In the first week of January 2026, Team Veditum was in Kolkata for our Team Retreat. Along with the full time team of Aishani, Madappa, Rhea, Shamika and Siddharth, we were joined by our floating team members Mohit, Kabini and Priyans for a lovely week-long exploration of the city.
It was a busy week in wintery Kolkata, as we conducted and participated in workshops, celebrated 10 years of Veditum in the public domain, and explored the wonderful city of Kolkata. Here are some highlights from our retreat!
Environmental Storytelling Workshop
We kickstarted our week with a wonderful session on environmental story telling by Kabini, Mohit and Siddharth. Kabini took us for a walk along the Rabindar Sarobar, where we mindfully engaged with nature in and around the lake, and recorded our experiences through tactile, sensory and other mediums. We would later turn our observations into zines!
Mohit, a veteran journalist, took us through an informative session on structuring environmental stories in effective ways. He took us through an informative session on how to structure information to produce compelling stories. He also shared an insight into how a newsroom works, and how to pitch stories or issues to news organizations.
We grabbed breakfast between the sessions, and had delicious Aloo Kachori and lots of chai!
10 years of Veditum
The Team Retreat 2026 was extra special since we were also in the city to celebrate 10 years of Veditum in the public space! We are grateful for all the support we’ve received all these years in taking our work forward, and are more than thrilled to have met so many wonderful people who believe in the cause.
To commemorate the event, we hosted a warm gathering of friends and family at our new office space. Joined by Siddharth’s family and our supporters, we got together to chat over yummy food and beverages!
Mohit introduced us to a “gift” he had brought for us – River Run! – a super fun game where players are a “drop of water” trying to flow from source to the sea. The simple progress is hindered by a host of anthropogenic activities! With some of the friends at the event, we play-tested this exciting and informative game, till we had our first River Run winner! More about this game is coming soon!
Kolkata Sightseeing
The cold mornings did not deter the team from exploring the city! Our resident guides Siddharth and Shamika helped us plan our “to- see” lists in the city, including exploring the city on public transport and on foot!
The team visited the iconic Howrah bridge as we learnt interesting tidbits of history from our team members, took the ferry along the river and some of the team members even spotted river dolphins! The ferry ride was particularly enjoyable as we munched on ghoti gorom (a classical street snack)!
We walked along the ghats, stopped for more chai and our team member Madappa was brave enough to try the coffee! We watched lit-up party boats dazzle over the river as we learnt more about the city’s history and were fascinated by the circular local trains!
We hopped on and hopped off the colorful local buses as we made our way to new food joints across the city. We tried some mouth watering Chinese cuisine that left us full and happy (and a bit drowsy!). We visited Princep Ghat, went for a boat ride and some of the other team members saw another dolphin! This was followed by some really hot and warm Pav bhaji and kulhad chai.
We then went shopping for art supplies to print our own custom team shirts!
Custom shirts for the team!
Another highlight from the retreat was that we designed our very own Veditum shirts! With guidance from Kabini and Siddharth, we were introduced to block printing.
We spent a day working on various designs that were meaningful to us as individuals and also reflected the work we do at Veditum. By the end of it, we had very beautiful designs that ranged from gharials to frogs to hornbills. We also had meandering rivers and children playing in the water!
This was a lot of fun as the team carved (many) potatoes to make the block prints that we used on our shirts. The activity was interspersed with chai, snacks, and phuchkas.
Spot us in our shirts next time you see us!
Looking forward to the year
We wrapped up the January 2026 Team Retreat with some food and goodies to carry back home with us! The year ahead looks exciting as we have a host of programming planned – and we can’t wait to share it with you all!
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