Mumbai Diary: Saturday Dossier

Anushka Sharma

Waiting to be with virat
Anushka Sharma is seen exiting a studio in Bandra on Friday. Spouses of cricketers are not allowed to accompany them on tour for the first 20 days. Pic/Bipin Kokate

A warm gesture
A viral video is doing the rounds, where an elderly Sikh man is shown serving water to people in a bus in the sweltering Delhi heat. Now, Sikhs around the world are famous for their generous spirit.

This diarist fondly remembers going regularly for langars during his broke days as a student in England. But the members of the community in Mumbai are not to be left behind. For, we spotted a group of people outside a gurudwara in Versova serving water and rose sherbet to all the people passing by on an exceptionally hot day. Their humane act might not have gone viral, but it's equally commendable nonetheless.

Can't digest this?
Many city restaurants tried to cash in on the election fervour last month. There were discounts galore, and a range of specially curated menus. One of these was planned at Khar's Three Wise Monkeys. It was meant to be a hilarious take on political parties, with sections that read, "Pizza Yahi Banega", and dishes named Congress ka ban gaya keema pav.

But co-owner Sunil Thakur revealed this week that they ultimately didn't print it since they were advised against it. Now he has also been asked to take down a photo of the menu posted on the pub's social media account. But he put up the photo on his own profile and asked people to repost it if they appreciated humour. Two people who did so were Kunal Kamra and Swara Bhaskar, both of whom had dishes named after them on the planned menu.

Having a ball on social media
The denizens of social media can't seem to get over India's victory over South Africa at the World Cup, since memes were flooding in even two days after the game. Most of these were centred around the match-winning century that Rohit Sharma scored. There was one where he was shown as Baahubali carrying the rest of Team India on his shoulders.

Another one morphed the viral photo of the BJP's Shivraj Singh Chouhan being carried by his aides to avoid getting wet in flood water, replacing the CM's face with that of Sharma's, while his aides became Virat Kohli and Ravi Shastri. The caption read, "Carefully, he's a hero."

How time flies
If a city musician from the 1980s were teleported to the Mumbai of today, they wouldn't be able to fathom how much the independent music scene here has grown over the decades.

The same would have been the case for musician Ehsaan Noorani, except, of course, that he has seen the circuit evolve from close quarters, having helped shape it as well, outside of his Bollywood commitments.

But it was still a heart-warming throwback picture that he posted on social media of the first ever gig he played, at a Juhu restaurant called the kitchen. Noorani was only 17 back then. He is 55 now (check inset). How time flies.

Twice as good
After touring Germany, Poland, and Austria, where he became the only Indian choreographer to put together a full-length 55-minute ballet production, Ashley Lobo has now been invited once again to Poland, this time to the Zawirowania International Dance Theatre Festival. Celebrating its 15th edition, the dance festival will be held under two themes, one of which is called The Crossing, which refers to the multicultural meeting of and crossing of traditions.

In sync with it, Lobo along with Polish choreographers Karolina Kroczak and Elwira Piorun, has created a production of five separate pieces, where Indian and Polish artistes will celebrate their diversity and common experiences on stage. We'll wait to see how Lobo translates this European experience to the Indian stage.

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