Theme personality for 12th International History and Heritage exhibition is Hemanta Mukherjee

The four-day 12th International History and Heritage exhibition will be held at Sabarna Sangrahasala in Barisha between February 5 to 8.

The exhibition will be organised by Sabarna Roy Choudhury Paribar Parishad in collaboration with the government of Nepal as Nepal is the theme country. The 28th edition of Saptarshi, a hand written family magazine, the only one of its kind in the country will be published during the exhibition.

The handicrafts of Nepal along with old currency notes as well as weapons will be displayed at the exhibition. There will be masks and wooden handicrafts from Nepal. There will also be audio visual shows on Nepal and its handicrafts.

There will be an interesting item at the exhibition entitled "Tupi diye jae chana." There will be caps and hats of 40 countries that will be displayed at the exhibition. The caps will help identify civilisations. It may be recalled that Dr Ambarish Mukherjee, a minister of Left Front government had a collection of more than 100 caps and he used to put on different varieties of caps. Hats were hot favourites of Subhas Chakraborty and in the last few years of his life, the former Sports minister in the Left Front government never made public appearance without wearing hats. The history of hats goes back to 3,000 BC when the male members of different tribes used to put on colourful caps made from straws and leaves.

The theme personality in this year' exhibition will be Hemanta Mukherjee in order to celebrate 80 years of Mukherjee's first disc which was published in 1937 when he was a boy of 17 years. The two Bengali songs included in the disc published by Columbia records are "Janite Jodi go tumi" and "Bolo go bolo more." There will be a display of 50 rare records of Hemanta Mukherjee including one published from Pakistan. In 1972, Mukherjee had visited Nepal to attend the coronation of Raja Virendra and had cut a disc which was printed in a post card. Debarshi Roy Choudhury, organising secretary of the exhibition said all the old records will be played with the help of two gramophones manufactured in 1922 and 1928.

There will be rare photos of Hemanta along with pages from his dairy, unpublished letters including the ones written to Pranab Roy. The stamps of Mukherjee will be displayed too.