At the `Twenty 20 Paintings’ exhibition

I arrived in Delhi this morning. I was planning to be here yesterday night but stayed back in Kolkata to attend the inaugural function of the exhibition of paintings on Mother Teresa at the Victoria Memorial Hall. The exhibition called Twenty 20 Paintings, organised by Victoria Memorial as a part of the year-long Centenary celebrations of Mother, had on display 20 paintings by M F Husain and Sunita Kumar respectively.

The West Bengal Governor M K Narayanan inaugurated the exhibition and Sister Nirmala was the chief guest. There was a gathering of about 100 people from around the city.

I met Husain’s daughter, Aqueela A Husain (picture). The exhibition was initially scheduled to be inaugurated by the Dalai Lama a few days back but had to be rescheduled due to his ill health.

At the exibition I met Naresh Kumar, Shamala Dudeja, Rita Bhimani, Mohan Chandran, general manager of Taj Bengal Hotel and his wife Seema, Zubin Songadhwala, general manager of ITC Sonar and his wife Monisha and others.

There were arrangements for high tea on the terrace outside the Hall where I met and had a chat with Madhu Neotia (picture).

Today evening, here in Delhi, I met Jawhar Sircar, IAS, Ministry of Culture, Government of India, Namita Gokhale and poet Ashok Chakradhar at the India International Centre (ICC) and discussed different issues with them.

In fact, meeting up all three was very much a part of my Delhi agenda and I was planning to call them up tomorrow to fix up appointments. But this chance meeting at the IIC saved me much time and effort. No wonder, I like this Centre so much.

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