Mumbai Diary: Tuesday Dossier

Pic/Sameer Markande

Tackling the odds

A girl tries to stop her opponent during a rugby game at Tilak Nagar in Chembur on Monday.

These dancers break new territory

B-girl Jo will head to Poland in November to represent India at the finals of the competition

The past year has seen B-boys and B-girls being robbed of open spaces like parks and gardens where they can practise their moves in, and also witnessed dance institutes and venues shuttering due to the pandemic. It's thus been a tough period for them, but two of them - B-boy Wildchild and B-girl Jo - have overcome these obstacles to emerge as the winners of BC One Cypher India 2021, which is the national leg of one of the biggest breaking competitions in the world. The duo will now travel to the finals, titled Last Chance Cypher, which will take place in Gdansk, Poland, in November.

B-boy Wildchild

Speaking about her training process during the pandemic, B-girl Jo shared, "I think I got better at being a breaker in the lockdown the second time around. The first time I kind of burnt out trying to train as hard as I could without a goal in sight, and without taking care of my mental and spiritual health through what the entire world was going through. In the second lockdown, I took time to build my training in a holistic manner. I kept my nutrition clean, practised yoga and put in hours of training even though there was no announcement of any upcoming jam."

Shake lit up

Yesterday, the longlist for the 2021 JCB Prize for Literature was announced. Titles were selected by a jury of five that included author Sara Rai, designer Dr Annapurna Garimella, author Shahnaz Habib, editor Prem Panicker (in pic) and writer Amit Varma. The list of 10 titles includes works like What We Know About Her by Krupa Ge, Anti-Clock by VJ James, Gods and Ends by mid-day columnist Lindsay Pereira and The Dharma Forest by Keerthik Sasidharan. Five shortlisted authors stand to win Rs 1 lakh each.

Funnier side of nature

Sarosh Lodhi's photograph selected for the longlist

There's a reason why many people can spend hours watching online videos featuring cats, dogs, farm or wild animals. It's because of the reason that apart from being cute, they can also be hilarious. That's the same premise with which the Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards were started in the UK in 2015. The aim of the global competition is to celebrate the hilarity of our natural world, and the 21 finalists of this year's edition have just been announced. They include three Indians: Siddhant Agrawal, Sarosh Lodhi and Aditya Kshirsagar. "We received well over 7,000 photos submitted from every corner of the globe. It was an amazing turnout, especially given the impact of the pandemic," shared Paul Joynson-Hicks, the award's co-founder.

Joining forces

According to the new National Education Policy, different states are being paired in educational activities to understand each other's culture, wildlife, etc. Maharashtra has been paired with Odisha, and as part of this tie-up, Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya (CSMVS) has joined forces with Bhubaneswar's Regional Museum of National History for a series of workshops aimed at school kids, which starts today. "We have three different sessions that will focus on subjects like wildlife and wetlands," shared Meagan Vaz, education officer at CSMVS.

Chembur's all-new canvas

F&B company Impresario Handmade Restaurants is about to launch the newest outpost of Social, its chain of restaurants, at Chembur. But ahead of that launch, they have announced a competition where they are inviting artists to paint miniature models of the outlet's façade, with the picture depicting what their memories of the neighbourhood are and what it means to them. Selected artworks will be included in an installation that will be on display at the venue, and three winners will also get prizes, apart from food and drinks on the house. "Each of our outposts is a representation of the neighbourhood it resides in and imbibes hyper-local influences. The Chembur outpost is no different. Nurturing local communities is at the heart of every neighbourhood Social, and what better way to bring that alive than by tapping the local artist community," Alexander Valladares, chief marketing officer of Impresario Handmade Restaurants, told this diarist.