Mumbai Diary: Tuesday Dossier

Lean on me
Actor Richa Chadha at the shoot of a music video for her forthcoming film, at Vile Parle on Monday. Pic/Sameer Markande

Byculla boys and girls
The city's civic authorities are all set to revamp fire safety rules. We hear they are cracking down on developers who compromise on the width of staircases or forego the mandatory refuge areas. All welcome news for aamchi Mumbai, which also takes us back to US Consul General Edgard Kagan's recent visit to the first gender-integrated fire brigade at Byculla.

Edgard Kagan with the men and women at Byculla fire station. Pic/Datta Kumbhar

We learn that Kagan's interest was piqued as he heard about some of the challenges that women face in embarking on their unusual career path. The US Consulate had highlighted four of the firewomen from the department in the consulate's #WhatEmpowersMe video series on social media in early March, which was Women's History Month.

And now equipped with the new safety guidelines, the firefighters of the city only seem to be going from strength to strength. Here's to being in safe hands!

An Indo-Dutch jugalbandi
When it comes to musical collaborations that have never been attempted before, expect Niladri Kumar to lead the way. The sitar-zitar player, apart from his regular jugalbandi sessions, has even created music on stage while Makarand Deshpande delivered a monologue. And now, he is off to the Netherlands to play with the Dutch Ballet Orchestra. A concert hall filled with the melodies of the sitar, tabla, bansuri and a full-fledged orchestra - sounds like music to our ears.

Step in time
The BMC put back yet another milestone - III Mile - back to its original place near Bhatia Hospital in Tardeo after restoration by conservation architect Tapan Mittal-Deshpande. The stone will now be cleaned up at the site as a part of the final phase of restoration.

The original basalt paving is being relaid currently. An information plaque will be engraved by traditional craftsmen in basalt to highlight the heritage significance of the milestone as a 200-year-old marker of the city limits since the 19th century. Five milestones will soon be restored by the conservation architect within the next month.

Jitish heads to New York
Though American art lovers are not new to Jitish Kallat's works - the noted Mumbai-based artist has exhibited his works at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (2016-17), San Jose Museum of Art (2013) and the Art Institute of Chicago (2010-11) - it is after a considerable gap that he is having a solo exhibition in New York.

Opening later this month at Sperone Westwater Gallery, the exhibition titled Decimal Point is being described as a culmination of several strands of inquiry that Kallat has developed over the last few years including the ideas of time, sustenance, sleep, vision and perception. At the centre of the exhibition is a suite of photographic works that reveal themselves to the viewer one layer at a time.

Also part of the exhibition are Kallat's works on paper that derive their form from mathematical concepts, an intricately detailed sculpture, a sculptural installation as well as an intriguing work inspired by astronomy. In a nutshell, New Yorkers are in for a feast to the eyes.

A glittering pic
When it's someone of Christopher Nolan's stature, it follows that only the biggest and most respected names from Bollywood would get a chance to spend some time with him. And that's exactly what happened when the director of such super-hit Hollywood movies as Prestige, Memento and Inception came down to the city for a talk on the importance of using film for shooting movies.

Never before have we seen the likes of Amitabh and Jaya Bachchan, Kamal Haasan, Shah Rukh Khan, Shyam Benegal, Siddharth Roy Kapur, Santosh Sivan and Adoor Gopalakrishnan in one frame. Nolan, though, remained the real star of the photograph. But we love how he occupies a nondescript position in the front row, instead of standing in the centre and hogging the limelight. True class, we tell you.

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