Kolkata is loving ‘Tulsi rasgulla’
After securing a geographical indication tag for Bengal’s variant of rasgulla, sweetmeat manufacturers in the state are trying new variants of their loved sweetmeat, the latest being rasgulla flavoured with tulsi, which was unveiled in 25 stalls at ‘Ahare Bangla’, a five-day state-sponsored food festival being held at New Town Mela Grounds in the northeastern part of the city. While jaggery rasgullas, a winter speciality, are selling like hot cakes at sweet shops in the city, visitors to the food festival are satiating their taste buds with the new rasgulla variant after feasting on Russian and Chinese cuisine. Organisers of the festival say that the new rasgulla variant will soon hit the city markets.
‘Mermaid baby’ dies 4 hours after birth
A baby born with a normal upper body but fused legs and an underdeveloped pelvis, which made the lower part of its body resemble that of a mermaid, died four hours after birth at a Kolkata hospital. The rare condition, called ‘Sirenomelia’ or mermaid syndrome, affects one in one lakh births. This was believed to be the first such case in West Bengal and the second in the country. The gender of the baby, born to 23-year-old Kolkata resident Muskura Bibi, could not be identified due to its condition, which was not detected during pregnancy as the poor mother could not afford to undergo a scan.
Hundreds march for LGBTQIA rights
Hundreds of people besides members of the LGBTQIA community marched in the 16th edition of the Kolkata Rainbow March, demanding annulment of Section 377 of the constitution. They burnt copies of the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Bill 2016 in protest. Carrying a 40-metre-long rainbow flag, the participants marched from Deshapriya Park to Park Circus Maidan, playing music, dancing and shouting slogans. Started in 1999, one of the first such marches in South East Asia, the Kolkata Rainbow March has inspired similar events across the country and in South and South East Asia.
When a court summoned Tagore
Kolkata Police has shared on its Facebook page an incident from 1918 when Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore was summoned by a court to identify his pen, which was stolen from his residence in Jorasanko in north Kolkata and recovered by the police a few weeks later. Given the importance of the pen, with which he had written poems, songs and novels that won him the Nobel Prize in Literature five years before the theft. Though the pen was recovered, the law required the owner of the item to identify it in court. However, Tagore was spared the court hearing following an intervention by his admirer and police lawyer Sourindramohan Mukhopadhyay, who explained the entire episode to Presidency Magistrate Anisuzzaman Khan, who, in turn, tweaked the law, saying: “The law is made for the people. And there is only one Rabindranath among millions. If we bend the law a bit for his sake, I suppose it isn’t going to be a grave sin to commit.”
Aishik Chanda
Our correspondent in West Bengal chanda.aishik @gmail.com