08 January,2021 08:42 AM IST | Mumbai | Team mid-day
Pic/Sayyed Sameer Abedi
Musician Agnelo Cardoz's morning gig at BKC's city park offers visitors a sweet start to the day.
Paanchika was also selected for the New York Indian Film Festival 2020
It's not often that one scores big in their first attempt. But city-based Ankit Kothari was in for good news when he heard that his debut short film Paanchika will be the opening film at the International Film Festival of India (IFFI) this year under the Indian Panorama (Non-Feature) category.
The film is about seven-year-old Miri's journey to deliver lunch across a desert of salt pyramids, and about the honour Kothari told this diarist, "Nothing beats the satisfaction of watching my short film on the big screen, especially in these times."
In an age where disinformation about the country and its past spreads by the minute, turning back to history is the only way forward. And Namit Arora's new book Indians: A brief History of a Civilization (Penguin India) is a step in that direction as it traverses nearly 5,000 years of India's history. It's garnered praise from esteemed writers and researchers like Pankaj Mishra, John Keay and Assa Doron. Arora, who spent two decades in Silicon Valley before moving to India, shared that he was yearning for a book that "would bring alive this [social and cultural] history in the context of specific iconic sites - a book that combined narrative history with archaeological travel writing, which connected the dots to illuminate some of the most consequential trends, transformations and fault lines of Indian civilisation." He didn't find a title that satisfied him and so decided to write one himself. He hopes readers will discover "amazing new stories of our ancestors." We hope so, too.
Priyasri Patodia with Akbar Padamsee
On January 6 last year, the art world lost Akbar Padamsee at 91. But the modernist's legacy lives on in his work and in the memory of the lives he touched - including Priyasri Patodia. On his first death anniversary, the gallerist took to social media to share a warm memory of her first meeting with him in 2005 at his studio in Prabhadevi, eager to work with him. But he refrained from talking about art or commerce and instead asked her to sing a thumri, and inquired about the languages she could read and speak in. "It sounds like an odd thing to say, but in the course our meetings I somehow began to feel I had known him for a long time," she reminisced.
Last year, we had written in this section about how designer Joy Bimal Roy, son of filmmaker Bimal Roy, had begun upcycling his late sister Yashodhara's sarees and launched a new venture called Touch of Joy. His work is being showcased at the Kala Ghoda gallery ARTISANS'. Now, taking off from Roy's venture, the gallery has started a saree bank to give old, damaged sarees a new lease of life. "The sarees from saree bank go to Touch of Joy and to some of the other upcycling projects that we work with. We welcome natural material sarees, like handmade or handloom or hand-printed ones. We plan to set up a barrel outside our gallery. If the person can add a small note about what the saree means to them, we'd like to carry the memories and meaning," gallerist Radhi Parekh (inset) said.
If you're interested in electronic music - be it as a producer or just as a listener - what do you feel about spending a week at a scenic location in Kerala's Pallakad district, learning the tricks of the trade? That's what the folks at Bhoomi Farms (left) in the southern state are offering with a music residency slated to start on July 23.
The programme is called Free Wav, and involves participants being taught modules on field recording, beat making and the sampling history of electronic music, among other things. Nithin Shamsudhin, one of the instructors, told this diarist, "The idea was inspired by a similar residency in Kolkata, called Synth Farm. But that runs only for three days, and we thought why not have people over for a week and delve deeper into the subject." Check out @bhoomi.farms on Instagram to apply.
