Mumbai Diary: Wednesday Dossier

Pic/Ashish Raje

Who is on the other side?

A Little Egret fishes in the waters at Dadar Chowpatty

Home Sciences just got cooler

Students explain their designs to visitors at the exhibition

It was all about sustainability at the Juhu-based Sir Vithaldas Thackersey College of Home Science‘s annual exhibition, NIRMITI on March 17 and 18. As part of the Creative Upscaling course, students designed products for interiors, set design and fashion from sustainable materials like upscaled UPVC pipes, coconut waste, jute and waste flowers. The students were also encouraged to manage small entrepreneurial ventures of the products they designed. "The combination of applied sciences and arts in our curriculum with hands-on training is the perfect formula for innovation and enterprising aptitude amongst students," shared Dr Manjiri Bhalerao, the college's principal.

Cat concerns

A moment from the cat survey. Pic courtesy/The Feline Foundation

City-based animal welfare NGO, The Feline Foundation, recently sterilised 1,364 cats as part of their Versova Project. "Large-scale sterilisation is an effective way of treating the cat population.

We have been doing this for the past two years. We usually take a baseline census of cats in a particular neighbourhood and sterilise them through the trap-neuter-return approach along with post-operative care. The long-term effects are hugely beneficial," Pallavi Kamath (inset), executive director, told this diarist.

The supermen come to town

A still from the documentary. Pic courtesy/Ameet Mallapur

Filmmaker Faiza Ahmed Khan's original documentary, Supermen of Malegaon, found a new audience in Bandra on Tuesday. "We screen a film every month, and this one was our choice for March," said Aparajita Sinha (below), founder of the Brief Encounters Film Club at St Paul's Institute of Communication in Bandra. The club has so far screened works that enable students to raise questions about the world around them. "One of our screenings was ‘While We Watched' that depicted the journey of journalist Ravish Kumar, and another was the documentary ‘Déjà vu' by Bedabrata Pain. We always insist on having the filmmaker, or someone involved to speak with students after the screening," she revealed.

To this end, it was Faiza Ahmed Khan who turned up. The club had tried to host the film previously, but would always run into some hurdle, quite like the protagonists of the film. "Supermen of Malegaon is about B-grade films being made in a mofussil Indian town - it's not an uncommon genre in India. Faiza's film about Sheikh Nasir a video parlour owner in Malegaon, dwells on the power of film (particularly Bollywood) to redeem the most humdrum and menial of lives. The filmmaker has captured the small town lives and loves of modern India with insight, and affection, and respect," Sinha told this diarist.

Memories of Mewar in Mumbai

A dated photo of Shriji Arvind Singh Mewar from his 2013 visit to Mumbai. file pic

News of the recent passing of Shriji Arvind Singh Mewar of Udaipur took this diarist right back to 2013. Shriji was speaker at an annual Hotel Investment Conference, being held at a Santacruz five-star. One particular session at that extensive conference was headlined: ‘Are you getting the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender (LGBT) business in your hotel?' The speaker addressing the audience for this session was Shriji. Some excerpts of what he said in his well-presented speech were, "This is not a study of sexual preferences, and I am not judgemental. What I am saying is let us look at the LGBT [community] in the larger interest of our industry while respecting cultural ethos. We have to expect these changes to run their natural course. In India, we tend to sermonise and tend to hide behind hypocrisy and cliched road maps." This diarist who was at the venue to report on this session, recalls the audience listening raptly as the Mewar royal added, "The time is now to further open our doors to the LGBT segment of tourism. It is an irreversible part of liberalisation. The community has definitely carved out a significant niche for itself. At the height of the global recession, where there is a drop in our industry one cannot afford to overlook this emerging revenue stream." Prescient, progressive and punchy, all delivered in a crisp, clipped accent, in trademark Shriji Arvind Singh Mewar style.

From the past to the future

Pic courtesy/Godrej Enterprises Group

If you thought business majors need not study history, Godrej Archives' masterclass this Friday will prove you wrong. Anders Sjöman (below), executive vice-president, client projects and corporate communications at the Centre for Business History in Stockholm, shared, "History is a strategic asset because it's rare, it can't be copied by anybody else. An organisation's history and heritage are thus invaluable as that is what lends authenticity to your storytelling in a world where everyone is making things up." The session will explore how businesses incorporate historical narratives to drive corporate strategy. "Through our masterclasses, we explore history not just as a record of the past, but as a strategic tool for understanding and anticipating future developments and trends," Vrunda Pathare, head, Godrej Archives added.