Meetings all day

Thursday, May 3, 2012: I arrived in Delhi after a gap of few months and am having a series of meetings the whole day.

On Tuesday afternoon I met Ira Pande. She has very kindly agreed to translate my mother’s novel Ananya Si Ananya into English. Thanks to Namita Gokhale who has requested Ira for this.

I was very happy to hear Ira had agreed to do the translation as her mother Late Shivani, an author, knew my mother very well. When my mother Late Prabha Khaitan was alive, we had informally discussed that Ira was the best person to translate her biography.

After her death I had approached Ira but her hands were full since she was the Editor of India International Centre magazine. Somehow or the other the translation work got delayed and Ira recently retired from her job at IIC. She now has the time and has agreed to do the work.

I call this destiny. Though things were decided in advance, yet the English translation of the book got delayed by three years and at the end it has come to the same person.

Tuesday evening was a holiday and Namita Gokhale organised a dinner for me at her residence. She invited quite a few people known to me in Delhi – Urvashi Butalia, Sanjay Roy, Ira Pande, Ashok Vajpai and few others. I also met other prominent people from Delhi’s cultural world at the dinner. It was quite an enjoyable evening for me. My thanks to Namita for organizing it.

Namita was in Kolkata the day I and Mr Harsh Neotia hosted the dinner reception of Soumitra Chatterjee.

On Wednesday afternoon I met Urvashi Butalia over lunch. Urvashi got the Padma Shri last year. Currently, she runs a publication house called Zubaan which publishes women’s writings. It was a joint effort by Urvashi and Namita to persuade Ira to translate this book. Zubaan would be publishing the translated version.

On Wednesday afternoon, after meeting Urvashi, I had a meeting with Ina Puri and discussed with her the possibilities of an art exhibition of a bureaucrat friend in Jaipur whom I recently met.

This meeting was followed by yet another meeting with Ashok Maheshwari of Rajkamal. We discussed quite a few things, let’s see how it shapes up.

Today afternoon I had a meeting with Jawhar Sircar in his new office as CEO of Prasar Bharati.

Today evening I will attend the National Film Awards function at Vigyan Bhavan.
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