SOWMEN MITTER | সৌমেন মিটার

“ You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it. ” - Maya Angelou

Born: 26 September, 1820 Died: 29 July, 1890 Contributions Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar is considered as one of the pillars of Bengal renaissance. In other words, he managed to continue the reforms movement that was started by Raja Rammohun Roy. Vidyasagar was a well-known writer, intellectual and above all a staunch follower of humanity. He brought a revolution in the education system of Bengal. In his book, "Barno-Porichoy" (Introduction to the letter), Vidyasagar refined the Bengali language and made it accessible to the common strata of the society. The title 'Vidyasagar' (ocean of knowledge) was given to him due to his vast knowledge in almost all the subjects. Poet Michael Madhusudan Dutt while writing about Ishwar Chandra said: " The genius and wisdom of an ancient sage, the energy of an Englishman and the heart of a Bengali

"... In fields am I, where barbed wire now is coiling, And death goes whistling all adown the lea, Though even here the sky is black with starlings, They're starlings that have feathers made of steel. Here bombs explode, and the Sun's face is sullied, Here you can smell the blood and not the rose, It's not the dew that makes the thick grass humid, But human tears and blood that on it flow. Athwart the smoke I sometimes seek the sunlight, And with a bitter pang my heart will swell, Then on my hair the dewdrops will I sprinkle, Catching a droplet in a flower's bell. ......." - Mussa Jalil , ' The Joy of Spring '. An air strike early on Sunday (July 20, 2014) morning killed four people, including two children, according to medics [Courtesy:BBC / Story link: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-28389282] At the scene: Yolande Knell (BBC) [http://www.bbc.com/news/world-mi

Sonnet XCIV by William Shakespeare They that have power to hurt, and will do none, That do not do the thing they most do show, Who, moving others, are themselves as stone, Unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow; They rightly do inherit heaven's graces, And husband nature's riches from expense; They are the lords and owners of their faces, Others, but stewards of their excellence. The summer's flower is to the summer sweet, Though to itself, it only live and die, But if that flower with base infection meet, The basest weed outbraves his dignity: For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds; Lilies that fester, smell far worse than weeds.

On April 30, 1945, the day of Hitler’s suicide, a squad of American soldiers rolled up the driveway of a quaint, green-shuttered villa in the Alpine resort of Garmisch-Partenkirchen, in Bavaria, and found themselves face to face with the eighty-year-old composer and conductor Richard Strauss. “I am the composer of ‘Der Rosenkavalier’ and ‘Salome,’” Strauss said, in English. The G.I.s had intended to commandeer the house as a temporary headquarters. After listening to Strauss play excerpts from “Rosenkavalier” at the piano, they let him be, and moved on to another destination. .... The events of April 30th also shed light on the personality of Strauss, a supremely wily character who maintained a lofty position in German music through the Kaiserreich, the Weimar Republic, the Nazi regime, and beyond. He was often accused of opportunism, and the claim is not unjust: Strauss did what he needed to do to protect the sacred circle of his art, and, not incidentally,

“In the dark times Will there also be singing? Yes, there will also be singing. About the dark times.” ― Bertolt Brecht

"Had there really been any superpower presiding over the well-being of men, there would be no injustice or such grave disparities in people's lives and knaves would think for the umpteenth time before perpetrating a crime on a fellow human being. As for the religious-minded, well, I've nothing against or no issues with them. And though the religious teachers and preachers have more or less meant well, their efforts have largely drawn a blank. Their crusades and whatever they did to wean men from their inequities met with failure because their sermons were either hijacked or deliberately misinterpreted to perpetuate a system that allows the perpetrators to appropriate the benefits of other people's labour and to fool the latter into believing they would get it redressed in some afterlife or so."

"Governments like it that way.They want their people to see war as a drama of opposites, good and evil, 'them' and 'us', victory or defeat. But war is primarily NOT ABOUT VICTORY or DEFEAT, but about DEATH and INFLICTION OF DEATH. It represents the TOTAL FAILURE OF HUMAN SPIRIT. ...." - Robert Fisk

"I am not only a pacifist but a militant pacifist. I am willing to fight for peace. Nothing will end war unless the people themselves refuse to go to war." - Albert Einstein