Mumbai Diary: Friday Dossier

Meet me halfway
Soha Ali Khan and Kunal Kapoor negotiate the ramp at a wedding fashion event in a Juhu five-star on Thursday. Pic/Satej Shinde

Memoirs in the sun
For a long time, LGBTQ activist Harish Iyer would spell sun as son. When Iyer - who also advocates for children's, women's and animals' rights, and has fought against child sexual abuse - overcame his inhibitions and appeared on Aamir Khan's popular talk show in 2012, his mother is said to have sent him a text which read "my SonRise". It is understandable then that the activist, based on whom National Award-winning filmmaker Onir based his movie I Am, is ready to pen his memoir and will be calling it Son Rise. "I believe that living your life truly and unabashedly is the purest form of activism and my truths need to be told. I am a survivor of child sexual abuse, and it is important to tell the world what happens within the mind of a male survivor of rape," Iyer told this diarist about what inspired him to write the book, which is expected to be published in October 2019.

Sunny Pawar in a still from the film

Sheru is back
We watched his endearing portrayal of the young Sheru or Saroo in the film Lion, and now 10-year-old Sunny Pawar is back on the silver screen as the protagonist of Chippa, which will be screened on Monday at the MAMI Mumbai Film Festival, in the Discovering India section. Written and directed by Safdar Rahman, the film is a coming-of-age tale of a child who lives on the streets of Kolkata, and is narrated across a single wintry night. "It feels nice to play the protagonist of the film and be an important part in taking the narrative ahead. It also is quite an honour that the film will be seen by so many people in the festival, which in turn will help them empathise with the emotions and mindset of a 10-year-old kid," Pawar told this diarist.

Shibani Bhagat, Kartik Aaryan, Hardik Pandya and Tanisha Rahimtoola Agarwal

Made for men
Young, hip, urban, and women - meet Tanisha Rahimtoola Agarwal and Shibani Bhagat, friends and business partners behind the menswear-only multi-designer store, Curato, featuring Rajesh Pratap Singh, Abraham & Thakore, Dhruv Kapoor, Khanijo and Nikhil Thampi. Its cleverly laid out interiors give an impression of walking into an apartment, with each room dedicated to moods and occasions. So you have a section on eveningwear, where you will find Masaba Gupta and Payal Singhal debuting their menswear lines of kurtas in their respective signature prints. We found designer and socialite Reshma Merchant enquiring whether size 41 would work for her husband, musician Salim Merchant. "My husband has very long hands," she told the saleswoman. Spotted at the event were Jackie Shroff, Kartik Aaryan, Hardik Pandya, Nachiket Barve, Pria Kataria Puri, Namrata Purohit and Yasmin Karachiwala.

Mikhail Kornienko (centre) at the Nehru Science Centre

From space, with jokes
Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko has landed in Mumbai and on Thursday, he attended the two-day Rosatom Festival at Worli's Nehru Science Centre. Now, while at the event Kornienko was meant to address questions regarding space and his exceptionally long stay there (he spent a year on the International Space Station from March 2015 to 2016), what really pulled the crowd in was the camaraderie which he maintained with the crowd even though there was a communication barrier.

Mikhail Kornienko In his cosmonaut avatar

When this diarist asked when according to him would the next man land on the moon, Kornienko, whose translator seemed to have run out of English by then, joked that it would take about 15 to 20 years for the mission to come through and if Russia, India and China managed to bury their differences and join forces.

Mumbai theatrewallahs head east
For two years, theatre groups from Mumbai have been taking some of their best productions to Assam for the Guwahati Theatre Festival. The three-day event, which has seen participation from the likes of Shabana Azmi, Shernaz Patel, Vinay Pathak, Kalki Koechlin and Jim Sarbh is back with its third edition next month. And adding to its list of plays this time is Laughter Therapy, featuring Mona Singh (in pic), Atul Kumar's Detective 9-2-11, Sunil Shanbag's Stories in a Song, and Imogen Butler-Cole's debut solo show, Foreign Body. That's happy news for theatre lovers.

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