Mumbai Diary: Friday Dossier

Pic/Atul Kamble

In the pink of health

An old lady and two exercising women, who are all colour-coordinated, caught in one frame at Shivaji Park in Dadar on Thursday.

The stage is set in England

One positive aspect of the past year and a half is the advent of the virtual medium, which has given us access to performing arts staged in different parts of the world. That will be in evidence when Quiz Time, a play directed by Bombay Theatre Company (BTC) founder Raveesh Jaiswal, is staged with British actors at Stratford Upon Avon in England on Saturday, while being simultaneously live-streamed on BTC's Instagram page.

The play stars Joshua Gallagher, who is also the playwright, Stacey Warner and Hannah McBride (inset), and the plot revolves around three friends who meet after the lockdown is lifted to pursue their favourite pastime - quizzing. "I have worked with Hannah before and have seen how good a performer she is, and so she was my obvious choice. As I personally do not know many actors in England, I relied upon her to help me cast for the play," Jaiswal (below) shared about the casting process. Keen to watch it? Log on to @bombay_theatre_company on Instagram.

Equal ties

Point of View is a Mumbai-based platform that amplifies the voices of women and marginalised communities. They have now launched a campaign called Equal Online, which seeks to make people understand that our bodies extend beyond the physical realm into the digital world. Campaign consultant Asmita Ghosh told us that all the footprints that we leave online are virtual manifestations of our real selves, whether we are expressing our political beliefs or dating preferences. That creates a digital body for us, she said, adding, "It has agency, autonomy and the right to be received with consent." Ghosh added that the campaign will employ social media to start conversations around how access to digital devices is restricted to adolescent women, and how social media algorithms foster inequality, for example.

Getting interactive about our biodiversity

Mumbai boasts of rich biodiversity, thanks to its coastline and green stretches. Citizens' platform Ministry of Mumbai's Magic will now chart this out in an interactive biodiversity map that illustrator Rohan Chakravarty has created. The map is an improved version of the 2020 original. It will document different species, with clickable features. "From a forest ruled by leopards in the heart of the city to beaches full of bizarre shore wildlife, from wetlands dotted pink with flamingos to mangroves splashing red with fiddler crabs, Mumbai has them all," Chakravarty pointed out.

Altered schooling

Tomorrow will witness the launch of an initiative called Covid Hatao Abhiyan India, under which grassroots literacy platform Katha will spend 101 days educating children, women, teachers and other stakeholders about how they can navigate the altered education system post the pandemic. "We will promote home-schooling and talk about other alternative solutions for children's studies. We will also host workshops to explain home-schooling methods," shared Dr Anand Singh Rana, director of support services at Katha.

Hope to see you soon, Boteco

The other day, this diarist heard some buzz that Boteco, a restaurant in Bandra Kurla Complex that specialises in Brazilian food, was not operational anymore. An online search revealed it had permanently shut down. We were heartbroken to hear the news about the go-to place for meat lovers, known for their pork ribs and barbeque chicken. But all seems well, after all. When we reached out to the owners, they said that the menu is available online for delivery, and they will open for dine-in when they find a new address in the city. Well, the sooner the better.