This academic year, we the Team Prakriti(the environmental club of NIT Durgapur ) have had many exhilarating
moments, ups and downs, and finally we did accomplish what we’ve planned upon.
Here’s a brief summary of what happened at Prakrti.
The Events:
Green Art
The first event organized by Prakriti every year is Green
Art which has Essay Writing Competition, Poster Making Competition and
Photography. Fresh minds who just started their engineering career and the
other year students of this college were seen attending the event trying and
subsequently successful in voicing their thoughts and opinions about our nature
and environment. Poster Making Competition has witnessed participants from
Bihari More too and the ideas of those children were worth taking a look at. A
photo was shown on the spot for the Essay Writing Competition, based on which,
the participants wrote their essays. And yeah, we being the event coordinators
didn’t take a back seat. We enjoyed participating in spite of the fact that
they won’t be rewarded. We believe in the fact that the journey is what matters
the most, not the mere destination! And the treat from the final years after
the event is just priceless and adds to the aura of being a member of Prakriti.
Green Diwali:
I still remember the evening when we discussed if we should
venture upon conducting a new event, which is out of the book and many people
opposed the decision taking the proximity of exams and the turnout of public
into consideration. Nevertheless, the zeal to DO things and make things work
out of all odds made us embark into the event management and voila, it worked.
Gymkhana too collaborated with us when we reached dead end with the resources.
There were many participants in Rangoli Making Competition and utterly creative
ideas came into light taking the shape of clay in Diya-making Competition. The
event was a big success and it ended with us contently looking at all the
Rangolis and Diyas people made and remembering the evening the discussion for
Green Diwali started.
RUNIT:
RUNIT is a mini-marathon (6.4K run) for awareness among
public for the need to save earth from the exploitation man is causing on her
natural resources. This has been conducted on 16th Feb and the first
event by us in Even Semester and has been a delightful experience. The day
after Saraswati Puja, waking up groggy at 8am in the morning, in winter, on
Saturday, was a start for us. Faculty advisors of Prakriti club Prof Kalyan
Adhikari and Prof A.Gangopadhyay’s presence during the commencement of the
marathon added the vitality to the participants. The turnout of participants
has increased from last year’s RUNIT and waiting at the check points for those
runners to turn up and guiding them through the route, cheering them up to run
faster was like serendipity yielding bliss in work.
Campus Cleaning
Now this is one of the events we Earth Warriors are tagged,
by most of the inhabitants of this campus. We find this as a responsibility to
clean up our own home before trying to reform the whole wide world. Teams were
divided among which we along with volunteers from NSS have tried cleaning up
the campus from non-degradable plastic. And the commonest reactions from the
guys/gals who were assigned the Nescafe zone was- “Man! The number of coffee
cups seems to be more than the population of our campus!”
It is absolutely rhetorical, but, think again. Should it be
like this? I mean, whatever happened to the civic sense of us educated brains
in an engineering college?
One thing for sure is, that the one who was in Campus
Cleaning will surely make a note in one’s mind to not to litter the campus. And
that exactly is what we need!
“Be the change
you wish to see in this world”
----- Mahatma Gandhi
These events are followed by induction of new members into our club...the fellow 'greenengineers' we call them. So, the notices for auditions were put up and i'm not lying....i'm gonna be brutally honest; we expected at least 50 people for auditions and the result was a pitiful 20 students willing to be a part of the green club. This was a huge disappointment and the first round of interview happened with few of us trying to understand what the first year students think of us and our club followed by a decision taken to conduct a second round of auditions (which never happened before this year) for those who are selected in 1st round and this way we could expect more public (those who couldn't come for 1st round were also welcome to complete it). So finally the auditions of second round took place with an agenda to take people who are team workers and who are willing to work for the club. And it did turn out fruitful.
In order to ensure that, we asked the students to form into teams and discuss a new event that we could conduct and try to find the p's and q's of their ideas. This group discussion brought very innovative ideas of those fresh minds and the round was successful!
Finally we could find those 15 nature loving minds which could work for the club.
The new team of Prakriti formed finally.
Team Prakriti |
After this successful year at Prakriti, it became really hard to bid farewell to our final year members. And the jb treat from them was an awesome party and i shall never forget that day!
"Prakriti is not merely a club; its a family!"---this was told by our club 's ex-president on the day of farewell and she meant it by every single word which echoed all our voices that day!
Finally, it was such an awesome year and looking forward to another one with a new responsibility as a treasurer of this green club. Hope i could fill up the responsibilities and learn more things.
P.S. there are lot many moments with prakriti like the village trip we went on,the most appraised candle march on the day of 'Earth hour', the college magazine 'NATURA' , the valedictory ceremony.....this goes on and on...but i couldn't mention it above. Just one thing i can say..."it was fantabulous"!