Mumbai Diary: Thursday Dossier

Pic/Satej Shinde

It's time to reflect

A white-throated kingfisher searches for food in a drain at Kandivali on Wednesday.

In the name of Ambedkar

Yesterday was the birth anniversary of Dr BR Ambedkar, a leader who needs no introduction. Carnatic vocal maestro TM Krishna released a new song to mark the occasion, which he performed online. The track in Tamil is called Karpi, ondru ser, puratchi sei - which translates into ‘educate, organise, protest' - and author Perumal Murugan, Krishna's long-time collaborator, wrote the lyrics for it. Speaking about what relevance Ambedkar's values hold in society today, the musician told this diarist, "I think there are two parts to it. One is that honest introspection by the larger public of India will reveal that we have actually not done justice to him for a long time. That needs to be acknowledged. Independent India has not done enough to honour his commitment as a constitutional thinker and social reformer." Krishna added, "The other part is that everything he stood for - which fundamentally was that democracy, equality and equity have to be the soul of any modern nation - is in danger at all ends. Our political system is threatening personal liberty and creative spaces, and dividing us further on caste and religious lines, thus breaking down all the possibilities that Ambedkar gifted us. We have regressed by about 150 years, except that we are doing it with the help of modern technology."

Arty makeover

The wall near Worli's Love Grove pumping station has been adorned with a brand new mural. Titled Darroj Mumbait or Everyday Mumbai, it depicts Mumbaikars engaging in daily routines. The theme highlights the fact that the city moves through its people. The mural has been painted by Aravani Art Project, a collective of trans and cis women artists, in conjunction with St+art. Its founder, Sadhna Prasad, said that the goal of this two-week undertaking was to create a design that celebrates the local communities while not being so visually complex that it distracts traffic drivers.

Do the vax dance

We know that the Mumbai Police has a quirky social media presence. But it seems that the Kerala Police are not to be left behind. They recently posted a fun video of two animated vials of Covaxin and Covishield undertaking the #Rasputin Challenge. For the uninitiated, the challenge entails people dancing to the song Rasputin by Boney M, to show solidarity with two young medicos from Thrissur who were trolled for being from different religions, after they posted a video of them dancing to the same track.

A voice for gender issues

Sandbox Collective, a Bengaluru-based artists' collective, is initiating a new project called Rest Your Thoughts Here: The Gender Chronicles. It aims to create an interactive space where people can share their stories and experiences on the theme of gender and sexuality. The project will be launched on April 17, when an online event will invite people to post their inputs on a Mido board, which is a software that mimics a white board, except that you can also leave audio messages on it. "We want to move away from the wokeness that surrounds gender issues, where you keep hearing the same things. We want to see what a 93-year-old person feels about gender. What are the views of a cis man? These singular voices are equally important," shared Deepika R Bhardwaj, who's curating the project.

Back in business

Urvaksh Hoyvoy (second from left) with his family

Back in 2009, Urvaksh and Amy Hoyvoy had set up Parsi da Dhaba, a restaurant on the Mumbai-Gujarat highway out of the desire to share the joy of authentic, home-cooked Parsi food that they grew up eating. "We love food and are passionate about it. Being on the highway, and the fact that we felt that in every Parsi, there's a little bit of a Sardar, we had called it Parsi da Dhaba," recalled Hoyvoy about the restaurant that shuttered a few years ago. To revive their legacy, his sons, Armaan and Azamaan, have now started a delivery kitchen by the same name in Lower Parel. "There was a deep desire to restart again on some level, so we found some good cooks in Mumbai. It's a joint labour of love," he added.