SLOBA NEWSLETTER

From the Secretary's Desk

It is a privilege to have the opportunity to write from this desk. It was quite a thrill to have been chosen the Secretary, when the going of the association is smooth. I thank Soumitra for paving the road for me, and the Secretaries to come. But let me be honest. I still think that he should have continued for some more days. But he preferred to be a Gavaskar than to be a Kapil Dev.

Let us discuss some business now. After having obtained the 80G exemption, the  association needs to spend 75% of its annual earnings. Hence like every year we have started with a deficit of about Rs. 18,000/- to keep the regular projects going. Hence for any new venture we take up, it has to be over and above the projected deficit. We have to keep in mind the Second National Congress of Jesuit Alumni / ae  in 1999 in Calcutta. We cannot  forget the launching of the second edition of the SLOBA Directory too. For all these, we need your suggestions and support.

I conclude by congratulating all of  you on the greatly successful Blood Donation Camp held on July 26, 1998 at our school campus, followed by the Annual Career Counseling  programme for the outgoing students on the 10th of August (St. Lawrence Day). Kindly extend your valuable support and participate in every possible way to make every SLOBA programme a resounding success.

Amitava Gupta 

From the Editor's Desk

That  SLOBA is a dynamic organisation is evident  from the upheavals it goes through from time to time. New faces come in with new enthusiasm and old ones put in only cursory appearances. The work of the association continues. What we were not prepared for all this while  was the inevitable but least thought of occurrence - that of bereavement. Subhabrata Sen, Vice President of SLOBA, a familiar face greatly loved, a sympathetic listener, a high achiever and above all the quintessential gentleman  is no more. He passed away on the 18th August 1998, succumbing to a fatal heart attack. Till the very last day of his life he was doing what he loved  to do, helping others organise events, gatherings and yes, their own lives.

Only at the time of writing this obituary do we realise how little we knew about him. He was always unassuming and of a very gentle disposition, so much so that his avuncular presence greatly belied his official stature. Humility was his forte and never ever did he even passingly mention his powers as an administrator of repute. At SLOBA we took his presence and goodwill for granted and his generosity a permanent feature to bank upon. We looked upon him more as a friend because of his genial nature.

He was associated with  SLOBA  since its early days and was a key  factor in the setting up   and administration of the Golden Jubilee Fund which disburses various  grants  to teachers and students.  Ever since the  Career Counselling  Programme was started by SLOBA for students of the school, his was but a familiar figure handing over the scholarship cheque to the Madhyamik topper from St. Lawrence. We are priviledged to have been honoured with his presence at our last programme on 10th August 1998.

Losses are sometimes made up but very often mankind is poorer for the passing away of a worthy son. Subhabrata Sen belonged to a generation which quietly did its work and did it well. This association of the old boys of the school is very definitely poorer for his absence. May his soul rest  in peace and may his family (he leaves behind his wife, his son and daughter in law) find courage to bear with the profound grief and shock at his untimely demise.

Early Life
Born in Muzzafarpur, Bihar, admitted to St. Gregory's School of Dhaka where his father was a      professor at the Dhaka University. In 1947 shifted to Patna alongwith his elder brother Satyabrata and admitted to St. Xavier's School.  Shifted to Calcutta and joined St. Lawrence in class VI in 1950. He completed his I. Sc. from St. Xavier's College, Calcutta.

Period of Study in St. Lawrence       1950 - 55

Graduation                                       B.E. (Metallurgy)
From  Bengal Engineering College, Shibpore
Retired as : GM (EDP) Industrial Investment Bank of India

Date joined SLOBA                          12th April 1986

COJAC NEWS

We take pleasure in enclosing the first COJAC Newsletter, the result of a combined effort from all the three alumni / ae associations in Calcutta.**

At SLOBA, we are committed to the cause of the proposed Federation and are taking an active role in the preparation of the Second National Congress in January 1999.

A regional meet of COJAC was held in Bokaro on October 11, 1998 at St. Xavier's School, Bokaro organised by BOXA (Bokaro Old Xaverians' Association) under the stewardship of
Fr. Bob Slattery s.j. From SLOBA a delegation of 5 including Fr. Wavreil s.j. took part in the deliberations which dealt, among other things, with the preparation of a draft constitution for the proposed Federation of Jesuit alumni / ae. Seven alumni / ae associations, SLOBA, SXCCAA, ALSOC, BOXA, AROX, Jamshedpur and Hazaribagh participated. The arrangements were superb and the meet was a grand success.

**    We regret our inability to post this newsletter here. We have plans to post future national federation newsletters on the Internet.

Newscorner

• SLOBA successfully organised a Blood Donation Camp in the school, the first ever, on Sunday, July 26 in the morning in which 54 volunteers participated. Members turned out in large numbers. Apart from the regulars, even spouses of some members came forward enthusiastically  to donate this most valuable gift of life. Special thanks must be given to Dr. Kingshuk Das, a Lawrencian and one of the very early and active members of SLOBA for co-ordinating with Life Care Blood Bank the entire mechanism and support personnel for the camp. A warm greeting of thanks to Flight Lieutenant L. Unni Krishnan of the Indian Armed Forces, another Lawrencian, as well for encouraging more than 20 donors from the NCC to participate. Thanks again to Pradip Gomes, Secretary of the Boarders' Association of St. Lawrence, who motivated a sizable number of Lawrencians to participate. Life Care Blood Bank is very actively associated with the treatment of Thallassemia  patients and a major part of the blood collected will go towards the treatment of children afflicted with the disease. SLOBA served refreshments for all donors on the day, expenses for which were partly financed by Life Care Blood Bank itself. For all donors, the donor and blood group cards are at the SLOBA office.

• The Blood Donation Camp at the School

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• Flight Lieutenant Unni Krishnan is a man of many virtues. Among other things, he runs his Maruti 800 car on LPG gas. And he does his bit for the NCC in these parts of the country. At SLOBA we thought of inviting him to the Career Counselling Programme for the students of the school who just completed their Madhyamik and Higher  Secondary examinations for a talk on a career with the Indian Armed Forces. The event was held on Monday, August 10, St. Lawrence Day. The other speakers for the evening were Mr. Subrata Sengupta, a senior and respected professional from the discipline of creative art and advertising who spoke on creative advertising as a career and Mr. Devashis Gupta of Aptech who is of course a familiar figure in the field of computer education as well as in the school itself. No prizes for guessing what he spoke on.

• Unni Krishnan speaks

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• SLOBA organised, for the fourth year in a row a Felicitation Programme for the successful candidates of the two board examinations along with the counselling programme. Satyaki Bandyopadhyay, a rank holder in the Madhyamik Pariksha was presented with a silver plaque from SLOBA for his achievement. Various other prizes were distributed. Refreshments were served for the guests and the students like other years. The glaring shortcoming of the  programme was the level of  participation from the students of the Higher Secondary section and most of  the teachers of the  school. Considering that the programme was held on a Monday greatly inconveniencing  members of SLOBA just  to ensure participation of  the teachers, the fact that very few teachers were present greatly upset  the members. We still have miles to go, it seems. This event, sadly, was to be the last for Late Subhabrata Sen who passed away shortly  afterwards.

• Felicitation Programme on 10th August 1999

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• Continuing on the good work of Mr. Devashis Gupta, Aptech held a demonstration on the  capabilities of the personal computer with multimedia for the students. The school is currently somewhat  handicapped by the lack of state of the art machines as well as competent  instructors. SLOBA is interacting with the school authorities towards setting up of more computers for the students with multimedia capabilities and Internet connectivity. Members who work with computers and the Internet will be called upon to spare sometime for the students to teach them the basics of multimedia and browsing. The multimedia demonstration by Aptech comes with a handsome donation from them to SLOBA to encourage our efforts. We thank them for their support.

• Mr. Devashis Gupta of APTECH

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• More on Internet news now. The SLOBA Website is currently under construction and will be put up shortly. We expect the site to hit the web by the middle of October 1998. Till such time we get a sponsor, the site will be hosted in one of the numerous free domains available. Watch out for details in the next newsletter. For those of you who have access to e-mail, there is good news. A list of SLOBA members  is being developed by Sushenjit Bandyopadhyay (he calls himself the "Gatekeeper of the Sloba list") at the address sloba_list@usa.net with about 30 odd members presently and more joining every week. Joining the list  is very simple. Just send in an e-mail to the above address with SUBSCRIBE as the subject header. You may keep the body of the letter blank. You will receive confirmation and instructions which are automated. Once you join, you can make postings to the list as well as get to see what the others are posting. You may also UNSUBSCRIBE anytime by the same process. This newsletter incidentally, is posted on the list for the benefit of the  subscribers. For corresponding with SLOBA you may also send an e-mail to sloba_cal@geocities.com and someone from the governing body will try to answer your questions. Get going folks.

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• We have taken up another ambitious venture at SLOBA, that of Computerising our records. The association is 12 years old and the task is Herculean. Yet it is essential to computerise the membership database prior to going on line. Happily, the SLOBA constitution is now available on a floppy and the membership database consisting of some 700 life members is also computerised. There has been some talk of bringing out a new directory of members. Admittedly, the information in the current directory is horribly outdated. Regrettably, even the members' ledger does not contain current data in many cases. We enclose a tear away section for the member to fill up and send back to the SLOBA office at the earliest so that records may be updated. As for the directory, publication of a full directory will    require major sponsorship. Till such time, the updated database in a floppy  will be made available to members on request for a nominal sum of RS. 30/- only. Please contact the SLOBA office for your copy. For the convenience of users, both these documents are maintained at the very basic level of data entry, that is, as a basic text file in either DOS or Windows and a dbf file in FoxPro. We hope the members will support us in our efforts and more than  anything else, respond promptly to the information mailer. Please help us to have all the information ready on the day of the Annual Reunion on Sunday, December 6, 1998. Details on the reunion are in the accompanying Annual Report for the year 1997-98.

Prithwish Chatterjee, who passed out of the school in 1995 (H.S.) writes :

One of the teachers of the school suggested  nearly  two years ago that  I  should  join SLOBA. To be a part and parcel of the school even after having passed out of the institution. I  joined and today  I consider it as an achievement  to be able to write a few words in the newsletter as the youngest  member of the  association. I  may not have the experience of some of our senior members but I  too have had  the opportunity to see the activities of the association from close range. A very cordial relationship with my elders has proved to be worthy in every respect.

The newsletters tell you of so many events like the Career Counselling, Blood Donation Camp, the Annual Picnic, the Cricket Match etc. which all go to show that the SLOBA calendar is filled with events throughout the year. In fact, from the time of the Golden Jubilee Celebrations, SLOBA is no longer restricted to just lending a helping hand to the school but has developed programs for both the school and its students as well as the members by itself on its own merits. I personally deeply appreciate the efforts of all of our members in the organising of such events.

There are three glaring shortcomings in the working of the organisation, however, and each related to the  other - that is what I feel. It really is sad that the teachers of the school by and large are not even remotely interested in SLOBA and its activities. This has another very serious fall out, boys just passing out are in the dark about the role the alumni association plays in the school. And again, from the point of view of the very young members, perhaps the association does not provide them with enough recreational activities which would interest them.

I believe that we should be mindful of the interests of these young boys so that we may enjoy the luxury of fledging numbers for SLOBA and  increase  interaction with the teachers at all levels. After all, the students and  the teachers come together to build the future and an alumni association can not flourish without the patronage of either.

• Contributions  towards the 13th Annual Reunion Dinner in the school premises on December 06, 1998 at 8.30 p.m. have been fixed at RS. 125/- per head. For children between the ages of 5 and 12, the contribution will be RS. 75/-  but for children below 5 years  no contributions are required. Kindly book your coupons early as dinner is organised only against confirmed  coupons. Dinner Coupons will be available at the SLOBA office on November 15, 22 & 29 between 11 a.m. and 12.30 p.m. and on December 1 & 2  between  5 p.m. and 7 p.m.  No coupons will be available after this.

• The SLOBA Annual Picnic will be held on January 03, 1999 Sunday at a cost of  RS. 100/- per head excluding transport. The venue will be announced later. If members desire that transport arrangements should also be made, please contact Mr. Asit Roy (Phone : 476 2658) for further details. Members are allowed to bring guests along. We look forward to an enthusiastic response.