Gidea Park teen Aashi Sinha remembered with cake sale

Each year they commemorate Aashi Sinha, an 18-year-old schoolgirl from Gidea Park who was waiting for her A-level results to go to medical school when she fell ill in 2013. 

All the money from their 11th cake sale held at Christ Eternal Church in Gidea Park on May 11, with Havering's mayor Stephanie Nunn in attendance, are going to the Cardiac Risk in the Young charity.  

Aashi loved baking cakes herself — so the family friends baked their own cakes in her memory.

“It was devastating when Aashi died quite suddenly in the early morning,” family friend Karthy Sooraj told the Recorder.

“No-one could have done anything — it was a tragedy surrounded by doctors in the family.

“There was no underlying heart condition.”

Aashi, a sixth form pupil at Forest School in Walthamstow, was heading for a medical career like her parents.

Her mother Suman Sinha is a GP at The Greenwood Practice in Harold Wood and her father Ajay Sinha is a consultant at the Royal London Hospital, next to the medical school in Whitechapel where Aashi wanted to enrol while waiting for her A-level results.

Aashi’s younger sister Shruti, now 22, is a medical student at the Royal London where their father is a paediatrician.

“They still feel the loss 11 years on,” Karthy added. “Hopefully it won’t happen to other children.”

Friends home-baked all sorts of cakes for the sale and also mobilised east London businesses to help.

A large ‘designer’ cake in red and white was specially made by Renata Pogroszewsk from Naturally Delicious Cakes online bakery business in Romford.

Cakes were also given by Sweet Rose Cakery and Waitrose, both in Upminster, while Jalsa restaurant in Dagenham supplied hundreds of samosas to sell throughout the day.

Raffle gifts came from Tesco at Gallows Corner, Costa Coffee in Gidea Park, Starbucks in Westfield Stratford and books from Waterstones in Romford.

Thanks were also given to Sainsbury's Hornchurch for supplying cake boxes and to Greggs.