Mumbai Diary: Sunday Dossier

Lo chali main!
Industrialist Anil Ambani reacts as Isha Ambani seems to be reminding her mother, Neeta, that she has forgotten something. Akash (extreme right), the elder son of Neeta and Mukesh Ambani got married to Shloka Mehta, daughter of diamantaire Russell Mehta, yesterday at the Jio Gardens in Bandra Kurla Complex. Pic/Shadab Khan

The hoarding announcing today's cricket tournament in Juhu

Cricket on the beach
The Indian Premier League-2019 is two weeks away, but Hanuman Cricket Club in Juhu is not waiting for the country to go into T20 mode when champions Chennai Super Kings take on Royal Challengers Bangalore in Chennai on March 23.

Today, eight tennis-ball teams will head to Juhu Beach to be part of the Viky Velinker Memorial Hanuman Cricket Club Premier League. Though the youngest player is all of eight and the eldest participant is 60, they have one strong bond in common - while today they may have travelled from across the suburbs and even from far-flung villages to indulge their love for cricket, they were once all residents of Mangelwadi, on Juhu Tara Road. Call it gully cricket if you will, but this community is using the sport - and this annual tournament - to keep their bonds strong.

No sponsor banners, brand endorsements or TV cameras will be on hand to capture this camaraderie; in fact, it is simply the benevolence of a local cricket lover that is helping Hanuman Cricket Club keep their tournament going for another successful year. Viky Velinker, who lived in a bungalow right across the street from Mangelwadi, was as committed a cricket fan as it is possible to be. He passed away in 2014, but had he been alive today, he would certainly have cheered these players on from the sidelines. And his whistle would have been the loudest too.

Twisted tales of a serial killer
Mumbai-based forensic psychologist Sampada Karandikar has co-authored her first book, Twisted, with ex-cop Shirish Thorat. The book presents a detailed analysis of some of India's serial killers. When this diarist asked about a chilling case mentioned in the book, Karandikar shares, "I was horrified by the Amardeep Sada murder case. He was only seven years old when he committed three murders. What bothered me was all his victims were much younger to him. I had never heard of something so brutal in India and abroad. As a forensic psychologist, I looked at the patterns of his behaviour, his family dynamic and whether or not he had any serial killer tendencies. The child was believed to be a sadist, who enjoyed hurting people and animals."

Danish Husain

Singing away depression blues
This week, something amazing happened. Theatre-maker Danish Husain's daughter, Zahra, tweeted about fighting depression for a year, and sang a cover of Dream a Little Dream of Me as "an attempt to get back to myself." The video went viral, with the entertainment fraternity voicing their support. Among all the other praise, singer Rekha Bhardwaj said, "What a voice. You are beautiful and sound great! Please sing more." She then tagged her husband, filmmaker Vishal Bhardwaj and asked him to check out her voice.

A tribute to a photographer
Vivan Sundaram Is Not a Photographer. As provocative as that sounds, it happens to be Tulika Books' new title, written by art historian and writer Ruth Rosengarten. Incidentally, the book, which explores how the veteran artist started using photography as a more active agent in his work in the 1990s, has been designed by Indian Memory Project founder Anusha Yadav. "It involved understanding Ruth's content, and putting it all together in a context that best represented Vivan's photography.

Vivan doesn't use photography in the traditional sense. He embraces it as a citizen artist with varying mediums and creative practices. Images are contextualised with text in a cinematic flow yet they resonate with traces from previous chapters like human memory, and not in the usual image and text or vice versa predictable manner," Yadav told this diarist.

While most of the colony's old bungalows gave way to redevelopment in the 70s, one still stands. Pic/Ashish Raje

Love thy neighbour
This Tuesday, residents of Santa Cruz's Saraswat Suburban Co-operative Housing Society will celebrate a century together - on March 12, 1919, the foundation of Mumbai's second-oldest Saraswat colony was laid and construction was completed in 1924. Founder of the colony Rao Bahadur Shripad Subrao Talmaki, says resident Dr Laxmi Rao, was known to be so engrossed in the design of the society that he would draw their layouts with a matchstick on the floor of the toilet.

The celebrations will be marked by a puja and on March 16, a flute recital by Pandit Nityanand Haldipur has been organised. Later, the neighbours will sit down for a community dinner.

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