22 May,2023 07:21 AM IST | Mumbai | Team mid-day
Pic/Aishwarya Deodhar
To keep the heat at bay, a horse at Dadar Chowpatty sports a cowboy hat
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Despite the heat playing spoilsport, Mumbai's summer shades are hard to miss. Take a minute to look out of your bus, auto-rickshaw or car and catch clusters of bright pink and yellow flowers. This season, this diarist has been eyeing the pink bougainvillea flowers along the city's dividers and footpaths - it makes for radiant additions to her photo gallery on dull days. And just in time, Goa-based artist and sculptor Subodh Kerkar drops his bougainvillea installation that uses nearly a 1,000 flowers. With the help of his colleagues at the Museum of Goa (MOG), he collected colourful branches to insert the flowers in a tall and wavy wire mesh.
About its name, Kerkar shared, "The flowers were brought to Goa from Brazil by the Portuguese in the 16th century. Jeanne Baret, a botanist, accompanied her lover on that ship. Since women were not allowed on ships back then, she dressed up as a man to sail, becoming the first woman to sail around the world. She spotted the pretty flowers in Brazil and named them after Admiral Bougainville, who was commanding the ship." He added that the flowers are called petroli in Goa for their paper-like feel. And it's called kagoj phool in Bangla; kagoj meaning paper. United by flowers, are we?!
A moment from The Bond Behind The Jam
Three films that explore music through its interactions with spaces and as a vehicle of dissent are coming to a city venue next week. Harkat Studios is set to host their last film screening for the month. The showcase will feature films such as Politics, Protest, Poetry; The Bond Behind The Jam and The Casteless Collective Prologue. Oishee Nandy, assistant curator at Harkat, told this diarist, "Mumbai has a unique space in the framework of music and culture. The Casteless Collective Prologue is set in the city and is a documentation of the rise of the collective by the same name. Since Mumbai has an informed culture of desi hip-hop, the film reflects the sentiment of the genre being an accessible and popular medium of dissent."
Sohrab P Godrej (right) with Dr Salim Ali. PIC COURTESY/GODREJ ARCHIVES
It's been 23 years since Sohrab Pirojsha Godrej - a man of diverse interests - passed. Remembering her uncle-in-law, Pheroza Godrej, art historian and author, told us, "He was deeply involved in the holistic development of the nation. One of the vehicles that he chose for that was the World Wildlife Fund. He would say that our environment goes hand in hand with the population of India. He loved - Gujarati and French and lived a full life." Solly uncle, she added, used to wear two cloth patches, a black patch and a white one, to visually emote the days when he was in mourning or feeling happy.
Heaps of garbage piled up next to the signage at Pali Hill
He was celebrated as one of the most famous residents of Bandra, but the eponymous chowk named after late singer Mohammed Rafi on Pali Hill seems to be in need of a tune-up. This diarist was dismayed to spot piles of garbage around the signage during an afternoon stroll in the area over the weekend. Naming a street after an icon is a salute only in name, we feel. The intent gets defeated if we fail to maintain it.
Dr Anita Rane Kothare discusses the hero stone with (right) US Ambassador Eric Garcetti
The new United States Ambassador to India, Eric Garcetti, began his tenure with a tour of aamchi Mumbai last week. A keen student of history and culture, Garcetti visited the Keneseth Eliyahoo Synagogue, stopped by the Kyani & Co for chai and bun-maska, and also dropped by St Xavier's College for a tete-a-tete with the head of department for Ancient Indian Culture and Archaeology, Dr Anita Rane Kothare. "Both he and US Consul General, Mike Hankey, were part of the informal visit. They saw the images of Vetal, and the seals we have in our collection. Garcetti was fascinated by the hero stone, and knew the languages, too," she revealed.
