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Young achievers

Sudha Menon

Corporate houses, Bajaj Auto and Champagne Indage recently teamed up with Mid-Day Pune which felicitated a group of city youngsters who have excelled in areas as diverse as music, astronomy, film-making and medicine. Manik Chandrachud, a seventeen-year-o ld who recently bagged the Commonwealth English Speaking Union gold medal while representing India and a young doctor, Ninand Deshmukh seeking to develop low-cost technology for making cancer surgery more affordable for the masses, walked away with the T op Young Achiever awards.

The city's corporate elite rubbed shoulders with the glitterati at a cocktail theatre evening hosted by the publication to felicitate the achievers.

The entertainment for the evening was provided by Mumbai's Act I productions: `Sleeping with Shakespeare' is a look at the bard's works in a contemporary setting while `The Good Doctor' was a rib-tickling slapstick play which, along with the wine, left the audience in high spirits. The keys of two wheelers were handed over to the Bajaj `Man of Caliber' and the `Woman of Spirit'.

The young doctor, Ninad provided an interesting, if unexpected, sidelight to the evening when he immediately put up the Caliber bike for auction, the proceeds of which, he said, would go towards funding an organisation he wanted to set up, of medical professionals who wanted to make medical treatment affordable for the poor. Now that is what we call truly a man of Caliber?