India-Bangladesh Friendship Meetup, Allen Park, Kolkata 2023
(July 23, 2023)
The West Bengal Local Guides community is one of the oldest flag-bearers of the Google Local Guides program in this part of the world. Established in the year 2016, this community had been actively running and contributing
in the program, through various activities organized round the calendar, including meetups, photo walks, geo-walks, food crawls, accessibility walks, heritage walks, festival walks, local business support and discussion sessions for the Local Guides from different parts of the east Indian state of West Bengal. Even during the COVID-19 pandemic that threatened to suspend all physical events under the banner of the Local Guides communities due to the imminent procedures of social distancing, the WBLG community continued to host and participate across the new mode of Guiding meets - the virtual meetups.
Although these virtual meetups were able to spread the news about the Local Guides program at the remotest corners of the state, with active participation from over 50 members across 15+ such meetups on various themes, as a community, we were kind of missing the old charm of having physical meetups. While virtual meetups provide us flexibility to be a part of the events and activities from the comfort of our homes, physical meetups give us the opportunity to explore ourselves, interact with fellow local guides and explore the location together, in the spirit of local guiding with more depth!
We must thank Mahabub Hasan ( @MahabubMunna ), who needs no introduction here among the community members, for being the catalyst in implementing the plan to restore physical meetups for the WBLG community. One of the most renowned Local Guides contributors across the world, and the head of the Bangladesh Local Guides community, @MahabubMunna da recently had a trip to the city of Kolkata, along with fellow Local Guide Farabi Rahman Fahad bhai.
On Sunday, 23 July 2023, we hosted a meetup under the banner of the West Bengal Local Guides community, where 6 of our community members met and greeted @MahabubMunna and Farabi at the Park Street, Kolkata. This international meetup among Local Guides from the neighboring nations of India and Bangladesh appeared to also be the 7th instance of the India-Bangladesh Friendship Meetups that has been taking place across many South-East Asian locations in the last seven years!
The meetup began at the Allen Park, a park that hosts a playing arena for kids, as well as often hosts an array of live events such as musical conferences, festivities or entertainment shows within its compound. This place is famous for having the biggest annual Christmas party of Kolkata, which sees a large footfall on the night of 24th December. This park is located at Park Street, which is a hub for various posh restaurants, bars, eateries and shopping malls. The nightlife at this place of British Indian heritage is fabled, hence we decided to host our meetup here. As the sun and rain kept swapping their wrath on us in this monsoon afternoon, we moved to the closely located Apeejay Oxford Book Store cafeteria to resume our event.
It requires to be mentioned that West Bengal Local Guides is immensely grateful to @MahabubMunna for being
one of the pillars of strength for this community. Along with setting up from scratch and running the ordeals of the Bangladesh Local Guides that has already set a benchmark in terms of activeness, reach and volume of participation in the program among Local Guides in all parts of Bangladesh, @MahabubMunna also helped and inspired in the creation and fueling of multiple Local Guides communities in several other countries. The West Bengal Local Guides community is also a proud part of that list, that began its operations in the hands of its founders @Amitesh_Gayen , @DrShaunak , @Sovon through the first ever India-Bangladesh Friendship Meetup in December 2016, that was hosted at College Square and Victoria Memorial, Kolkata.
From WBLG, we had a mix of experienced and fresh Local Guides attending this event. We had Dr. Shaunak Das ( @DrShaunak ) da, a veteran Local Guides contributor who had been to the Connect Live summit at Google HQ, CA, USA on multiple occasions and had represented India and West Bengal there. We had Local Guide Amarjit Das da, a regular attendee at WBLG meetups since its inception, who traveled 100+ kilometers from his home at Midnapore to be here with us. We had senior Local Guides contributor Truptilal Pattanaik ( @TPattanaik ) sir, who is also a renowned name in the India Local Guides community. Also, we had a young Rupak Saha ( @rupaksaha ) who attended his first ever Local Guides event and I’m sure, he will be attending many more in the near future after this! We had Local Guide Sayantan Datta ( @SDatta ) who joined the meetup in the later part. As the host of this event, I was really elated to have all these special persons from the Local Guides community on the same coffee table, discussing and sharing their experiences regarding this program.
While @MahabubMunna shared his precious advises on how WBLG can revamp the Local Guides program in West Bengal, to attract more fellow Local Guiding enthusiasts to be actively participating in the program in the upcoming days, @TPattanaik shared an idea to host a Local Guides meetup focused on refreshing, re-validating and adding the missing old age homes and orphanages, through arranging drives across various parts of the state, coordinated by the WBLG community members at their native places, as there has been instances that the mobile numbers, or the websites displayed on such old-age homes or orphanages are either incorrect or outdated. The Local Guides from West Bengal can pitch in to resolve this program, by rectifying such information on the Google Maps, so that the correct data appears for the good Samaritans who wish to donate money, help or food to such shelters.
Therefore, we had a virtual meetup on Google Meets with the India Local Guides community members @TravellerG sir, Deepak Kumar bhai ( @deepakjhic ), Shruti M ma’am ( @Shrut19 ), Piyush, Dr. Subhajit and MdNasim, where we introduced ourselves and our guests from Bangladesh, and discussed on the motive on this meetup.
In the final part of the event, some gifts were exchanged among the Local Guides from the two nations. The West Bengal Local Guides community presented our guests from Bangladesh with its printed Local Guides badges:-
The Bangladesh Local Guides also presented some wonderful accessories and t-shirts from its iconic 200th meetup event organized in December 2022:-
Here are some vibrant images from the meetup:-
With that, the meetup was concluded. We thank all the Local Guides who traveled a long way to attend this event, that too on a rainy Sunday afternoon. With your presence and active participation, this event became successful. Also, once again, thanks to @MahabubMunna for his presence in this event that made it such lively!
see you soon!