Mumbai Diary: Saturday Dossier

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Arjun Rampal and girlfriend Gabriella Demetriades exit a restaurant in Bandra on Friday. Pic/Bipin Kokate

The double-sided Ram Kumar painting on display

A colourful record is made
After their weekend stay at a SoBo art gallery housed within a five-star, several of the 45 lots for Prinseps' seventh online auction went under the hammer, bearing some rather pleasing results for the auction house. A new record was set when a coveted double-sided Ram Kumar crossed the one crore mark, selling at Rs 1.72 crore. An early FN Souza landscape of Goa was sold for Rs 51.75 lakh, going beyond what was a high estimate to start with. What did pique our interest was to see the auction houses's inclusion of photography as a new category, and what better way to do that than an intriguing blend of art and photography, with Vivan Sundaram's photomontage, created from the Amrita Sher-Gil archives. "It is great to see continued interest, particularly at the top end of the market. As this is only our seventh auction, we are pleased to have crossed the one crore mark as well as have two of our key lots go to new institutional collectors," said founder of Indrajit Chatterjee.

A cheeky sign about chicken
The day of voting is just days away and many initiatives have come up with innovative ways to encourage people to exercise their franchise. But one particular suburban Chinese restaurant had a rather cheeky poster put up on a wall outside. The proprietors of Uncle's Kitchen in Malad wrote on it that they would "keep our chicks away from you till 6 pm so that you can cast your valuable vote." They, of course, are referring to their chicken dishes.

Townie tales
People from SoBo are often caricatured as rich people with their noses in the air. And that same image was reinforced recently when a WhatsApp message started doing the rounds taking a dig at them. It was titled, "Ten reasons why South Bombay won't vote enthusiastically on 29th April", and some of the different points were: "clashes with salsa classes, election whites not dry-cleaned, no valet parking at booth, and no party tackling real issues eg reduce Gold Gym rates [sic]".

There may have also been a desi version of Thanos (above), as hinted by Sonam Kapoor Ahuja on Instagram where she posted a picture of Mogambo and his rings from her father's movie Mr India (below)

Endgame after 11 years
Those who have watched the latest and last Avengers movie are calling it the end of an era, while those who haven't are frantically blocking those giving away spoilers on social media. And this, when in two days we'll be watching yet another epic battle in the final season on Game of Thrones.

Such is the fear of spoilers that many are first trying to figure if the latest Google feature, wherein searching for Thanos and clicking on his gauntlet leads to half the searches being wiped out, is one. This includes city musician Tejas, who's yet to watch the movie. "I wish Google would make a Thanos-like feature for spoilers and make them disappear," he told this diarist.

Tejas also reminds us that the series actually stems from comics. "To do a serialised story which has been consistently good over the last 11 years is a huge accomplishment. There have been serialised movies in the past, like Back To The Future and Star Wars. But what this has done is what nerds have always loved about comics for decades. When I was growing up, we used to read comic books - copies of issues would be released every month and we would learn about the characters over time as we saw them in their own lives and big crossover events. The Avengers series is a movie format of that," Tejas continued.

And also cashing in on the buzz, a popular shoe brand has launched an exclusive line of Avengers shoes and even Bollywood's favourite fashionista Sonam Kapoor took a break and put up an Instagram post of Mogambo's [Mr India] many rings, akin to a desi Thanos!

So, have you booked your tickets for this emotional awesomeness?

An initiative to take pride in
When the Supreme Court decriminalised homosexuality last year in September, it was an important step in making India a more inclusive place. Now, there is another encouraging piece of news. A popular food aggregator has responded to an online campaign to make eating establishments inclusive of the queen. Soon, the app will introduce a tag that says whether a particular bar or restaurant is LGBTQ-friendly. A step in the right direction.

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