BHU’s Anviti Art Contest Imagines Future Worlds; Sanjay Mishra Listed for September 15 Closing

VARANASI: Students at Banaras Hindu University turned to imagined planets, green habitats and technology-filled cities for Rangon Ki Udaan, the painting competition held on Saturday, September 12, as part of Anviti Hindi Week.

The event took place in the Zoology Department’s SPRC Hall and was the fifth and final activity in the series organised by the Hindi Publication Committee. The closing ceremony remains ahead: actor Sanjay Mishra is listed as chief guest for September 15.

The paintings described in the competition account ranged from settlements on Mars in the year 2200 to cities dependent on oxygen cylinders. Other entries used green domes, robots, spacecraft, DNA spirals and plant-filled light bulbs to explore relationships between science and the environment.

These were speculative artworks. They should not be read as announcements of research projects, predictions endorsed by the university or demonstrations that the technologies pictured already exist.

Environmental questions in imagined settings

Some of the works placed human habitation beyond Earth; others brought the focus back to pollution and the conditions needed for a liveable city. The contrast between an oxygen-dependent urban landscape and a green habitat gave the exhibition’s imagined futures different directions.

The use of scientific motifs did not make the exercise a test of engineering plans. A DNA spiral or a spacecraft could function as an image through which a student developed an idea. The competition joined visual expression with themes already present in science education.

Swikriti Kumari, Shruti Pathak, Ankita Bind, Prachi Tiwari, Satya Rao and Vaishnavi Bajaj were among the participating artists named in the event account. No final ranking or prize list was supplied.

From poetry to painting

Anviti began on September 7 with Kavya Sarita. Katha Srijan followed on September 8, a debate on September 9 and the Gyan Prabha quiz on September 10. Saturday’s painting competition completed that sequence of activities.

The progression gave participants several forms in which to express an idea: a poem, a story, an argument, a quiz response and finally an image. Hindi Week therefore included a visual activity alongside programmes centred more directly on spoken or written language.

The closing is scheduled for 2.45 pm on Tuesday, September 15, in Mahamana Hall at the Science Faculty seminar complex. The programme also lists the launch of an issue of the magazine Achintya, themed Kshitij Se Pare.

Although the ceremony is associated with Hindi Diwas, its announced date is September 15; readers should not move it to September 14 by assumption. Mishra’s appearance and the magazine release are planned parts of that forthcoming event, not activities already completed at Saturday’s painting competition.