Mumbai Diary: Sunday Dossier

Pic/Atul Kamble

Fam jam

A tourist couple enjoys the big city breeze at Gateway of India.

Keeping it quiet

Rashmit Arora (left) and Rajanvir Dharni. Pic/Sameer Markande

This Mexican eatery in Belapur, Navi Mumbai, is covertly offering its patrons plant-based foods without yelling the agenda. Gracias Granny's hot chocolate, chocolate dips for churros, jugaadu sour cream and the cheesy sauce that the nachos come slathered with are all dairy free. While all the meats come with plant-based options to replace, these basics are not advertised loudly. "Instead of trying to convert people, we believe in meeting people where they are," says Rashmit Arora, one of the partners. "India is the largest consumer of dairy, but Indians are naturally flexitarians," he continues, explaining the confidence that underlies this covert activism. What about allergies? "If someone has an allergy, they tell us outright, and they are usually for peanuts or, ironically, dairy," he says, "People like hot chocolate because it tastes so unique and why it tastes unique is the nut milk!" But what if we just like our cheese to be cheese, not pumpkin?

ICC takes note of Chad ‘scoring' runs at two months short of 82

The International Cricket Council (ICC) has done well to honour a silent worker in world cricket - Indian scorer Yeshvant Chad - on their Instagram account. Chad, two months shy of completing 82, has been doing scoring since 1972 and has scored at two India-winning World Cups in 1983 (England) and 2011 (India) apart from four tours to England. As unassuming as they come, Chad in the Instagram video (shot during the Afghanistan v New Zealand game in Chennai), remembered his mentor Anandji Dossa, who urged him to take up scoring. Chad is hoping he can "score" India to their third ODI World Cup win. And what a great early birthday gift will that be!

Also read: Navi Mumbai: 43-year-old man held for sexually abusing dog in housing society

A kidnapping at Watson's Hotel

Author Anuradha Kumar has always loved reading up about Bombay, especially what the city was like in the 19th and early 20th centuries. "It was such a vibrant, cosmopolitan, precociously modern city. Mark Twain noticed this too, in the chapters he wrote about Bombay in his book, Following the Equator (1897). I really loved that book," she tells this diarist. Some years ago, soon after the release of her novel, Coming Back to the City: Mumbai Stories, Kumar had a flicker of an idea - "to write a mystery involving Mark Twain, his stay at the Watson's Hotel [in Kala Ghoda], from where he is ‘kidnapped'".
Her soon-to-release novel, The Kidnapping of Mark Twain, has the American writer as its central character. "…as are the people desperate to find him: the American trade consul, Henry Baker; a free-spirited, Anglo-Indian, Maya Barton, who does a bit of everything, and Baker's aide, Abdul. I tried to bring the period alive, complete with its soirees, business rivalries, opium dens, lively theatre acts, nautch performances, and that insistent bubbling of reform and change, that nothing could ever clamp down, not then, and not now."

A tequila shot headed for Gaza

Tequila

Tequila has turned 13, and this very special indie is celebrating it in a befitting way - by contributing funds to a charity in war-ravaged Gaza that is taking care of street and homeless pet animals. These are animals found in the rubble and hurt in the bombing. Her humans, Raj Mariwala and Dr Shruti Chakravarty of the Mariwala Health Foundation are donating their personal funds - Rs 55,000 - to four animal charities. "We chose small, committed organisations that don't have marketing muscle." The other organisations are Stray Care in Manali that helps with adoptions and needs a fridge and is trying to set up an OPD. Then there's Roar in Bengaluru that works with handicapped dogs and prosthetics. And then there's Hand and Paw run by a mother-daughter duo who feed and sterilise strays in Mumbai. Tequila came as a traumatised and abused pup to Mariwala, and her behavioural problems set Mariwala on the path of becoming a canine behaviourist and extending that work to mental health of vets, pet professionals and parents. Tequila is also the reason Mariwala is India's leading feline behaviourist - the dog cannot resist nurturing orphaned kittens and "she's the reason my house is over run by cats." And now Tequila is the bringer of change in war torn areas far, far away.

Mein aisi hi hoon!

Zoya Lobo, India's first trans photojournalist and influencer, is giddy with excitement when we speak to her over the phone. Her bubbly personality spills over as she tells us about a five-minute documentary, Zoya, directed by Harsh Matondkar, screened at MAMI Mumbai Film Festival that talks about her life.

Zoya shot to fame with her photographs of stranded migrants at Bandstand during peak COVID. "I didn't want to talk about the same old thing. I wanted to move forward in my life," she recalls. But a coffee with Matondkar - she went to a Starbucks for the first time in her life - convinced her to ‘spill the beans'.

"You know, I thought if I don't talk about Zoya again, how will people know her? How will others like her know of a better life?" she quips, her diva move of addressing herself in third person making her all the more endearing.

The documentary, says he acting aspirant, was shot over just two days. "Harsh and I had a blast in those two days and I am so proud of this project. I had auditioned for so many parts in the last few years and I feel a sense of vindication with this documentary. A kind of ‘See what you missed?' for all those who threw shade my way," she laughs. Well, girl, now they know better. #Divaforlife!