Mumbai Diary: Wednesday Dossier

Pic/Ashish Raje

From Tip to tail
Workers go about their job of touching up statues of monkeys at Byculla Zoo, which reopened on Monday for the first time after the lockdown.

Looking back

The interiors of Cafe Dela Paix. Pic/Anushka Gupta

Anushka Gupta is a Bandra-based poet and branding professional, who started a series called Histories of Bombay last year to highlight the hidden gems of Mumbai. She is set to host the next session at Cafe Dela Paix in Girgaum, one of the city's oldest Irani cafés, and unravel its history with owner Gustad Dinshaw Irani.

"The idea is to redirect people to these dying spaces. The owner has put his heart into the place to make it more than just a café - it's like a cultural centre," she shared. Want to know more? Write to anushkagupta5@gmail.com.

Ode to the Burmans

This diarist is in Kolkata at the moment, and as a die-hard fan of Sachin Dev Burman, he underwent a surreal experience when he visited the house that the legendary music composer had built in 1944 in the city's erstwhile South End Park area. ‘Erstwhile', because the state government recently renamed the neighbourhood as Sangeet Sarani as a tribute to the icon. It's also the house where RD Burman was born, meaning that it spawned some of the finest music to have come out of Bollywood. It's an Art Deco-inspired building, and must have once had enthralling music emanating from its windows. But today, it stands in a dilapidated condition. The lone guard who lives there informed that the upper floors have been empty for years. How time flies.

Akerkar's flight into trouble

The flight that Rahul Akerkar was on

The pandemic is still not over, as you would know as a reader of this paper, given the daily updates on rising COVID cases in Mumbai we have been offering you. But some people seem to think that everything is hunky-dory once again. That's what chef Rahul Akerkar of Lower Parel eatery Qualia found out recently. He was travelling from Mumbai to Kolkata via Varanasi on a GoAir flight, and the blatant disregard that passengers had towards basic safety protocols shocked him. Worse, even the flight attendants didn't have face shields on. "It's tragic for the airline to not insist on them, since it's critical for the staff to wear one because they are the ones most at risk," Akerkar told this diarist. Let's hope that the airline pulls its socks up.

After 25 years

Tulika Books, arguably one of the most respected Indian publications for children, celebrated its 25th anniversary, recently. Radhika Menon, publisher and managing editor, recalled, "We took on a difficult course when we started - being independent, self-funded, with multilingual picture books as our primary focus. Staying with our convictions and continuing to publish in nine languages [and more] against all odds has been enriching." Here's hoping that they churn out their illuminating titles for many more years to come.

The many colours of Anaida

Anaida Parvaneh is a woman who wears many hats. The singer who made a splash in the 1990s with Indi-pop hits including Oova oova, later turned into a chef who till recently was associated with the Powai outlet of SodaBottleOpenerwala. That apart, she is also an avid artist and conducts healing sessions and yoga classes. She has now combined those last three attributes to launch a colouring book titled Tattva - An Aspect of Reality. "I was stuck in Pune when the lockdown was called, and thought of drawing to pass my time. A friend then asked me for a copy of what I had made, saying she wanted to colour on it. Later, a second friend asked for another copy and within just a few days, she wanted another one for her mother-in-law. That's when I thought to myself that this is really helping people," she shared about the inspiration behind the book. Log on to amazon.in to get your copy.