Lunch with Mumbai Mayor

I returned to Kolkata from Churu via Jaipur yesterday night. Today I hosted a lunch for the Mayor of Mumbai, Smt Shraddha Sridhar Jadhav (picture), who was in city on a day’s visit.

During an informal chit chat over lunch she expressed her views about the cleanliness and maintenance of the city drawing a comparison with Mumbai. The ex-Mayor of Mumbai, Nirmala Samant Prabhavalkar also joined us for the lunch. She is an advocate by profession and is also serving as a director in HUDCO besides being a trustee of the famous Siddhivinayak Mandir in Mumbai.

Before the lunch, I went to the Rabindra Sadan to pay my tributes to Rabindra Sangeet exponent Suchitra Mitra. She was the Lata Mangeshkar of Bengal. I had spoken to her on December 28th when I invited her for lunch the next day at The Taj Bengal.

I missed the classical evening organised by the Kolkata Police at Science City. Also missed the play Kabir by Shekhar Sen at the Town Hall organised by SREI. I was to watch the Shekhar Sen play Saheb at the Birla Sabhaghar on the 2nd of January but could not as I had to leave for Rajasthan. The felicitation function of Pandit Shankar Ghosh, who is the father of my friend Bickram Ghosh (picture), was also another of those great misses last week.

ess bee