The city - sliced, diced and served with a dash of sauce
Pic/Sameer Markande
Vande mataram!
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Models dressed in white at the Gateway of India shoot a video with the National Tricolour ahead of Independence Day.
Malhar is back with a bang
Mumbai’s colleges are abuzz as festival season resumes. St Xavier’s annual celebration, Malhar kicks things off on August 14. The theme for the 2023 edition is Eye of the Storm. “The idea is to project calmness amidst the chaos,” said Sulakshana Phoda, organiser in charge of public relations for the festival. “Organising a festival can often be chaotic, and the theme emerged from the idea of finding calm within this chaos,” she remarked. As always, the festival will add a new virtual dimension to its curated list of events in an arcade gaming competition. “There is another event with a focus on stand-up and improv. These are not our usuals, and our line-up of guests and judges reflects the same,” she told this diarist.
Let the kisses fly
From conversations around a certain flying kiss, columnist Paromita Vohra put it poignantly when she recently posted Agents of Ishq’s illustration of the word, kiss written in Indian languages that was created in support of 2014’s Kiss of Love campaign in Kerala. Vohra shared, “At the time, there was moral policing that a kiss wasn’t a part of our culture. But if there’s a word in the language, it’s obviously part of our culture.” She added, “It’s contradictory how ordinary acts of affection are sexualised and consensual relations are criminalised yet complaints of sexual violence are rarely given justice.”
Bandra’s big cricket fan
Yesterday, commuters at Bandra Station, platform 4, were reminded by a sweet gesture to catch the fourth T20 match between India and West Indies. Just as we alighted from the train, we spotted a man borrowing a bar of charcoal from his cobbler friend, and started writing: ‘4th twenty20 match, India v/s West Indies, time 8 pm. “I love T20s. It’s my favourite format of cricket matches. And it’s the fourth one. I want everyone to watch it, and so I am writing this. I will watch it on my friend’s phone too,” the differently-abled man, whose name we later learnt is Hanamantha, told us. By then he had attracted a pool of passersby, who were equally curious about his note. “I used to love studying. See? Handwriting achi hai na?” He asked with the excitement of a toddler.
Dosti, yaari ka journal
If you’ve always wanted to journal but didn’t know where to begin, a cool workshop by Punekar Renuka Patil (below) might be a good place to start. The founder of art and creativity platform Kioku Creations, she is bringing a fun journalling idea to Mumbai this Sunday. “The theme is friendship,” she reveals. The event will also simultaneously take place in Chennai. “Journalling promotes creative thinking.
There is no age limit because it generates a curiosity about how the same prompt would be interpreted by the others. Like this one time, when the prompt was free, a child’s journal was all about junk food, while his grandma’s was about Indian Independence.” The workshop will have a table filled with stickers and stationery. The only rule, Patil said, is to not make a plan before you begin. “If you don’t like how a sticker looks, replace it with another.” Head to @kiokucreations for more details.
High on hip-hop
A still of the hip-hop group from the dance competition in Arizona
From Thane to Arizona, Mumbai’s hip-hop champs are going places. The latest group to make a mark is The Lions crew at the recent World Hip Hop Dance Championship held at Phoenix, Arizona. “Representing our country on the world’s largest dance platform alongside 55 other nations is an honour,” said Balaji Kamble, founder and coach of the crew. The team qualified for the semi-finals of the championship that concluded on August 6. The secret, Kamble told us, was their disciplined approach. “Our success was paved with hours of rehearsals each day. Maintaining discipline and sticking to our routine was essential, and we approached every challenge with determination and resilience,” he shared with us.
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