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Mumbai Diary: Saturday Dossier

Updated on: 16 April,2022 07:26 AM IST  |  Mumbai
Team mid-day |

The city - sliced, diced and served with a dash of sauce

Mumbai Diary: Saturday Dossier

Pic/Shadab Khan

Coo-chi-cooing in Mohan's den


Two pigeons nestle under the nameplate of a building on Bhulabhai Desai Marg in Cumballa Hill. 


The mountains are calling


Sudhir KuttySudhir Kutty

The hills are alive. That’s what a festival taking place today at Dadar suggests. The Himalayan Club, along with Adventure Women India, is back with the Himalayan Adventure Fest after two years. “It aims to felicitate mountaineers and get adventurers to share about their expeditions. Every year, we select books on Himalayan literature in India and abroad, which are presented with the Kekoo Naoroji Book Award. There will also be a series of talks, stalls, and a photo exhibition,” said secretary Sudhir Kutty. To give local adventure-lovers a glimpse of mountaineering stories from across the world, the day will culminate with the screening of shorts from the BANFF Mountain Film Festival’s world tour.

Follow The Light, one of the films being screened at BANFFFollow The Light, one of the films being screened at BANFF

A green ally

Trees are often used to nail postersTrees are often used to nail posters

The BMC’s Vriksha Sanjivani Abhiyaan is gaining momentum across the city. NGO Mission Green Mumbai is directing the initiative by connecting students and citizens towards the drive. Subhajit Mukherjee, the NGO’s founder, shared, “We had been requesting the civic body’s garden department to let us involve citizens in ridding trees of nails, wires, concrete and advertisements. People are not aware that these things can’t be done to a tree.” How can volunteers help? To that Mukherjee said, “Anybody in any part of the city can reach out to the local ward tree officer for assistance. A group of 10 or 20 people can inform the officer and set out to protect trees in their area. If any tree can’t be salvaged by individuals, the civic body will take charge.” He added that apart from restoring trees, the drive encourages residents to be mindful of their natural surroundings.

Meet the Hamlets

Chanakya Vyas

As a playwright, director and teacher, Bengaluru-based Chanakya Vyas has always wanted to work with William Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Two books prompted him to imagine how we perceive a Shakespearean tragedy in an Internet-driven, fragmented and distracted world, and the way we depend on social media while experiencing alienation because of it. When he came across Science Gallery Bengaluru’s call for entries for their exhibition Psyche, all these ideas came together in the form of Hamlets Live, a re-imagination of the six soliloquies narrated in the legendary play. The online performance series, which kicked off yesterday, will see six actors respond to the soliloquies in their own ways. “Every monologue points to a larger theme — fears, memories, loss and more — and the actors respond to Hamlet as not just a character, but a metaphor. Since the piece was conceived in the lockdown, it is 
called Hamlets, referring to the tiny villages or worlds that you end up creating online,” Vyas told us. To tune into the performances, head to psyche.scigalleryblr.org.

Tapping into the fun

A pre-pandemic version of the Tapped beer festivalA pre-pandemic version of the Tapped beer festival

Music, free-flowing beer, and a delectable variety of food are all a pandemic-bored public can ask for. Tapped 9.0 will return to the Mahalaxmi Race Course on Sunday, for thirsting revellers after the two-year pandemic. A spanking new cocktail bar added to its layout has the founder trio of Bhakti Mehta, Saumya Khona and Neville Timbadia excited. “There’s an all-new layout with 65 craft beers on tap with festival-friendly food by chef-fronted restaurants and a unique bazaar section with uber-cool products to shop from along with live gigs by artistes such as Gino Banks, Mohini Dey and Rhythm Shaw,” Mehta told us. 

Bar bar dekho

Bar bar dekho

The muggy Mumbai heat and snail-paced traffic are a combination that this diarist never missed during WFH. However, a brew-tiful sight lifted the spirits of this weary victim of Vakola’s bottleneck congestion. We’ve all been to the kitschy truck, train, or auto-themed resto pubs, but a bar-themed autorickshaw? That’s a first. What caught the eye was a quarter and a goblet on a tray attached to the driver’s seat. As we prodded our driverji to inch closer, a tiny nip of whiskey and a blue bottle of gin were spotted on a nifty stand, along with the spirit of the year — sanitiser. Thanks to the traffic signal that played spoilsport, we managed just a fleeting glimpse of the rest of the vehicle. There were plants and some more tipples — hopefully, fake. Of course, we were thirsty for a drink by then but no time to wine.

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