Mumbai Diary: Friday Dossier

Pic/Atul Kamble

Kitty Party

Two felines have some fun of their own in a classroom at DS High School in Sion on Thursday

Dishing out dad's favourites

Jazz veteran Louiz Banks loves his Chinese food. "All our lives, after shows and recordings or on weekends, we would go out to eat Chinese food. It's in my blood and my system," chuckles Neil Banks (in pic), his son, who runs the music events firm Gigatainment. Naturally, the cuisine was his first choice when it came to starting his own delivery kitchen. Called JADE - PanAsian Kitchen, the venture is based out of Bandra, and serves up delicacies such as prawns with crackling spinach, wontons, chicken in chilli oil, butter pepper prawns and more. "It's been a dream to start a restaurant but considering the pandemic and that it's a new field for me, I decided to start off with a cloud kitchen," Neil added.

Ladies, it's time to loiter

A pre-pandemic Why Loiter session

Inspired by the book Why Loiter: Women and Risk on Mumbai Streets by Shilpa Phadke, Sameera Khan and Shilpa Ranade, writer and actor Neha Singh started an eponymous campaign in 2014.The idea was to drive a conversation around how women navigate public spaces, and to reclaim the streets, in order to make it a safer experience. After a brief pause on physical loitering sessions during the pandemic, the women were back on ground last night, on the anniversary of the Delhi gang rape and murder case. The women started off from Versova Jetty at 11.30 pm and walked to SV Road, Jogeshwari. "We felt that her death anniversary would be a good time to start loitering again because not much has changed since then. We chose this route this time as the area is still more hostile to women at that hour. If the new COVID variant doesn't cause further restrictions, I hope to continue with at least one loitering session every month," said Singh.

Six years of ishq

Agents of Ishq (AOI), one of the most influential multimedia platforms for positive representation of sex and sexuality in India, celebrated their six-year anniversary in typical fashion, with a catchy music video. "When we started, the conversations around sexuality were taboo and there weren't many spaces like ours in the Indian media landscape. Most spaces were Westernised and the Indian context was barely portrayed. There was a disconnect. There were many who discouraged us, claiming it was a bad idea. I remember when the messages and inputs started flowing into our inbox from all over the country, we realised we were doing something right," recalled Paromita Vohra, co-founder of AOI. The platform has garnered praise for promoting a healthy conversation around sex. "There is a lacuna in our understanding of sex and sexuality. It is not just information; it is an intersection of various aspects of our socio-cultural milieu. It is important that there is constant conversation about these topics to influence positive change," shared Vohra.

Jazzing it up across borders

Supergombo is one of the bands at the fest. Pic Courtesy/Facebook

Mumbai has had a rich history of jazz festivals with iconic events like the erstwhile Jazz Yatra. But that mantle has been taken on by Jazzfest Kolkata, a musical show that will be held online this weekend. It features artistes including Supergombo (France), L'éclair (Switzerland) and Chirag Todi (India). "The reasons we decided to remain digital this year is that the club where we normally hold it, Dalhousie Institute, hasn't opened yet, and international bands are not touring the country physically right now," organiser Varun Desai shared. Log on to jazzfest.in to get an online experience of the music that even Jazz Yatra embodied.

Sweden calling

Rithika Merchant's artworks at Mentors. Pic Courtesy/CFHILL

Mumbai-born artist Rithika Merchant's artworks have made it to an exhibition titled Mentors at CFHILL, an independent art space and art advisory in Stockholm, Sweden. Curated by Sandra Weil, the exhibition features artworks by eight artists from different parts of the world, and will be on view till January 7, 2022. The works that Merchant - whose practice is informed by mythology, history, and climate change and environment - is exhibiting at Mentors are a mix of old and new, the artist shared with this diarist. "They are all rooted in mythology and historical figures. Using botanical imagery and my own lexicon of figures and symbols, the artworks explore the relationship we have with different aspects of our natural world," Merchant told us.