Mumbai Diary: Saturday Dossier

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Is this love for real (estate)?
In the struggle to own a house in the brutal real estate market of Mumbai, is there room for emotion? That's the premise of Love Per Square Foot, the first Indian Netflix film, set to release on February 14. Directed by Anand Tiwari, with Vicky Kaushal and Angira Dhar in the lead roles, the romantic comedy revolves around two bank employees whose individual salaries cannot afford them a flat in the city.

Anand Tiwari

"As they join hands to achieve this dream, they are faced with the question of whether a house is more important than a home," Tiwari told this diarist. How does he view an online release over the traditional one? "How we consume content is changing rapidly. It's about time we kept up with the pace and realised where the audience is and how to reach it directly," said Tiwari.

Giving it back is stylish
What better way for a Mumbai designer to give back to her roots than work with craftsmen in Maharashtra? After collaborating with women in Charoti village of Palghar district, where 70 women work out of a 3,000 sq ft space, Anita Dongre has launched a second livelihood project, this time in Jawhar, in the tribal belt of the state, home to the Warlis.

Anita Dongre

The women here will be taught a variety of garment construction techniques in a bid to take jobs back to villages. Dongre says the effort has helped the women find dependable jobs close to home, their earnings allowing them to have a voice in family and personal decisions.

Pic/Pradeep Dhivar

I got the eye of the tiger
Shiv Sena leader Aditya Thackeray acknowledges a young fan in the crowd at a public toilet inauguration project in Mumbai Central yesterday.

A mother's catharsis
Every noon at Parel's KEM hospital, Shital Bhatkar is a familiar face, distributing lunch to relatives of patients. A meal that costs her '50 is handed out at '10. Bhatkar hopes that subsidised nutrition helps the families of grievously sick children cope better with the challenge that awaits them.

Shital Bhatkar

After all, she has been on the other side herself. Bhatkar lost her eight-year-old son, Arya, to Neimann Pick Disease, a rare lipids storage disorder, in 2015. Affecting one in 10 million, the condition was tough to diagnose, and when it was, treatment wasn't easily available.

"It helped me relieve my pain," says Bhatkar, who also spends time counseling parents of children who suffer from similar conditions, and is now joined by 15 volunteers. Bhatkar's struggle, and eventual victory has now found a mention in a book titled Touch the Sky by Rashmi Bansal.

A ribbon record
In the events leading up to World Cancer Day on February 4, a city-based pharma firm will attempt to create an interesting record in Karad of Satara district today.

Called the Pink Street campaign, it aims to raise awareness among people to be mindful of their bodies. And for this, they are creating a ribbon that's over 6,000 sq feet, which will be covered with handprints, symbolic of people pledging their support towards cancer prevention. The idea is to also enter the Limca Book of Records. Good luck, guys.

Won't you play Bom Dingy?
British Asians have always had a knack for making upbeat Hindi and Punjabi tracks peppered with bhangra beats, dubstep and dancehall, packaged smoothly with an overall electronic sound. There was Bally Sagoo in the '90s and then came Hard Kaur. Jasmin Walia and Zack Knight belong to the newest crop of musicians carrying on the legacy.

They made a runaway hit called Bom Dingy last year and the song evidently created waves across the Atlantic as well, because we now hear that popular American DJ Dillon Francis has made a remix of the original, which was sung almost entirely in Hindi. Francis (in pic) is arriving to Pune in a week to play at a festival, and we are wondering if he will drop the track before his Indian audience.

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