Mumbai Diary: Sunday Dossier

Pic/Aishwarya Deodhar

Twinning in pink

Fish mongers synchronise their attire and walk as they get into a Mumbai local on Saturday

A happy chain-reaction born out of love for cats

A class III student of Hill Spring International School in Tardeo has spurred a one-of-a-kind movement among friends. Animal lover Aarian Sharma, who is all of 9, recently got his friends to donate to animal welfare NGO YODA on his birthday. "After three lockdown birthdays, we decided to celebrate Aarian's birthday, but he told us that he didn't want gifts, and that he'd like to support a cause instead," says his mum Pooja Sharma. "We successfully raised a total sum of R1 lakh. This amount will help with close to 2,415 meals for cats or alternatively, around 96 vaccinations." Aarian continues to champion the cause of strays. At present he cares for seven stray cats in his neighbourhood. "Recently, he informed the local specialist about a cat with an eye injury, who arranged for the required medication to treat it," says his mum. Now, many of his friends are also following suit, and conducting donation drives for causes and charity groups supporting animals.

When Vishy got under Javed's skin!

Javed Miandad and Sadanand Vishwanath

There have been several players who more than just cringed when Pakistani great Javed Miandad was a source of distraction and nuisance through his on-pitch utterances. His antics were not restricted to batsmen because we know for a fact how he kept asking an Indian slow bowler for his hotel room number while batting against him in the Bangalore Test of the 1983-84 season. When the bowler sought an explanation as to why Miandad needed his room number, he was told that Miandad wanted to land the ball straight in his hotel room. The other day, former India leg-spinner Laxman Sivaramakrishnan narrated an anecdote on Twitter involving wicketkeeper Sadanand Vishwanath and Miandad during the 1985 World Championship of Cricket in Australia. Exasperated by Vishwanath's chatter, the Pakistani complained to India captain Sunil Gavaskar about Vishwanath, with the words, "Please ask your wicketkeeper to keep quiet." Imagine, Miandad getting a taste of his own medicine. Priceless, rare!

What's so intelligent about artificial intelligence?

Neil Leach has had a question on his mind for long: for a country with so much representation in Silicon Valley and the global software space, why does architecture in India lack computation? In the city earlier this week, the British architect, curator and writer was at Ballard Estate's IFBE gallery to muse with an audience about AI. He wondered aloud if AI can be termed ‘intelligent' - can AI truly ‘think' when it is neither sentient nor self-aware? Can AI emulate what the human brain can do, or is it capable of more, beyond what the mind can comprehend? Leach broke down for the participants exactly how AI generates images through systems like DALL-E and Midjourney. These AI models do not copy existing artwork; they search the internet and synthesise visuals based on the user's specific prompts. Most importantly, they are accessible to anyone interested in architecture or design. According to Leach, it is not productive to pit humans against AI. Viewing it as an extension of the human imagination, something that will significantly enhance our work, is how he sees it being of value.

When Mona Lisa almost smiled

Atul Choudhary's caricature of Da Vinci offering a rose to Mona Lisa

Artist Atul Choudhary's brilliance at realistic portraits, is turning heads of passers-by near Chemould Frames, Princess Street, SoBo. The artist has painted a spoof, a caricature of Leonardo da Vinci offering a rose to Mona Lisa, which is visible from outside the store too. We learn that proceeds from this sale will go to a deserving animal charity. The Mona Lisa smile is still an enigma, but no doubt, many are smiling at our very own ‘Atulbhai's' eye-catching spoof.

Free-styling their way to fame with international musicians

Last Sunday, this diarist was pleasantly surprised to see two young rappers from Dharavi share stage with renowned French-Spanish singer Manu Chao at the second edition of Sauce festival in the city. The 61-year-old's upbeat Latin ska music was a completely different genre to what Dharavi's Amogh Baini and Lavesh Laxman, who goes by the alias Mr Lassh, performed. This is not the first time that the duo have had the chance to perform alongside international musicians who play a different genre than hip-hop. The young rappers are part of Zone 302, a hip-hop group, along with The Dharavi Dream Project (TDDP), said to be India's first hip-hop school. They performed with French pianist Alexandre Herer's contemporary progressive jazz project Nunataq in 2019, when they "jammed in Dharavi" which led to the duo joining them on their India tour. They also performed with Herer and the band again last year when they came to India. The same with Chao, when he performed in the city in 2020 and "he liked jamming with us so he asked us again," they said. "We didn't have time to jam so whatever we did was on the spot," says Laxman. "We're known for our free-styling rapping and that is exactly what we did with Chao on stage," he adds. The crowd was mostly an international audience but the duo says that they got great response. "The best response we got was when a foreigner said that he was a huge fan of Chao but now he became a huge fan of ours too," gushes Laxman.