Cuttack, Dec 6: The iconic East Hostel of Ravenshaw University is celebrating its Centenary on December 24 this year.

On the backdrop of this historic event, a number of creative initiatives are jointly taken up by the East Hostel Alumni Association (EAA) and its current boarders. One such programme is “Smruti ra Shathi Ghara”. Under this wonderful and unique initiative a team of alumni and boarders today visited the native place of late Sachidananda Routray, an exponent of Odia literature and esteemed alumni of the East Hostel, at Gurujang, near Khordha.

Routray is credited with penning many timeless and classic Odia poems and is well recognized with his poem “Chhota Mora Gan ti’’, which is a tribute to the rural culture and its apt literary depiction in simple and touching words.

Today’s event, which started around 12 o’clock, started with the team of alumni and boarders reaching Gurujang and they visited the birthplace of the distinguished poet. Remembering the poet’s historic and beautiful lines they collected the sacred soil from the village in a decorated pot. Villagers of Gurujang also welcomed the team and cooperated.

It would be pertinent to mention here that with this sacred soil a memorial pillar (Smruti Stambha) will be built on the campus of East Hostel. A memorial tree sapling will also be planted near the pillar. As a token of memory similar activities will also be taken up for other distinguished alumni of East Hostel in near future.

This unique and historic event was organized under the mentorship of a distinguished alumni of East Hostel and Income Tax Commissioner Manoranjan Panigrahi. In this event alumni Sashanka Sekhar Rout, Rudra Narayan Dhal Samanta, Santosh Sethi, Amit Sahoo, Professor of Orissa University of Agriculture Technology Prof. Sarbanarayan Mishra and general secretary of EAA Pratap Mohanty took active role. Current boarder of East Hostel Gourav Kumar Mallick and Sipun Kumar Sahoo also participated.

The entire programme was coordinated by the team leader of the outreach team of EAA Sambit Tripathy. From the “Sabuja Sahitya Samiti’’ its secretary Suraj Satapathy and the editor of East Hostel magazine Jagarana Subhrajit Swain also worked tirelessly to make the event a success.