I seriously feel that the concept of a special day to celebrate womanhood itself is flawed. It should be celebrated EVERYDAY! But the imperfect world we live in... we (women) should not let go of any opportunity to pamper ourselves :p

And so 8th March is celebrated all over the world as International Women's Day!

I felt rather lucky to be invited to document the inauguration of a special community initiative - World of Women – WOW at VR Surat which is a month long initiative celebrating and honoring women.

'Inspiring Change' is the International Women's Day theme for 2014 and VR Surat took that forward by creating a WOW zone in the Runway section, where they have profiled successful female entrepreneurs. I was fascinated to learn a lot about the fascinating journey and achievements of fashion designer Anita Dongre, Mira Kulkarni, the founder of Forest Essentials and Shriti Malhotra of Body Shop among others. Such an inspiration!

Renowned singer Shruti Pathak was there to inaugurate this awesome initiative.

I had such a great time with her as we went around VR Surat... its simply such a happy place!

Had so much fun shopping with her, she made my day :p

I also loved the WOW Wall -

If you are looking for a way to express your love and gratitude to the most important women in your life, you can leave them a dedication at this special WOW message wall (You can also leave me a dedication if you like my pictures :p)

I just adore these small initiatives by them. Events such as these bring so much goodness and some refreshing changes to our city. The management team tells me that they will also have paintings by prominent artist Nandita Chaudhuri exhibited at the Centre (and i am so looking forward to that). They also plan to felicitate women who have contributed to the community with a special award ceremony at the end of this month-long celebration. Will definitely try and blog about that too. Till then do visit VR if you have not and have fun with all these super special little things you can do.

Also do share this and let other women know of this inspiring and wonderful initiative.

PS: While we are talking about celebrating womanhood, do go and watch QUEEN. A must must watch for every woman and even more so for men. I cant praise it more... JUST GO!

When guys at VR called me to confirm that i had to document the festivities at their Surat center on Christmas Eve i had no idea that i would actually come face to face with Surat's Secret Santa who has had such a huge positive impact on all of our's @LifeInSurat. Here is how it happened -

So on the shoot day I reached there on time and was briefed by Mr. Anupam Yog (Director - Virtuous Retail Services Pvt. Ltd.) about the list of things I had to keep in mind during the documentation and I carefully made a mental list of all his pointers. Here is the beautifully lit 30 feet tall Christmas Tree I shot just before i went for the meeting -

Since there was still time left for the festivities to begin, we (Me and Anupam) started chatting, and he started telling me about the group's philosophies behind the VR Surat project. I was highly impressed by the idea that VR does not intend to be just a retail space like so many other "malls" that have mushroomed all across the metros. VR has much more character than that. It aims to be a 'Community Center' that Surat is yearning for. Was pleasantly surprised to know about the initiatives by VR to build the social capital of the city like sponsoring the Annual Magdalla Boat Race and organizing the Dumas Art Project to name a few. (He also told be about the hard time he was having convincing a book store chain to come to Surat! But he is trying hard as this is a must for Surat as a community.)

Would have loved to continue with the conversation but had only so much time as the carol singing was about to start. So i rushed to the tall tree and got on with my job. Here are few images from the Christmas Carol singing event -

So there I was in the middle of all the festivities... documenting the huge 30 feet (Surat's biggest) Christmas tree, taking pictures of the glittering reindeers, listening to the Santa going 'Ho! Ho! Ho!' and distributing sweets to everyone around and there i was listening to the Christmas Carols & LOVING IT! And i suddenly realized that this was my first time listening to the Christmas Carols! (call me ignorant but this is a fact.)

Everyone around was having a good time. This is what a community center does. It builds bridges... encourages local participation & enhances experiences.

It was then that it struck me. The management team at VR seriously is Surat's Santa-In-Disguise!

This blog post is a big Thank-You! to the VR Team for taking so many super initiatives and bringing to us all these innumerable community building activities and experiences.

Thank You all for reading and do share your experiences at VR Surat in the comment section below.

[P.S - Dear VR Team, I would be forever in your debt for getting Caramel Popcorn and Zara to Surat :P]