Mumbai Diary: Friday Dossier

Making a meal out of this
Shilpa Shetty Kundra and her many moods during the shoot for a culinary show at a venue in Worli on Thursday. Pics/Sameer Markande

A daawat on Eid that included all
The completion of the holy month of Ramazan is as much about zakat - compulsory charity that comprises one of the five pillars of Islam - as it about a grand feast. And how someone channelises this obligation is finally up to them.

But this year, The Bohri Kitchen's founder, Munaf Kapadia, managed to combine feast and charity in a truly laudable way, when he tied up with The Seva Kitchen, a crowd-sourced food distribution initiative, to prepare and donate biryani for more than 100 sex workers associated with an NGO called Rescue Foundation.

Khushroo Poacha and Munaf Kapadia

"The food served on Eid was excellent. The girls' happiness reflected on their faces," Khushroo Poacha, founder of the Seva Kitchen told this diarist.

Let's talk about our mangroves
They often say don't throw the baby out with the bath water and it's an adage that's perhaps most applicable to technology. It has its shortcomings, but it can also be used to dispense knowledge. Like, Mangroves, a mobile app launched by an Indian conglomerate that acquaints users with the ecosystem and it's uses, mangrove distribution, current threats and conservation measures, and information about mangroves in Vikhroli.

Now, they have made the app available in 10 Indian languages of the coastal states, including Gujarati, Marathi, Konkani and Kannada, and have included information about 43 new species of plants to their database. Speaking about the initiative, Anup Mathew, senior vice president of Godrej Construction, said, "Our primary aim for launching the app was to help people become more aware of the importance of this ecosystem. By making it available in 11 Indian languages, we hope to reach out to a larger audience."

A musical July
That's what Raell Padamsee promises with her next production. And this time, she has turned her focus to My Fair Lady, the Broadway musical based on George Bernard Shaw's classic Pygmalion. The production, we hear, will be directed by Karla Singh (inset), who started her career as a dancer and choreographer for musicals like Evita, Grease, Oliver, and Jesus Christ Superstar.

To be staged at the Jamshed Bhabha Theatre, NCPA, which will be ready by then after its ongoing technical upgrade, it will showcase a cast that includes professional singers, dancers and actors who will perform alongside 100 young adults from underprivileged backgrounds. The proceeds will be donated to a foundation in memory of Raell's mother and late theatre veteran Pearl Padamsee.

The KARDs are on the table
The hype around K-pop became apparent when in January, the one-day release of a movie on an outfit called BTS in the city opened to a throng of exhilarated followers. Now, there's some good news in store for India's small-but-growing community of the genre's fans as a South Korean band announces their maiden India tour.

An entertainment company from the South Asian country announced that KARD - a Korean mixed-gender group that they handle - will be coming to India next month. And fans flooded the post guessing which will be the lucky host city. "We hope to see your support and love. More information to be announced very soon!" it read. We'll keep our fingers crossed.

Time to get floored
Posting pictures of your feet on pretty tiles may be the Instagram aesthetic, and a new range by iconic tiling company Bharat Flooring and Tiles (BFT) in collaboration with Art & Found, a curated platform for art, gives you more reason to 'gram.

The range called Virtuoso has been designed by this city's best graphic designers including Aniruddh Mehta, Pratap Chalke, Suzanne Dias and Shweta Malhotra.

"It shows that when artists and a design-focused company collaborate, they can produce something meaningful and commercially relevant," Firdaus Variava, Vice Chairman, BFT, told this diarist.

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