Aastha exhibition

Today afternoon I visited an exhibition at the Taj Bengal banquets organised by a women’s organisation called Aastha. Every year, around this time, they organise this annual exhibition of home products, clothes, jewellery, cosmetics, gift items etc.

A small group of young women are involved with this organisation and honestly I was pleasantly surprised to see the exhibition as it was very different from the usual round-the-year exhibitions held at the Ice Skating Rink and the so-called hep designer wear exhibitions that draw more window shoppers than real buyers.

Aastha’s exhibition was very well organised and I could make out that the women who were there were more interested in buying then passing time or hanging around. Kolkata has many women’s organisations like Jyotirmay, Jagriti, Mahila Parishad, Marudhara etc., but somehow the younger generation is not involved in the decision making process and the organisations are by an large controlled by elderly ladies.

Aastha, for a change, is an organisation with young women at the forefront. I feel the city needs more organisations of this kind where the upper middle class and middle class ladies feel comfortable and direct their energies and efforts towards more fruitful social welfare activities.

Later in the afternoon, I had a meeting with Arindam, Agni and police officials at the Commissioner of Police’s room in Lal Bazar to streamline the process to provide medical facilities to the members of Pronam.

The officials of the hospital associations present were Mr P Tandon (Belle Vue Clinic), Mr D N Agarwal (AMRI Hospitals Limited), Mr R Barua (Calcutta Medical Research Institute), Dr Rupali Basu (Apollo Gleneagles Hospitals), Dr Aloke Roy and Mr R Udayan Lahiri (Medica Superspecialty Hospital).

Overall, it was a fruitful meeting. It was decided that one more meeting will be called on the 5^th of August evening with other representatives from major hospitals of Kolkata. It was also decided that Pronam annual function would be on held on Saturday 4^th of September at the Vidya Mandir. Previously it was slated for 1^st of October – observed as the World Elders Day by UN.

However, due to the Pujas, may be, we plan to have another program for the members and hence the change of the date to 4^th September.

ess bee