The Hindu Business Line : Bangladesh comes to Mumbai

When streets were jam-packed with preparations for the final Ganeshotsav immersions, people made it through the traffic jams to at least three celeb-packed events in Mumbai.

With the festive season having set the city abuzz, these have been rather busy times for the Page 3 people. Last Sunday, when streets were jam-packed with preparations for the final Ganeshotsav immersions, people made it through the traffic jams to at least three celeb-packed events in Mumbai. These included a Bangladeshi fashion show, Rael Padamsee's new play Two to Tango at the InterContinental near Sahar airport (audience included people like Pooja Bedi and the Aasma band), and a Jagjit Singh Nite in aid of underprivileged children.

On display at the Bangladeshi fashion show organised by Rathikant Basu at the Hilton Towers were clothes by Bibi Russell, with shades of green from hand-woven textiles; Lita S. Chowdhary's locally woven Tangalil saris and Jamdani, which she is promoting as formal wear; Aneela Haque's East-West fusion concepts; and garments from Aarong House, a leading fashion house in Bangladesh, which focuses on reviving Bangladeshi crafts.

Neena Gupta, Ila Arun, Durga Jasraj and Shobhaa De were among the people who were there, and for a change the clothes were wearable (unlike most of the other garments showcased by Mumbai designers, which seem to be put together only for anorexics!). They were on sale the next day and must have been snapped up.

The fashion show was the first of several events organised as part of a Bangladesh festival encompassing Rabindra Sangeet, a contemporary art exhibition by 27 Bangladeshi artists and food by Gurmeet Shawkat Osman from Dhaka. The festival ends on October 3.

Chipping in

At the same time as the Bangladeshi fashion show, Jagjit Singh was at the Grand Hyatt, doing a live concert in aid of CHIP (Supporting Children in Pain), an organisation that works for underprivileged children and has adopted the Pratiksha Nagar school, a Hindi and Urdu medium school, with 1,000 underprivileged children. CHIP has been around for just a few months; it was launched with a fashion show on February 7 and Jaya Bachchan, the chief guest then, became its first patron.

The Jagjit Singh Nite on September 26, was the second event, and was meant to garner funds for remodelling Pratiksha Nagar. Angus T. Simmons, Consul General of the US, was among the people who showed up, but there weren't too many other celebrities, apart from the CHIP trustees themselves, such as TV personality Ruby Bhatia in an elegant white gown and actress Kunika Sadanand Lall. The Governor of Maharashtra, Mohammad Fazal, did make a half-hour appearance as chief guest, and Kunika interrupted the concert to announce that he had donated Rs 25,000.

She also announced that since this was a charitable event, every single person in the 1,400-strong capacity hall had paid for their passes, either directly or in some other way — a statement clearly designed to shame people into parting with donations, if they hadn't already done so.

For this good cause if you'd like to sponsor a child's education and medical expenses, you can do so for Rs 5,000 a year. CHIP will provide you with regular updates on the child's progress, but there will be no other commitments such as having the child over to stay or visit — though, of course, that sort of gesture would make it seem even more worthwhile.

Saluting a doctor

When a child receives the right kind of support, and has the determination to succeed, there is no limit to what he or she can achieve. Ask Mumbai's best-known doctor, Padmabhushan Dr L.H. Hiranandani.

Dr Hiranandani's biography, Born to Heal, was released on his 87th birthday on September 17 in Mumbai, accompanied by the inauguration of a state-of-the-art auditorium at the hospital that his sons, the well-known developers Niranjan and Surendra Hiranandani, have named after him — the recently commenced Dr L.H. Hiranandani Multi-speciality Hospital.

Says Dr Hiranandani, who went on to develop several innovative operating techniques in the ENT field, including the internationally recognised Hiranandani Tongue Flap, "I remember the time when I was eight years old and almost dying of malaria. I could not avail of quinine even after travelling to Karachi. When a private doctor provided me the same, I did not have 12 annas to pay him at that time, and borrowed money from the dharamshala I was staying in."

His is a remarkable story and Dr Subhadra Anand's account of it in this book makes for fascinating reading; it is candid, full of interesting anecdotes, and makes you believe you can achieve anything if you put your heart into it. Published by Rupa & Co and priced at Rs 595, it is a good read.

Response can be sent to life@thehindu.co.in

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