Healing Words, a platform inspired by The Poetry Pharmacy (an anthology by William Sieghart), organised a poetry-reading session at Surfire The Coastal Cafe on March 10, as part of its initiative to set up poetry clinics in different spaces to celebrate the power of poetry and leverage it for collective wellness.

Multi-disciplinary artiste and elocutionist Sujoy Prasad Chatterjee, in conversation with psychologist Nilanjana Chatterjee, kickstarted the afternoon with a tribute to writer, filmmaker and musician Ankur Roy Chowdhury, who passed away on March 3. Sujoy also recited a few poems penned by Barnamala Roy, Rantideb Mukherjee, Arindam Lahiri and Ayesha Begum.

Rantideb Mukherjee, Barnamala Roy, Ishita Jana and Ayesha Begum of Healing Words posed for a photo with Ishani Priyadarshini (second from left), owner of Surfire The Coastal Cafe, and Shankhadeep Mitra (extreme right), owner of Zoom Tea-O-Graphy

First Aid Kits for the Soul, a collection of merchandise and poems jointly curated by Healing Words and Zoom Tea-O-Graphy, were on display for sale. The kits contained exclusively crafted Healing Words poems, handkerchiefs hand-embroidered by the Delta Lives women participants in the Sundarbans and mood-uplifting stationery procured by Zoom Tea-O-Graphy.

Rantideb Mukherjee, Barnamala Roy, Ayesha Begum, Arindam Lahiri and Shreyoshee Gupta organised the event.