Mumbai Diary: Sunday Dossier

Pic/Suresh Karkera

Chhutta Nahi Hai

A woman shows her purse to a fruit seller in Lalbaug to prove her point.

It's showtime at Kraszna-Krausz Awards

Though the Hindi film industry has taken a beating in the pandemic, there's some good news for cinema lovers. Researcher Debashree Mukherjee's 2020 book, Bombay Hustle: Making Movies in a Colonial City (Columbia University Press), which offered a striking portrait of the Bombay film industry from the 1920s to 40s, and the studios that helmed it, was recently longlisted for the Kraszna-Krausz Book Awards. The longlists were chosen from over 180 submissions. "I'm quite thrilled to be in such wonderful company with co-nominees such as Salomé Aguilera Skvirsky and Eric Smoodin," says Mukherjee, who is assistant professor at the Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies at Columbia University. "It's nice to be recognised for writing about popular cinema, especially from a century ago."

A cricket-loving PM called John Howard

Then Australia Prime Minister John Howard at the Heritage Cricket Match in Canberra to celebrate a century of Australian cricket on January 26, 2001. Pic/Getty Images

Australia's Prime Minister Scott Morrison has attracted the ire of several cricketers Down Under for sticking to his stance of not allowing them to arrive in the country till May 15 in a quest to minimise Covid-19 cases. As a result, Aussie players and coaches can't get home as early as they expected after IPL-14 was suspended. All this doesn't make Morrison one of the most popular Australian PMs in a cricketing context. He is surely not a Sir Robert Menzies, who served in two terms - 1939 to 1941 and 1949 to 1966. We'll dwell on Menzies's cricket passion on another day, but we can talk about John Howard, who was often called a cricket tragic. Howard held office from 1996 to 2007 and this diarist remembers being in the same elevator as the PM at the Sydney Cricket Ground during the January 2-6 India v Australia Test in 2004. We started talking cricket and he was asked who was his favourite Indian cricketer. When one expected him to say Sachin Tendulkar for obvious reasons, Howard picked VVS Laxman for his batting style. If Laxman is reading this, he should remind himself of his Very, Very, Special (VVS) status in world cricket.

Malvan comes to Byculla

Last year has possibly been the worst for the hospitality industry. All restaurateurs could do was make sure their businesses survived. For former photojournalist Amit Haralkar, however, it has been a great run. He started Masoli - a restaurant that serves a Malvani menu dominating seafood - in Nagpada, just a few weeks before March 2020. Instantly, his venture was a hit on Sofia Zubair Road. A few days ago, Haralkar has opened up a second branch in Byculla, bringing Malvan coast to this neighbourhood that otherwise loved kebabs and yakhni pulao. He tells this diarist, "Byculla is dominated by Middle Eastern cuisine. So we thought we should introduce the people here to seafood as well. The response has been great."

Insta grief page remembers those who lost fight to Covid-19

It's been a hard few months, with many of us losing loved ones. To show their support for the victims and families who have lost loved ones, an online memorial known as the "2nd wave memorial" has been created on Instagram. Every day, they post beautiful stories about people who have died as a result of Covid-19. "Being witness to mass deaths every day as a result of a lack of healthcare resources and government negligence is what prompted us to create this page. People are frequently memorialised after mass tragedies. In India, however, this is uncommon. In contrast to other countries, where people learn the names and faces of tragedy victims, we only hear numbers. We are more than numbers," says one of the spokespersons of the group, which wants to remain anonymous.
They have received such a positive reaction that now they are receiving stories from strangers, and not just curating information from news articles and Twitter. "We hope that people can find some solace in the collective expression of grief and outrage. Even if we don't achieve anything, it's still important to recognise and speak out against injustice when it occurs. It's possible that with timely access to healthcare, some of them would have beaten Covid-19," adds another member.

Your vax assistant is here

That a little help in booking vaccination appointments could help expedite the inoculation programme is what prompted Tushar Vashisht, co-founder and CEO of HealthifyMe, to launch Vaccinateme.in. The platform uses the CoWIN API (Application Programming Interface) to help people find the available slots in real time in their area or district. In the case of unavailability of the slots, the platform will notify the users when a slot opens up via SMS, email, or WhatsApp. Users can access this service either on the HealthifyMe app or by visiting Vaccinateme.in. You can even customise the search on the basis of pin code, district, age, choice of vaccine, and free or paid vaccination centres.