100 m²) from a local landowner. The house was situated near the main road between the towns of Vernon and Gasny at Giverny.

There was a barn that doubled as a painting studio, orchards and a small garden. The house was close enough to the local schools for the children to attend and the surrounding landscape offered many suitable motifs for Monet's work.

The family worked and built up the gardens and Monet's fortunes began to change for the better as his dealer Paul Durand-Ruel had increasing success in selling his paintings.

By November 1890, Monet was prosperous enough to buy the house, the surrounding buildings and the land for his gardens. During the 1890s, Monet built a greenhouse and a second studio, a spacious building well lit with skylights. Beginning in the 1880s and 1890s through the end of his life in 1926,

Monet worked on "series" paintings, in which a subject was depicted in varying light and weather conditions. His first series exhibited as such was of Haystacks, painted from different points of view and at different times of the day.

Fifteen of the paintings were exhibited at the Galerie Durand-Ruel in 1891. He later produced several series of paintings including: Rouen Cathedral, Poplars, the Parliament, Mornings on the Seine, and the Water Lilies that were painted on his property at Giverny.

Monet was fond of painting controlled nature: his own gardens in Giverny, with its water lilies, pond, and bridge. He also painted up and down the banks of the Seine, producing paintings such as Break-up of the ice on the Seine.

He wrote daily instructions to his gardener, precise designs and layouts for plantings, and invoices for his floral purchases and his collection of botany books. As Monet's wealth grew, his garden evolved. He remained its architect, even after he hired seven gardeners.

Between 1883 and 1908, Monet traveled to the Mediterranean, where he painted landmarks, landscapes, and seascapes, such as Bordighera. He painted an important series of paintings in Venice, Italy, and in London he painted two important series—views of Parliament and views of Charing Cross Bridge.

His second wife, Alice, died in 1911 and his oldest son Jean, who had married Alice's daughter Blanche, Monet's particular favourite, died in 1914. After his wife died, Blanche looked after and cared for him. It was during this time that Monet began to develop the first signs of cataracts.

During World War I, in which his younger son Michel served and his friend and admirer Clemenceau led the French nation, Monet painted a series of weeping willow trees as homage to the French fallen soldiers.

In 1923, he underwent two operations to remove his cataracts: the paintings done while the cataracts affected his vision have a general reddish tone, which is characteristic of the vision of cataract victims.

It may also be that after surgery he was able to see certain ultraviolet wavelengths of light that are normally excluded by the lens of the eye; this may have had an effect on the colors he perceived. After his operations he even repainted some of these paintings, with bluer water lilies than before.

The Palais Garnier or Opéra Garnier

The Palais Garnier or Opéra Garnier, is an elegant 1,979-seat opera house, which was built from 1860 to 1875 for the Paris Opera. The theatre was originally called the Salle des Capucines because of its location on the Boulevard des Capucines in the 9th arrondissement of Paris, but soon became known as the Palais Garnier in recognition of its opulence and its architect, Charles Garnier. The theatre was also often referred to as the Opéra de Paris or simply the Opéra. It was the primary home of the Paris Opera and its associated Paris Opera Ballet until 1989, when a new 2,700-seat house, the Opéra Bastille, with elaborate facilities for set and production changes, opened at the Place de la Bastille.The Palais Garnier is now primarily used by the company for ballet....

The show was about......

Lifar / Ratmansky

PHÈDRE / PSYCHÉ

Phèdre (originally Phèdre et Hippolyte) is a dramatic tragedy in five acts written in alexandrine verse by Jean Racine, first performed in 1677.Consumed by an uncontrollable passion for her young stepson and believing Theseus, her absent husband, to be dead, Phèdre confesses her darkest desires and enters the world of nightmare. When Theseus returns, alive and well, Phèdre, fearing exposure, accuses her stepson of rape. The result is carnage. ..... 28 Sept 2011.

The city gates of Paris

Visited the city gates of Paris ("portes de Paris") are the access points to the city for pedestrians and other road users. As Paris has had successive ring roads through the centuries, city gates are found inside the modern-day Paris.... 27 Sept 2011

The Château de Versailles

Vistied the Château de Versailles, which has been on UNESCO’s World Heritage List for 30 years, is one of the most beautiful achievements of 18th-century French art. The site began as Louis XIII’s hunting lodge before his son Louis XIV transformed and expanded it, moving the court and government of France to Versailles in 1682. Each of the three French kings who lived there until the French Revolution added improvements to make it more beautiful. .... 25 Sept 2010

” If you can survive, you must remember that I love you......”

After the Earthquake had subsided, when the rescuers reached the ruins of a young woman’s house, they saw her dead body through the cracks. But her pose was somehow strange that she knelt on her knees like a person was worshiping; her body was leaning forward, and her two hands were supporting by an object. The collapsed house had crashed her back and her head.

With so many difficulties, the leader of the rescuer team put his hand through a narrow gap on the wall to reach the woman’s body. He was hoping that this woman could be still alive. However, the cold and stiff body told him that she had passed away for sure.

He and the rest of the team left this house and were going to search the next collapsed building. For some reasons, the team leader was driven by a compelling force to go back to the ruin house of the dead woman. Again, he knelt down and used his had through the narrow cracks to search the little space under the dead body. Suddenly, he screamed with excitement,” A child! There is a child! “

The whole team worked together; carefully they removed the piles of ruined objects around the dead woman. There was a 3 months old little boy wrapped in a flowery blanket under his mother’s dead body. Obviously, the woman had made an ultimate sacrifice for saving her son. When her house was falling, she used her body to make a cover to protect her son. The little boy was still sleeping peacefully when the team leader picked him up.

The medical doctor came quickly to exam the little boy. After he opened the blanket, he saw a cell phone inside the blanket. There was a text message on the screen. It said,” If you can survive, you must remember that I love you.” This cell phone was passing around from one hand to another. Every body that read the message wept. ” If you can survive, you must remember that I love you.” Such is the mother’s love for her child!!

Thinking of starting a new blog to help people to learn C# programming

C# (pronounced see sharp) is a multi-paradigm programming language encompassing strong typing, imperative, declarative, functional, generic, object-oriented (class-based), and component-oriented programming disciplines. It was developed by Microsoft within its .NET initiative and later approved as a standard by Ecma (ECMA-334) and ISO (ISO/IEC 23270). C# is one of the programming languages designed for the Common Language Infrastructure.

C# is intended to be a simple, modern, general-purpose, object-oriented programming language. Its development team is led by Anders Hejlsberg. The most recent version is C# 4.0, which was released on April 12, 2010.

Trying to find out an easy way to present it.

Peace of soul

To help reduce tension which seems to dominate us everywhere, you can start by reducing your own pace. To do that you will need to slow down, quite down. Do not fume. Do not fret. Practise being peaceful. To win a race, row slowly or to work slowly and maintain the steady pace.

The way to happiness

Keep your heart free from hate, your mind from worry. Live simply, expect little, give much. Fill your life with love. Scatter sunshine. Forget self, think of others. Do as you would be done by. Try this for a week and you will be surprised.

As you read these words you may say: "There is nothing new in that." Indeed, there is something new in it if you have never tried it. When you start to practise it you will find it the newest, freshest and most astonishing method of happy and successful living you have ever used.

Developing a peaceful mind

Effective technique in developing a peaceful mind is the daily practise of silence. Go alone into the quietest place available to you and sit or lie down for 15 mins. and  practise the art of silence. Don't talk to anyone.

Create your own happiness

Who decide whether you shall be happy or unhappy? The answer - you do. You don't need to have any great secret to be happy. It's just as plain as the nose on your face. When you get up in the morning, you have two choices- either to be happy or to be unhappy. That may seem an over-simplification. Abraham Lincoln (whom nobody could accuse of being superficial) said that “People are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.”

Make a difference

I can't sleep tonight....
Can someone tell how to make a change?
I close my eyes and I can see a better day I got a vision, to make a difference.
And its starting today.
Cause I know there's sunshine behind that rain
I know there's good times behind that pain..........

Maathine’s Koop: Drinking water well. Now preserved as a symbol of sorrow and love after the death of Maathine.

In the beginning of the 20the century, a young handsome police officer in the British Indian Police named Mr.Dhiraj Kumar was posted to Teknaf thana.

Teknaf is a saline area; Drinking water was a problem all the time. Water well was only the source of drinking water which was situated in the thana campus.

Everyday, early in the morning Rakhine girls come to fetch water in the thana campus. The well was in front of Dhiraj quarter. Sitting with a cup of tea Dhiraj regularly watch the girls fetching water from the well.

One morning, the daughter of the local Rakhine Zamindar, Maathin, came to fetch water. She was stunningly beautiful. Dhiraj saw Maathine and Maathine saw Dhiraj. They were impressed each other. For them, it was love at first sight.

After that day, Maathine regularly come to thana campus to fetching water and to spend some romantic moments with Dhiraj. In this way both of them become very close and planning a happy life.

But highly respected Rakhine Zamindar family (Maathine’s family) refuses to accept Dhiraj, who was not from their community. But “real love recognizes no boundaries”. None can stop them. Time passes the romance and love between Maathine –Dhiraj ran deeper and deeper.

One day, Dhiraj got a telegram that he should come back to home to saw his father as he (father) was very ill. Dhiraj gave the news to Maathine and telling her that he will come back very soon but had to leave for home to saw his father. Maathine requested Dhiraj to marry her before he left teknaf, unless she will not let him go. Dhiraj tried to convince Mathine but he failed.

He took one month’s leave and one evening silently he left for Calcutta to saw his father. After some days, Maathine realized that it was not Dhiraj’s father illness rather it was Dhiraj’s indecision to marry her, he makes an excuses to see his father he left Teknaf silently.

She become nervous and can think of what to do. Always she was thinking about her Dhiraj. She stopped every thing, always absent minded and thinking stopped taking food and became sick. All the family members and her father and mother give all assurance to back Djiraj to her. But none could change her mind.

She regularly come and sits near the well in front of Dhiraj’s house and waited for beloved Dhiraj all day long from morning till evening hopping Dhiraj would return. Gradually she became frail and weak.

One day Maathine take her last breath, leaving her family members, father and mother, friends and the neighbours in great grief and sorrow. The only drinking water well of the Teknaf thana campus has become a symbol of sorrow and love after the death of Maathine The police authorities took measures to preserve the well naming it as “Maathine’s Koop”. When you visit Teknaf do not forget to drop a petal in “Maathine’s Koop”.

Teknaf is situated in the extreme southern tip of Bangladesh at the border of Myanmar and on the bank of river Naaf in the district Cox’s Bazar. From the capital Dhaka it is 490 km and from the district head quarter Cox’s Bazar it is 85 km away. It was a very back ward place in the beginning of the last century.