Mumbai Diary: Tuesday Dossier

Shahid Kapoor and Mira Rajput with kids Misha Kapoor and Zain Kapoor

It's a hap, hap, happy birthday

On Shahid Kapoor and Mira Rajput's daughter Misha's third birthday on Monday, we saw almost all of Bollywood's tiny tots and their star parents in attendance. Pic/ Sayyed Sameer Abedi

Soha Ali Khan and Kunal Khemu with daughter Inaaya, and Esha Deol with daughter Radhya

Yash and Roohi Johar

Shabana's class act

A tribute show of the long-running play Broken Images was held in the city on Sunday, in memory of director Alyque Padamsee and playwright Girish Karnad. And veteran actor Shabana Azmi, who portrays the two characters in the play, made sure it was special, leaving the audience speechless. While Subramaniam Ramadorai, chairman of the governing board of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, said the performance gave him goosepimples, Cedric Santos, founder-member of Theatre Group Bombay, felt every minute of the play was worth it. Congress spokesperson Sanjay Jha, too, couldn't stop marvelling at Azmi's performance, wondering how she pulled off a solo act for over an hour. But that's what class acts are made of !

The joke's on Jay Shetty

Canadian comedian Nicole Arbour recently accused British-Indian motivational speaker Jay Shetty of plagiarising the work of lesser-known figures on the Internet in a video. And now, comedian Sanjay Manaktala posted another video as evidence that Shetty had copied from his friend and motivational speaker Varun Agarwal's Facebook post and minted money by delivering a speech elsewhere. Since Shetty still hasn't addressed these accusations, the jury is still out on this one.

mid-day report gets a chef on his toes

When Meldan D'Cunha, owner of Bandra's seafood restaurant, Soul Fry Bar and Kitchen, came across mid-day's news report, published on Monday, on how the prevalence of baby pomfrets in the fish markets of Mumbai has alarmed environmentalists, he decided to do something about it. D'Cunha took a copy of the newspaper to the fisherwomen in the Citylight market in Mahim, urging them to avoid selling baby pomfrets, which in turn would stop the boatmen from catching the same.

Fishing of baby pomfret, explain marine scientists, negatively impacts the lifecycle of the species, endangering it. "I have been buying fish for my restaurant the last 20 years and I have seen the catch reduce in quantity, the size of the fish getting smaller and certain species of fish disappearing," D'Cunha said. The average weight of the pomfret around 1980 used to be 300 gram when it reached fish markets, but it is now around 50 gram, meaning the city's love for the fish is not letting it reach adulthood.

New soda, old bottle

It sounds like revamp season at restaurateur AD Singh's brands. A few days ago we reported in these pages that after a long stint, chef Rishim Sachdeva - who is primarily based out of London now - will be stepping down to make way for Viraf Patel as the head chef at Olive. Now, we hear, a reshuffling is in order at Singh's Parsi cuisine restaurant chain SodaBottleOpenerWala, where Irfan Pabaney will be replacing Mohit Balachandran as its country head. Speaking about it, Pabaney told this diarist, "I am excited to be joining a hospitality group that is one of the leaders in the industry. My focus will be to make Parsi and Bombay street food more exciting, young and quirky."

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