MONOGOBBET SOCIETY is a group of conscious, logical fools who
have come together to form a unique society in Santiniketan in 2006.The main
motto of this society is to conduct series of meaningless GOBBET ADVENTURES in
and around Santiniketan from time to time. Monogobbet society is an open ended
society where anybody can come and join at any point and leave. In this respect the gobbets have declared 1st August as GOBBET DAY.
GOBBET DAY 2006
It started with the first community activity
of one minute solo silent mono acting competition “IN SEARCH OF THE VOICE OF
SANTINIKETAN” to find the ‘Santiniketan Idol’. The winner has to prove that he
loves Santiniketan the most.It was a performance competition where the
participants will have to perform in front of the camera which will be
projected LIVE in the screen placed infront of the audience.So audience cannot
see the performance physically .The audience were given three coloured paper
fans (each colour having specific grading).According to the public voting the grading
of each performance were evaluated. While the audience would grade the
performance the audience reactions were also projected in a separate screen
next to the performance projection screen. So both the audience and behind the
screen performance were viewed together. There were three awards,’Golden
Chhatim’, ‘Silver chhatim’ and ‘Only cchatim’( Chhatim or saptaparnior the
Devil tree, the tree with seven leaves is the iconic tree of Santiniketan and
during convocation only a chhatim leaves are given to the students in public ).
GOBBET DAY 2007
Second Gobbet day activity was around the
gobbet expedition of the 80years of trees planted during Vriksharopan festival,
the annual tree planting community activity initiated by Rabindranath Tagore in
1925 as part of the landscaping building and community building process. Visva
Bharati News the monthly newsletter of Visva Bharati has published news of this
activity regularly. A research was initiated to map the places where the trees
were planted since 1925 through Visva Bharati News.Then placards were generated
based on this news. Maps of Visva Bharati campus were printed with the
information of the locations where trees were planted and installed in
different strategic locations of the campus 2 -3 days before the expedition and
posters were distributed to different departments and public spaces in
Santiniketan for people to join in. So for three days students and community
members of Santiniketan searched the 80 trees that has been enlisted in the
Visva bharati newsletter since 1925.Environmentalist like Late Shayamali
Khastagir and others joined in to locate these trees.
GOBBET
DAY 2008
The
third Gobbet activity was more an intra Kala Bhavan activity where Gobbets
invited the students to “CLEAN YOUR OWN RAGGS” a kind of an anti ragging
activity where seniors and juniors joined together to clean each other.
Different forms of cleaning devices were designed by the gobbets. A cleaning
room was set up on Chatal the central stage in Kala Bhavana. The room had walls
made of images of Joseph Beuys cleaning the dust in front of the parliament and
also different meanings of rags and process of cleaning were mentioned. A
display board was placed where students can enroll their names whoever wants
clean them. So it was choice based cleaning. This was followed by a public
interaction on ragging between the senior students and the juniors.
GOBBET DAY 2014
Mono gobbet society organised the gobbet
garden “GARDEN IN YOUR HEAD”.Posters were issued in the campus to participate
in the design development for the gobbet garden. Then on 1st august
afternoon a workshop was initiated by the participants on gobbet head
gardening. Participants transformed their heads into individual gardens by
styling their hair in different garden plans with the help of plants and hair
styling. Then they made a march to different parts of the campus and read
excerpts from Tagore’s writings on landscape, nature and gardening.
