Vice-President Hamid Ansari to visit Kolkata in February end

KOLKATA: Vice-President Hamid Ansari will be in Kolkata later this month for the three-day celebrations to mark the birth centenary of well-known poet, novelist and journalist Sachidananda Vatsayan Agyeya, popularly known as Ajneya. The event is being organized by the Prabha Khaitan Foundation between February 21 and 23.

Apart from the vice-president, who will be the chief guest, nearly 50 renowned literary personalities from across the country will attend the event. During the programme on February 22, Soumitra Chatterjee, Arpita Chatterjee and Moon Moon Sen will recite Ajneya’s poems. West Bengal governor M K Narayanan and others have also confirmed to be present at the event that is being organized in collaboration with the Sahitya Akademi and Raza Foundation.

Ajneya was born in 1911 and edited several newspapers before taking up a faculty position at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1965, he returned to India and became the founder editor of the newsweekly ‘Dinaman’ of The Times of India Group. He remained in India till 1968, before embarking on a trip to Europe. In 1969, he returned to Berkeley as Regents professor and continued there till June, 1970. After a stint at Heidelberg University, he returned to India. He was editor of Jayprakash Narayan’s ‘Everyman’s Weekly’ and editor-in-chief of ‘Navbharat Times’ between 1977 and 1980.

Hamid Ansari will attend the three-day celebrations to mark the birth centenary of well-known poet, novelist and journalist Sachidananda Vatsayan.

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