NAGAON, July 3 - The people of Assam observe the birthday of Rupkonwar Jyoti Prasad Agarwala on June 17 but film maker and scholar Parthajit Borooah claims that he was born not on June 17 but on July 2.
Addressing mediapersons here recently, Parthajit Borooah informed that after visiting Edinburgh University in Scotland and going through the records there, he found that Jyoti Prasad was a student of that University in 1926 and and had mentioned his date of birth as July 2 in the admission forms there.
Parthajit Borooah is doing research at the National Film Archives and has won a number of awards in film making. Borooah also demanded that the Joyshree Cinema Hall at Nagaon which was formally inaugurated in 1944 be preserved. The construction work of the hall then known as Joyshree Talkies was started in 1938 by Jyoti Prasad. Later due to his ill health, his brother Hridayananda Agarwala took charge of running of the cinema hall.
It may be mentioned here that Jyotiprasad constructed the cinema hall by taking land on lease from the Gherawat family and named it after his eldest daughter Joyshree. Borooah demanded that the Joyshree Cinema Hall be converted into a cultural museum and appealed to Dhanpat Gherawat who is the present owner of the land to extend his help for the greater cause of cultural uplift of the State.
Short story writer Sibananda Kakati, cinematographer Mukut Bhuyan, Puniram Saikia, Dr Akashi Hazarika, Parvez Anwar and Homeswar Debsarma were present in the press meet.
All of them appealed to the State government and Nagaon MLA Rupok Sarma to take up positive steps regarding the preservation of the hall.
