The city - sliced, diced and served with a dash of sauce
Pic/Ashish Raje
Reliving history
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The Western Naval Command rehearses Beating the Retreat at Gateway of India in preparation for December 4 — the day that commemmorates Indian Navy’s successful attack on Karachi port in 1971.
Carol-in Christmas
Members of The Sassy Songbirds
The lawns of D’Monte Park Recreation Club in Bandra will witness a starry, starry night this Sunday evening. Neale Murray, Brian Tellis, Vasundhara Vee, Jeanne Merchant, Dr Victor Rodrigues and Petula Rodericks are among a slew of artistes who will ring in Christmas with carols in the outdoors. Starry Starry Night: A Magical Christmas In The Park is curated by the all-woman quartet The Sassy Songbirds. Mimosa Almeida Pinto from the quartet shared that the concert is presented along with the Salsette Catholic Cooperative Housing Society. “We wanted to do this show outdoors as we’ve all been cooped up indoors for two years. The weather’s good, so we wanted to get into the Christmas mood early. The idea is to foster a community spirit,” shared Pinto, promising a lineup of stellar acts.
A moment from their performance in 2020
Long time no see!
That expression might pop up in conversations in a city-based alumni meet that will feature a who’s who of business professionals. Hundred and nine years after its establishment, the Sydenham College of Commerce and Economics was able to instate an alumni association recently. They will have their first meeting this month, shared its founder-director Ajit Lalvani (below, right). “We were trying to form a committee in the past few years, but the pandemic posed a series of hurdles,” he told this diarist. Former students Falguni Nayar (top), CEO, Nykaa; Deepak Parekh, chairman, HDFC; and Keki Mistry (far left), CEO, HDFC, among others, will drop by to relive the good ol’ days.
Mummifying a cultural symbol
The installation art used gauze to mummify bombil. Pic Courtesy/Goethe-Institut Mumbai
Critical Zones, an ongoing exhibition project put together by Goethe-Institut Mumbai and The ZKM in Germany looks into the earth’s reactions to human actions and explores new modes of coexistence. Contributing to its theme, Parag Tandel hosted a session wherein he mummified the bombil or Bombay duck — a fish that stands out as a cultural epithet for the city, and for its Koli community. Tandel said, “Earlier, bombil could be found in abundance but due to excessive fishing and climatic changes, it has moved to other breeding grounds. This means loss of livelihood for the Kolis. We wanted city people to know what this means for a community. Bombils are too delicate for taxidermy, so we chose mummification as the process mimics the act of drying fish to preserve it for longer.”
Now read it in Marathi
The cover of the Marathi edition of Green Wars by Bahar Dutt. Pics Courtesy/Twitter
Environment journalist Bahar Dutt penned Green Wars: Dispatches from a Vanishing World over a decade ago. Green warriors and readers piqued by personal topics bordering on social action might remember her gripping storytelling. But for those who prefer reading in regional Indian languages, the book recently returned in Marathi. About the translated title — Harit Yuddhe — Dutt told this diarist, “At a time when attention span for books is so limited, this step will help extend the book’s shelf life and take it to the people of Maharashtra who have an active interest in wildlife and nature.”
The fable-ous Harari returns
What is an underrated superpower? Storytelling, if you are Yuval Noah Harari. A frequent visitor, the author will be in the city next week to talk about his next title, Unstoppable Us, which centres on history, and more specifically, fables. The author explained that it was easier to talk history with kids than adults. “The talk will explore key themes from the book, especially the role played by storytelling in history. It is our superpower, and has made us ‘unstoppable’ in ways that are important to consider,” he remarked.
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