Tete-a-tea takes off with Anurag Basu

With Anurag Basu

Trafalgar Suite, Hotel Windsor Manor (Bangalore): This luxury property of ITC has always been one of my favourites. There are four manor suites in the main wing of the hotel and then there is the Trafalgar which has a lawn that is open-ended on three sides. You can walk into the garden lawn from either sides of the suite.

I arrived here today afternoon to attend a lunch party that would be hosted in this very hotel tomorrow to celebrate the 50^th Birthday of my distant cousin and close friend Anil Kathotiya (pic).

Yesterday, the first in the series of a new event by Prabha Khaitan Foundation in association with The Oberoi Grand, Kolkata, and t2 (The Telegraph) which is called tete-a-tea got off with ace filmmaker Anurag Basu as the guest.

Since the successful launch of our other programme The Author's Afternoon, I was thinking of doing something on those line as many offers came in from different hotel properties. 
After discussions with t2 and The Oberoi Grand we have frozen this series which aims to provide a platform to people from different walks of life and professions, who are achievers in their respective fields of work and popular nationally and internationally, to come and share their life's experience.

Anurag Basu (picture) was the first one yesterday and Roopa Ganguly who rolled on the conversation that was later carried forward by Ina Puri. Among the selective guests invited were prominent persons from Tollywood. I was quite amazed by the statement made by Anurag that shooting in Bengal for an outsider is more expensive than shooting in Switzerland.

The event went off very well except for one thing which was not in good taste. This event was planned in association with t2 editorial only and thus no other media were invited.

But there was a minor confusion when a photographer from a competing media house turned up to cover it. Later I was told that Anurag did another event of cake mixing at the Oberoi  immediately after the tete-a-tea in which other mediapersons were invited. Probably that is why there other media person had mixed up the two events.

Honestly I had no clue about this “cake mixing” event. Once I return to Kolkata I shall sort it out with the hotel before carrying forward the series.

ess bee