Peace priority  CEC, a leading educational institute of the Northeast offering IT and allied courses besides taking up other educational activities, has come up with a noble mission to do something for the terror-hit people of the region. Billed ‘CEC Peace Messenger’, this special initiative was launched recently during the institute’s event ‘Design Champion 2009’ at Pragjyoti, Machkhowa, Guwahati by Dipankar Dutta, founder president of CEC Group, actress Zerifa Wahid and former Mrs India-World runnerup Arunima Dutta. The mission of this non-political peace initiative is to spread education in the Northeast among the terror-struck people. “We at CEC have undertaken the tremendous responsibility to transform a child into a leader — the transformation from ‘what can you do for me’ to ‘what can I do for you’, imbibing among the students the spirit of ‘we can do it’. We believe that only through the light of education can the darkness of ignorance, resulting in terrorism and mass destruction in our land, be removed,” said Dipankar, adding, “this peace emblem is our extra step forward towards our call for peace, since we are all hurt. There is pain in all of us, let us heal each other — through education.”

Budding beauties  Pantaloons Femina Miss India East 2010 witnessed a bigger and better launch in Guwahati the other day with a good number of beauties turning up for the audition round at the Pentaloons megastore to be a part of the country’s most sought after beauty pageant. The Pantaloons Femina Miss India East Selection squad congregated at DT Towers to screen and shortlist girls who exhibited a heady combination of good looks and intelligence. Femina Miss India International 2006, Sonali Sehgal thoroughly assessed and scrutinized each of the selected girls. Those who cleared the Guwahati hurdle to compete in the elimination round to earn a ticket to the Pantaloons Femina Miss India East Grand Finale in Kolkata were Priyanka Choudhury, Nirmali Das, Punah Kalita and Sangeeta Phukan. “I am extremely enthusiastic to be associated with Pantaloons Femina Miss India 2010 and hope to do full justice to the cause. It was quite a challenge and experience to handpick the right candidates, especially since I have been on the other side of the judging process sometime ago and I completely understand the feeling of anticipation and fear,” said Sonali, adding, “Pantaloons Femina Miss India East is a fabulous opportunity for girls from East India to come out of their shells and move beyond their city lifestyle.”

Food frontier  It was nice to see two young Assamese entrepreneurs — Janajit Barman and Mrinmoy Sarma — joining hands to come up with a multi-cuisine restaurant bringing delicacies from around the world to the gastronomic delight of food-lovers. Named ‘Zero Mile’, this 2,000 sq ft family restaurant at Ganeshguri, Guwahati has an interesting interior decor of automobile theme that gives one the feel to be amidst vehicles, and it serves four different varieties of dishes — Indian, Chinese, Mexican and Continental, all supervised by experienced chefs and coming at a resonable rate. During its opening ceremony last Thursday in pesence of distinguished guests, including actors Bhagavat Pritam and Niren Sarma, the entrepreneur duo also unveiled their plans of special festival food campaigns that will begin with this feasting season of Magh Bihu itself.

Simanta / Mridumoloy