Mumbai Diary: Wednesday Dossier

Pic/Pradeep Dhivar

Look ma, no hands

A cyclist displays his balance while riding down the Worli sea face during the lockdown on Tuesday. Pic/Pradeep Dhivar

For the artist

An important medium through which artists communicate with prospective audiences, gallerists and curators is the artist statement, which summarises the concept of a particular piece of visual work. But even though many painters might be accomplished with the brush, they might face challenges when putting the thoughts behind their pieces down in writing. A workshop will now tackle this subject, with Vaishnavi Ramanathan, senior curator and historian at Piramal Museum of Art, teaching participants the correct way to frame a statement.

"They will learn to write it in clear, compelling and concise prose, and be well-prepared to talk about their art with friends, colleagues, gallery owners, journalists, etc. The people who will benefit from this include art school students, independent artists, recent art graduates, and any other artist who wishes to write better proposals," Sayali Munde of the museum told this diarist.

For thespians

Theatre has rarely been acknowledged as the sort of artistic medium that's as lucrative as films can be, and the lockdown has left many people within the community facing a bleak financial future. City-based collaboration, Collective Madness is now compiling a database of people in need within the theatre community, so that beneficiaries can get in touch with them.

"There are people like technicians who are struggling right now, and since we don't have extra resources ourselves to help each other, we thought that it would be nice if we can help with data at least," said Maneesh Verma of Collective Madness. Log on to https://cmsocial.in/theatre-wale/ to learn more.

Teaching the write call

Kanchana Banerjee, one of the guests

Authors build fantastical worlds and create fictitious characters that take on a life of their own. But how much do we really know about the life of the authors themselves? A new YouTube series started by publishing professional Lipika Bhushan delves deeper into this question. It's called Between the Lines, and Bhushan invites writers of various hues to talk about not just their creative processes, but also the sort of lives they lead outside of literary circles.

Lipika Bhushan hosting an episode

Her guests so far include thriller writer Kanchana Banerjee and Harini Srinivasan, who pens detective stories. "I started this series because we don't have too many such spaces in India for writers to talk about not just their books, but also their lives. The focus is more on their personal stories. We shoot the episodes in each other's homes and I edit them to make it look as if we are chatting over tea or the like. The intention is to bring out one new episode every 10 to 12 days," Bhushan told this diarist.

Gobble that gobi

Rapper Baba Sehgal launched a typically wacky new single, Cabbage love, on Eid. In it, the rapper uses a tune that has become popular on social media videos as the background music.

The lines are equally zany, with the musician singing, "Pyaar hai apna patta gobi/ Ready hai toh khaalo abhi." The pop sensation from the 1990s has recently undergone a more contemporary avatar, singing and producing his material, and building a new following among the millennial generation.

The show must go on for performers

It isn't an easy task to completely decipher the scale of damage that the performing arts in India will witness due to the pandemic. But one thing is for sure: it is better to be safe than sorry. It's best to put contingency plans in place to deal with further adversities, and a webinar that the Indian Performing Right Society is organising is aimed at pinpointing the areas of concern and offering solutions to tackle them.

Industry expert Atul Churamani is the moderator and the panelists feature veteran sound engineer Vijay Benegal and Musicians' Union general secretary Horace Trubridge, who told this diarist, "This pandemic has hit the international music community particularly hard, and musicians' representatives all over the world need to work together as we plan for recovery."

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