Mumbai Diary: Saturday Dossier

Koi hai?
Actor Karisma Kapoor waits for the car while Amrita Arora Ladakh hangs behind, when they two get ready to step out of a Bandra eatery on Friday. Pic/Sameer Markande

A still from the film

A noble cause
Mumbai's international queer film festival, Kashish will be back, and this diarist has learnt that Noblemen, directed by debutante Vandana Kataria and starring Kunal Kapoor, will have its Asian premiere at the festival, which will screen 140 films from 45 countries, including 33 LGBTQ films from India. "I'm very happy to know that our film has been selected to premiere at Kashish 2018. Noblemen is a humble and honest attempt to highlight bullying and its effects. I am sure our film will resonate with the audience," said Kapoor, who plays the protagonist in the film. For those who are asking how this movie made it to the Kashish film fest, we hear that Noblemen does have LGBT overtones and the bullying is part of what young people with same sex preferences have to endure in educational institutions. The movie is set in an all-boys' boarding school, and is described as sensitive and nuanced, while being gritty.

Perzen Patel

A feast for 'aapro prince'
In April 2016, Prince William and Kate Middleton met Boman Kohinoor of Britannia & Co, possibly their biggest and oldest fan in India when they toured the country. The couple ensured that the nonagenarian's dream to meet British royalty was fulfilled. The media went into a tizzy after his video to meet them reached the couple, and the rest was urban history.

Prince William and Kate Middleton

Now, with the birth of their third child, Louis, another bawi, home chef Perzen Patel has decided to celebrate. She welcomed "aapro Loui's'' birth by offering free goodies - sweet and savoury - on orders the weekend. You know what they say about the British and bawas, don't you?

Arundhati Roy

Sticking for Ms Woolf
Recently, the New York Public Library's director, Paul Holdengraber, shared an image of award-winning author and activist Arundhati Roy holding a stick. Well, it was no ordinary stick, but one that belonged to the great Virginia Woolf, a torchbearer and stalwart of feminist literature across the globe. Holdengraber's tweet came with an adage - a quote by Patti Smith expressing her wish to some day own Woolf's stick. We'd rather leave the interpretation of this in context to Ms Roy's visit but as Woolf once said, "Women and fiction remain, so far as I am concerned, unsolved problems."

Nikhil Agarwal

Grapevine chat
Asia's largest food and beverage exhibition, SIAL China, that kicks off on May 16, is one of the largest platforms for the big guns to eat, drink and discuss about the F&B industry, with over 14,000 exhibitors and 330,000 visitors expected from 194 countries. The three-day forum that will debate ideas and innovations includes a focus on the wine industry. Sommelier Nikhil Agarwal is the lone Indian to be invited to represent the country and will showcase a selection of different wines produced by India's best wineries. Speaking of the visit, he says, "It is always a pleasure to showcase Indian wines through in depth tasting sessions and a master class for over 125 delegates from the global wine and spirits world in China. The feedback I receive on the wines is always positive and the masterclass plays a role in promoting Indian wine globally." We'll be waiting to raise a toast on how our wines are received there.

Dimi Lezinska

Cannes mix
Mixologist Dimi Lezinska, beverage director of city bars KOKO and The Good Wife, will be hosting a dinner at the two-star Michelin restaurant La Chevre D'Or for Russian celebs (names we'd recognise include Murrad and Nataly Osmann of the viral #FollowMeTo photo series) during the Cannes Film Festival. "The dinner will have more of a French connect to reinforcing the flavour of the local culture to a Russian audience. I will use interesting techniques; for example, I will smoke the asparagus the same way we make our Oaxaca Sour and recreate another drink. I will also use green and black cardamom." Cheers to a heady concoction.

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