Mumbai Diary: Sunday Dossier

Pic/Sameer Markande

Touch and go

Kids at Byculla Zoo have the chance to get up close with a tiger that's in the mood for a swim

Indie leakproof underwear gets govt grant

Founder of homegrown period lingerie brand Soqo, Janvi Tiwari has earned a grant of R10 lakh from the central government's Startup India Seed Fund Scheme, an initiative that encourages entrepreneurship across India. Speaking to us over a phone call from Bhopal, the 24-year-old says that this money will help her pay salaries besides helping them market their products. "Creating a new product is still doable but marketing them needs money. As of now, whatever sales we have been doing is through word of mouth. This grant will help us take our leakproof underwear to a wider audience," says Tiwari, adding, "I can also finally rent a space for my office."

Kersi's initial movement from Down Under!

Kersi Meher-Homji

This is an unusual item on cricket trivia, sent to us by our Sydney-based friend and renowned cricket facts man Kersi Meher-Homji.
Kersi has combined Test cricketers' initials (names or surnames) to form a word.
Over to him:
How do these initial ideas sound to you, readers?
Best all-rounders: SIKH
Best batsmen: BHAT
Best fast/fast medium fast bowlers: LAMB
Best spinners: WIMP
Best wicketkeepers: HOME
Have you worked out my strange system/code? Or do you think I have gone bananas?
Here's my explanation:
Best all-rounders: SIKH for Garry Sobers, Imran Khan, Kapil Dev, Richard Hadlee. My apologies for leaving out Ian Botham.
Best batsmen: BHAT for Don Bradman, Wally Hammond, Mohinder Amarmath, Sachin Tendulkar. (You may replace Hammond with Jack Hobbs or Len Hutton)
Best fast/fast medium bowlers: LAMB for Harold Larwood, Wasim Akram, Malcolm Marshall or Glenn McGrath, Alec Bedser.
Best spinners: WIMP for Shane Warne, Ray Illingworth, Muttiah Muralitharan, EAS Prasanna. What, Illingworth in and Bishan Bedi and BS Chandrasekhar out?
Best wicketkeepers: HOME for Ian Healy, Bert Oldfield, Rodney Marsh, Godfrey Evans or Farokh Engineer.

Memories of Premchand

Legendary Hindi author Munshi Premchand's writer-editor granddaughter Sara Rai is penning a memoir that will soon be published by Westland Books.
Titled Raw Umber: A Literary Memoir, the book is "a reflection on the nature of remembering and the role that memory plays in shaping a writer's sensibility."
It will begin with Rai delving into the story of her grandfather, and follows the lives of many others in her family gallery, including her grandmother and brother, from the 1920s to the 2000s. "Rai's writing sparkles and illuminates as she brings alive memories of childhood and family, of Allahabad in an earlier era, and reflects on a life lived in proximity to great minds.

Real to reel life

If you have watched Delhi Crime's Season 2, and were impressed with the storytelling, this may interest you. Mayank Tiwari, who has written the show, learnt his chops while being a young crime reporter in the capital in the early 2000s. This diarist, then a rookie sub editor, remembers editing his copies! "Delhi opens up differently to crime reporters especially, and that can be both rewarding and traumatic. The class divide and inequities are sharply observed. I don't think I could have worked on DC2 without that experience," the writer told us.

Brush up on aircraft carrier past

The installation at the Regal Cinema traffic island in Colaba

Prime Minister Narendra Modi commissioned the first indigenously built and designed aircraft carrier, the INS Vikrant at the Cochin Shipyard on Friday. There can be no better time for Mumbaikars to make their way to the Regal cinema traffic island in Colaba. The buzzing area has an installation of a scaled down (of course) version of the warship INS Vikrant, a model of the earlier aircraft carrier of the Indian Navy. This replica is in fact, made with some of the scrap material of the older Vikrant. The India-made Vikrant is named after this gallant predecessor, which played a key role in India's 1971 India-Pakistan war. Bella Shah, one of the movers and shakers of the replica project, said, "While the installation is of the older Vikrant, the India-made one may be much more advanced given the many decades that have elapsed since then - the public will get an idea of what aircraft carriers are all about. This is an apt moment for Mumbaikars to learn about the majestic warrior of the seas from a plaque on site, giving a short, snappy history." The older INS Vikrant, whose replica is symbolic of its fierce, stirring feats, was de-commissioned in 1997.