20 August,2023 07:19 AM IST | Mumbai | Team SMD
Pic/Satej Shinde
A tourist photographer trains his camera on the Gateway of India. Yesterday, August 19, was celebrated as World Photographers Day around the globe.
A still from the show
With all eyes and ears trained on reports of the Chandrayaan-3 mission, and heartbeats picking up tempo as India prepares to become the fourth country to master the technology of a soft landing by a robotic lunar rover on the moon's surface after the US, China and the former Soviet Union, the Nehru Planetarium has tapped into the excitement. The Planetarium's digital show "Cosmic Life", is up and running at the Worli venue. The show, which is in Hindi, Marathi and English, is futuristic with a dash of the philosophical posing the question: are we alone in the Universe? The show begins with a schoolboy on a picnic who falls asleep under the starry sky and dreams of a journey in a big ISRO spaceship, where he meets some extraterrestrials. And that, we think, is enough of a teaser!
A proposed representation of what the lobby at The Legend will look like
Mumbai's home buyers are indeed a fickle lot. All throughout the pandemic, we saw home aspirants ask for a home that required only the effort of moving their clothes into the new apartment, because they didn't want to the hassle of going through every little detail with their interior designers. Now that the market has opened up, guess what? Developers say that buyers are now asking for bare-shell apartments. Ayushi Ashar, director of Ashar Group, made the revelation during a tete-a-tete with the media at the launch of The Legend, a project where acting legend Dilip Kumar's bungalow used to stand. "Like our earlier luxury project Navroze, this project will not have ready interiors, which we usually provide. The buyers want to design their own layout. Some clients have asked for a bowling alley or a spa inside the residence. Hence, the taste of the buyer in ultra-luxury projects like ours is now changing." Not sure what home buyers will want next, but we're surely waiting and watching.
Jasprit Bumrah
No matter how well India's T20 tour of Ireland pans out, the big question which the media and cricket lovers should be asking is, how come Jasprit Bumrah, who spent a year mending his back injury, is back (no pun intended) in the team as captain? Have the Indian selectors with a new chief in Ajit Agarkar turned brave? Maybe they have, but it just doesn't sit well with convention. Selectors normally want to see how players cope in domestic/club games before getting them back to the international fold. The selection appears more extraordinary when you consider that the team has Ruturaj Gaikwad, who has been named as captain for next month's Asian Games in China. Wouldn't leading the team in Ireland have provided Gaikwad valuable experience in India's quest for Asian gold? Fair question. But then, answers and official explanations in the Indian cricket world are as rare as Test triple hundreds.
Kapish Mehra
It was a sales pitch that led to accidental book enterprise. Back in the 1930s, K Jackson Marshall, a Scottish gentleman selling books in New Market, Calcutta, met D Mehra selling hosiery. Impressed by his sales pitch, Marshall convinced him to join him. With meagre capital and his home doubling up as his office, Mehra became the bookseller's representative - that's how the new enterprise Rupa, which means "silver", was born in 1936. Mehra's entrepreneur's luck extended to Rupa's logo, which was designed by Satyajit Ray. The feed charged by the legendary auteur was "a few good books to read!" This week Rupa Publications turned 88. With a roster that boasts of some of the most beloved authors like Ray, Gulzar, Ruskin Bond, RK Narayan, to name a few, and biggest names, including President Pranab Mukherjee, JRD Tata, Ronnie Screwvala, Maharani Gayatri Devi, Rupa has a legacy that runs deep. "It's been a very humbling journey to serve the reader over the last 88 years. We are proud to have the privilege of publishing writers across genres and we hope to be able to do so, in the years ahead too," Kapish Mehra, Managing Director, Rupa Publications said.
Think"cybersecurity agency" and you'd automatically think of scary research reports about your data being stolen or cybercriminals trying to get into your bank accounts. Which is why an email from McAfee earlier this week had this diarist chuckling. "This Raksha Bandhan, what better for siblings and family members than opting for a practical yet careful approach by ensuring each other's protection not just in the physical realm but online as well?" it said. We do, though, appreciate the attempt at breaking away from the "prophet of doom" image to get on the festive bandwagon. "The idea is not to position from the Raksha Bandhan point of view, but more from the awareness point of view," a McAfee representative told this diarist. Well, they get points for effort for sure!
