Dear Friends,

I thank you most humbly for bestowing upon me the honour to be your President for the next two years. I truly feel privileged to head our beloved Association. We are still a young fledgling Association being only 4 years old but we have made a good start of coming together on this forum and we will work hard together to scale the heights that this Association deserves to reach, as a representative of the accomplished Plastic and Aesthetic surgeons practicing in the cities of Mumbai, Thane and Navi Mumbai.  

The last two years of the Covid pandemic severely restricted any offline activities but the office bearers under the stewardship of our President worked very hard to bring to all to you many online academic activities in the form of webinars by international stalwarts and online CMEs with a mix of national and international faculty.  They truly deserve kudos and thanks from us.

Now that we fortunately appear to be past that, we can hope to meet face to face again and renew our friendships, camaraderie and connections, in the coming years. With that in mind, we will be planning some regular offline academic activities in the near future and will keep you posted on the same. We will also continue to hold online webinars and video workshops with national and international experts as and when we can, under the auspices of the Aesthetic Potpourri sessions as before. 

You, dear members, are the Association, and unless you participate actively in its activities, it cannot grow and prosper as we ALL want it to. I would sincerely and humbly implore our members to let the office-bearers know about any interesting case, any series of cases, any original ideas and innovations made by you in your practice so that you can present and share the same with all our members in any future meetings that we have. 

Our website (https://www.aapsaesthetic.com) is up and running once again after being hacked and I would like to ask you all to have a look at it, suggest any changes and additions and we will implement those speedily. 

We must also endeavour to spread the message of public awareness of our specialty, of who should be doing Aesthetic surgery, of caution against quacks and charlatans. Our social media posts will go a long way in doing this but again we need active participation from each and every one of you. Please volunteer to write Blogs for our website and use the amazing creativity that you all have, to create posts for Instagram and Facebook and other social media to increase this awareness on our collective behalf, it can only help ALL of us in our practice. 

Teaching what I have learnt over the last 30 years and sharing my experience with younger colleagues has always been very close to my heart. Let me honestly say that I am only a phone call or a WhatsApp message away at any time of the day or night if any of you dear colleagues need assistance in any way and I promise wholeheartedly to help as best I can. I am not the only one, we are indeed fortunate to have many senior Plastic surgeons as members, all of whom would be keen to share their vast knowledge and experience with anyone who wants to learn. This camaraderie and affection is quite unique to our geographical area and I would like our young and dynamic colleagues to take advantage of it whenever they wish. 

Please join me and the office-bearers in taking AAPS to greater heights for our mutual benefit and that of the public we serve. 

     May the Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons grow strong and so may our friendships.