(From top) Actress Locket Chatterjee at The Telegraph Ad Masters Award night with little Pramadrija on Friday; actress Arunima Ghosh adresses the audience; artist Shuvaprasanna fetes Bibha Raychoudhury, a winner in the Super Souvenir Contest. Pictures by Rashbehari Das

The Telegraph Salt Lake has been a rocking success. And on the first anniversary of the Friday tabloid, it was time to rock with a party dedicated to the township.

The celebration also marked The Telegraph Ad Masters Award night which, in its inaugural edition, was hosted in the township. So Friday evening found advertisers, advertising professionals, bureaucrats, block association office-bearers and special guests heading towards the banquet hall of The Stadel.

The message was loud and clear — hip and happening, Salt Lake today is the place to be. An audio-visual clip on the township evoked emotions of belonging and bonding.

The centre of attention and affection was 375-day-old Pramadrija Chatterjee. The bubbly baby from IA Block was born the same day as the Salt Lake supplement, August 12. So it was only fitting that she took the stage first, riding the arms of brother Prithvijit. The teddy bear she was presented with was as big as her, but she did her best to clutch on to it by its woolly ears.

Then came the turn of the first family that had settled in the township — the Chakrabortys of AB Block — who had been featured in the first issue of the supplement. One of the members recalled the early days of isolated life on a marshy tract just reclaimed for habitation.

The first and the most regular contributors to the tabloid were felicitated next.

With Pujas just a few weeks away, it was time to applaud the winners of The Telegraph Salt Lake Super Souvenir Contest 2005. Early bird BE (West) was called first to pick up its prize. Then one after another representatives of the other blocks lined up for their respective categories — best article (Bibha Raychoudhury), most useful souvenir (DL Block), best cover (Vidyasagar Niketan) and finally the overall winner, FE Block.

The emotions that the people’s association with the newspaper aroused were expressed in spontaneous words. “The supplement has changed the colour of my Friday mornings,” said Amit Sengupta of Vidyasagar Niketan.

Artist Shuvaprasanna, who did the honours in the first session, summed up the spirit of the evening. He spoke of the dreams that uprooted families came here with — the dream that the township’s founding father Dr Bidhan Chandra Roy also nurtured — of providing the middle class Bengali with a home of his own in a planned urban space. “Ours may not be a perfect life but what we have achieved, most have not,” asserted the resident of Salt Lake.

Adding to the star quotient of the programme were ‘resident’ actress Arunima Ghosh and fellow Tollywood star Locket Chatterjee.

Spirits rose further during the break, accompanied by canapes. Then came the biggest draw of the evening — the advertisers’ section of The Telegraph Ad Masters Awards. These are the people who have forged a professional tie with the supplement and helped it grow.

Rajyavardhan Dewra of Smooth, who won the award for “52 weeks of regular advertising”, said advertising in the supplement had given him phenomenal sales growth. “The proof lies in the number of customers coming to our store with cut-outs of the ads from TT SL,” he said.

Sanjoy Roy, director of Zetasoft Education Services, and recipient of the same award along with RD Motors, pointed out how a community newspaper came in handy for residents, who used it as their primary source of information.

Dipak Das of Nu Sams won the award for contributing the “highest volume in liners”. The award for the “highest volume in display” went to Cams Corner, and the proprietor, Jiten Chawla, was all praise for the sharp focus of the tabloid that helped convert readers to genuine buyers.

The award for the “highest volume in display” went to the agency Victory Publicity. Next up was Waves for notching up the “highest revenue in display”. Shiva International was awarded for maximum contribution from agents, both for liner and display ads.

As the dance floor came to life with a DJ on duty, the mood of the evening was summed up by one of the guests: “TT Salt Lake rocks, my shop rocks, and so does this party!”

Cheers to that.