The Write Circle takes off in Jaipur

December 3, 2012: Instead of Saturday morning, I returned to Kolkata today morning. On Sunday, I initiated a new series in Jaipur called The Write Circle in association with DNA After Hours and Siyahi at the Hotel Rambagh Palace of Taj Group.

In fact, I did not fly back to Kolkata on Saturday morning as I would have had to come back again to Jaipur on the December 2 afternoon for this event and again take a flight to Kolkata the next day. I was in Jaipur only for the weekend.

The idea for this event came to me from the success of An Author's Afternoon in Kolkata and I decided to initiate this new series. The first guest at The Write Circle was Saleem Kidwai. The difference between the these two series The Author's Afternoon and The Write Circle is that while the number of guests invited are limited to around 25-30 in Kolkata, The Write Circle had about 60 guests.

We had actually planned for limited number of guests but since it was our first such event in Jaipur we were a little apprehensive on having adequate number of guests. It seems nearly 99 per cent of the invitees turned up to attend the event.

Shaking hands with legend Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar

I arrived in city from Jaipur today morning and went straight to Taj Bengal for the book release function (picture) of Pankaj: Bengal’s Forgotten Cricket Legend by Gautam Bhattacharya. The event started at 12 noon and thanks to Indigo Airline my flight landed 25 minutes before time. So I was at The Taj Bengal well in time to attend the event.

Besides Tollywood celebs, sports personalities of West Bengal, industrialists and Sourav Ganguly, Jagmohan Dalmia, the Captain of Indian Cricket Team, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, and the entire Indian team attended the event.

I, along with actress Rituparna Sengupta, presented a Sanatan Dinda painting of Mother Teresa to Sachin Tendulkar (picture) who was the Chief Guest of the function.

Sachin is very fond of Sanatan's paintings and has visited his studio many times. So I thought it was the right gift for the cricket legend.

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