Mumbai Diary: Tuesday Dossier

Pic/Shadab Khan

Matching Steps

A group of Kathak dancers perform at a community festival at St Stephen's Steps in Bandra.

Icing on the cake

Royal icing is an especially hard form of icing that is used to decorate cakes and gingerbread houses, among other sweet treats like cookies. But Prachi Dhabal Deb is a Pune-based cake artist who creates art out of it, making sculptures of historic monuments and busts of people including Apollo, the Greek god. She has now been recognised by the World Book of Records, meaning she will get a UK-based certificate for two achievements - creating the biggest royal icing structure, and the maximum number of vegan royal icing structures. The first one is a replica of the Milan Cathedral in Italy that weighs over 100 kg. Deb shared, "I am always on the lookout for structures with fine detailing, which not all monuments have. I still have a long list of options; the Milan Cathedral was just one of them."

Team goals

Girls from Parcham train to play football. Pic courtesy/Siddesh Raghavendra

In 2012, Parcham, a collective in Mumbra, brought around 40 Muslim and non-Muslim girls together, to get them to interact, forge friendships and get out of the ghettoisation imposed by society - all through a friendly game of football. Today, they are training 200 girls, and there's an acceptance to females playing football. "We focused on girls because it builds independence. Girls from all communities connect to some common issues - irrespective of where you're coming from, wearing shorts is a problem, as is the access to a playground," shared co-founder Sabah Khan, adding that the girls also engage with the local administration. Today, on International Women's Day, the team will see a journey similar to theirs unfold on the screen, at a screening of the Amitabh Bachchan-starrer Jhund. Directed by Nagraj Manjule, the film has been applauded for its portrayal of the life of coach Vijay Barse, who teaches kids soccer to fight off the vicious cycle of poverty, drugs and crime. "Because it's close to the kind of communities we're working with, we're hoping to see ourselves in the film," Khan added. Cheers to that.

This musician is making waves

Mumbai-based musician Sherise Brinelle D'souza seems to be getting a fair bit of love from international radio stations. We had written in these pages in January that she had placed third in the category of Best Female Artiste of the Year at Radio Wigwam Awards, based in the UK. Now, a channel from across the Atlantic Ocean - LDM Radio from New York - has also put her in the nominations list for its eponymous awards show held annually, for a song called Stepladder. There are different categories based on genres including pop, rock and reggae. D'souza has been nominated for Best Music Video of the Year. She explained that an in-house team decides the list of nominees, after which the final winners are picked based on public voting and the team's decisions. She also said, "There are artistes nominated from all over the world, and I am really happy that I got this news just before International Women's Day, since it seems like a gift to me."

The sisterhood of travelling pants

(From left) Designers Chandrima Agnihotri, Divya Sahaya, Advaeita Mathur, Anjul Bhandari, Riddhi Jain and Ridhi Mehra. Pic/Re-writing the Muse by Ensemble

Hey, it's International Women's Day (IWD). Among the mad barrage of maddening emails from brands marketing IWD gifting suggestions and discounts veiled under the guise of "women empowerment", one note stands out. Ensemble's campaign called Re-writing the Muse (RTM) highlights the spirit of collaboration among Indian women fashion designers as they celebrate each other's work. If the concept sounds familiar, it's probably because we saw a similar trend in 2020 via the #WomenSupportingWomen chainmail-style social media activity. RTM sticks to female-led fashion businesses instead, which is in itself a rarity in an industry front-faced predominantly by men. For us, the idea of promoting Indian women designers as a collective alone is a statement. It's also a fitting way to toast the multi-brand luxury fashion retailer turning 35. "The curated series is our special way of celebrating the community of women in Indian fashion," says Tina Tahiliani of Ensemble. The campaign compiles 13 established and upcoming bright designer names from Ritika Mirchandani and Surily Goel to Sohaya Misra, Swapna Anumolu, Sanjana Bhuwalka, Medha Bansal and Sharnita Nandwana.