The Case Of The Missing Woman

"My sister Rani is missing," Lini shared with the police-officer.

"Since when? When did you see her last?"

"Yesterday, Rani had spoken to me and said that she was at the Tram-station. She was coming home."

"What time had she called?"

"2:20 PM."

"We can check the CCTV coverage."

Photo Prompt- Rochelle Wisoff-Fields

Languages of Bharat - Bandhgala of I&B Minister at Cannes

Last week, I had shared how an upcoming Hindi movie's team did not feel it essential to showcase the sixth classical language of India - Odia, though they had well planned, projected and shown almost all the other official languages of India.

India has 22 official languages.

This week, it is great to see the Indian Bandhgala of the Information & Broadcasting Minister, Shri Anurag Singh Thakur.

It is a wonderful concept and showcases "Ek Bharat Shreshtha Bharat"- One India, Best India.

India boasts of 'unity in diversity".

There are six buttons where engraving has been done in six regional languages namely-

• Hindi
• Gujarati
• Urdu
• Bengali
• Punjabi
• Malayalam
• Tamil

Source

Whenever I see such lists, I look for Odisha. "Where is Odia?".

As India has 22 official languages, it is not possible to include all in such cases.

True that there is no Odia. We understand

Odia is the sixth classical language of India.

Only two classical languages have been included in this case namely- Malayalam  and Tamil.

Had the theme for this been "classical languages of India", then south would have got extra focus as most of the classical languages have southern links.

In that case, they would not have been truly representative of the the nation.

In order to do so and to portray Bharat, there has to be at least 1 language from 4 corners- East, West, North and South.

When there are only six buttons and choice has to be of six languages, usually only one is selected from eastern India. In 99% such cases, Bengali makes it to the list. 

Yes, Bengal and Bengali is considered representative of eastern India.

I want to know- 

Who decided which languages to include in this particular Bandhgala buttons case?

Someone must have made the tough decision.

What made her/him to select the above six only and why not the others? 

Under whose guidance/orders, did they do this?

These are just for my curiosity. Trying to understand why a language is excluded.

Would definitely love to see more inclusion of Odia and Odisha.

What about you? Would you like your mother-tongue to be included too?

Do share in the comments below.

The Missing Girl

Taani was missing.

Her family had last seen her in her own room.

They were sure that Taani had not gone out of their home.

-x-

Taani was working very hard on her college-assignment.

She had not slept the night before.

All she wanted was to complete her work and then take a break.

Time To Blow The Odisha Conch Shell

Consider this case-

There is a school excursion. The headmaster had invited most of the students for the outing. 

All the invited students had a great time together and were a part of the group video. That was shared via social media by the star student and generated great excitement. 

However, the few students, who had not been invited for the excursion, saw the video and felt hurt as they had been left out. Why did the headmaster or the teachers not include them? 

They were not sure whether this had been done intentionally or unintentionally by the headmaster. Why did the headmaster or staff treat them differently than the rest of the class? 

The ignored students and their supporters publicly confronted and complained to the headmaster, the staff and the star student involved. The aggrieved students threatened that they would adopt non-cooperation and boycott classes.

Seeing the quick condemnation, social media outrage, and the deluge of posts regarding this issue, the school-staff including the headmaster feared the loss of face and revenue i.e. school-fees. What if the ignored students really decided to quit school?