With Lord Meghnad Desai in Jaipur

With Madhu, Nondon Bagchi and Chef Niru Gupta

Thursday, July 30, Jaipur: I shall leave for Kolkata today evening. I had gone to Kolkata from Delhi and spent a quiet Sunday at home. On Monday (July 27) we had the Recipe Rendezvous event with Niru Gupta who was in conversation with Nondon Bagchi at the Jhaal Farezi.
A economics graduate, Niru Gupta, has written nine books on cookery. She has hosted the popular television programme Khana Khazana and Meri Saheli. The three easy-to-make dishes which Niru gave a demo were til-e-paneer, pineapple and cheese salad and chilled lemon pie. All three were much appreciated by the mostly women guests.

With Lord Desai at the Write Circle

On Tuesday afternoon I took a flight from Kolkata to Jaipur and in the evening attended a private dinner hosted by Thakur Digvijay Singh and his wife Usha. It was nice of the couple to host this dinner for me which was long due.

Wednesday and today's morning were dedicated to Lord Meghnad Desai and his wife Lady Kishwar Desai. There was the unveiling of a book rack at the ITC Rajputana of the authors who participated in the Write Circle till date. Today morning Lord Meghnad Desai was the 20th guest author of Write Circle. 

At the Book Rack unveiling with Lord Desai

To mark this, all the 20 authors’ autographed books would be kept for ITC Rajputana’s guests in Jharokha.

The Book Rack unveiling event was changed at the last minute to a love story event between Nargis and Sunil Dutt after the arrival of Lord Meghnad Desai and Lady Kishwar in Jaipur. We decided that as Lord Meghnad will be giving a serious talk in tomorrow’s Write Circle event why not have something different. So I, along with Lady and Lord Desai, landed up reading the love letters between Sunil Dutta and Nargis, which, of course, was from the book “Darlingji” which is based on their life and written by Lady Kishwar Desai.

With Lady Kishwar and Lord Meghnad Desai

I must thank Jayshree Periwal’s school music teacher Sharon and their student Rajyashree Kanodia who helped us during the rehearsal just before the programme which turned out really well.

Post event, I hosted a small sit down dinner to meet and greet Lord and Lady Desai.

With Lady Kishwar Desai at the sit down dinner

Today morning, Irina Garg, an IRS Officer who is the Director General, National Institute of Marketing, Jaipur, under the Department of Agriculture & Cooperation, Ministry of Agriculture, Government of India, was in conversation with Lord Meghnad Desai. 

Irina is the wife of Shailendra Agarwal, IAS, Principal Secretary, Tourism, Art and Culture, Government of Rajasthan. It was very nice of her to agree to do the conversation and she is very well conversed with the books and subjects of Lord Desai.

I am flying back to Kolkata today. Here also I have a lot of work on my itinerary this weekend.

ess bee