The city - sliced, diced and served with a dash of sauce
Pic/Aditi Haralkar
The keeper of Mumbai’s secrets
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On the occasion of Gauri Ganpati, devotees bid adieu to bappa at Juhu Chowpatty.
Hospitality and reverence, the Indian way!
The New Zealanders will be here next month for a three-Test cricket series (Bangalore, Pune and Mumbai). As usual, the tourists will lap up five-star hospitality, but there was a time when teams stayed at the grounds itself. The 1969-70 Australians didn’t have very complimentary things to say about the facilities, but the Kiwis who toured before them earlier in the season, appeared quite happy with the accommodation at the stadium rooms in Mumbai and Hyderabad.
Glenn Turner reading a magazine on his 1976-77 tour of India.Pic/mid-day archives
Glenn Turner, who would become the captain for their next tour of India in 1976-77, mentioned in his 1975 book My Way how the Kiwis met numerous characters during their 1969-70 series. One of them was Naga, who served them at Hyderabad. The ever-smiling Hyderabadi waiter, father of nine children, was a popular man with Graham Dowling’s team.
When they said thank you, he would invariably respond with the words, “Don’t mention it.” The team members tried convincing him that he didn’t have to utter those words each time they showed appreciation, but Naga wouldn’t relent. They also remembered his “I-get-for-you-saab” response to their needs. While we wonder if Naga is still around, there is no doubt that Turner, now 77, will remember him after 55 years.
The ambassador’s travelogue
Romanian Amb. Daniela Mariana Tane with singer-actor Iulia Vantur at the launch of the Twilight Chronicles. PIC/PRADEEP DHIVAR
Years ago, the familiar gesture of a watermelon seller in Rishikesh—the way he cut out a triangle of the sweet fruit and handed it to her to taste—instantly made this country feel like home to Daniela Mariana Sezonov-Ţane, Romanian Ambassador to India, Nepal and Bangladesh. This is one of the first anecdotes she recalls in her travelogue, Twilight Chronicles, launched on Thursday at the Taj Santa Cruz East. The book began as a travel diary, she says, “Some of the perspectives in the book are from 20 years ago. A lot has changed—the Rishikesh of that time has gone. The world is in kind of a twilight, if we don’t take better care of it, it will disappear.”
For granny, with love
Lakshmi Madhavan grew up watching her widowed grandmother wear a differently bordered Kasavu mundu veshti all her life. When she lost her in 2021, she wanted to find ways to reclaim her grandmother’s memories—which resulted in the exhibition, Generations in My Body, on at Akara Contemporary till September 19. It includes 96 shuttles, which are wrapped with Kasavu threads and hair. “This led me to the Kasavu weavers in Kerala. What started as a quest to thread a family member’s history, cascaded into understanding the community’s generational beliefs that were entrenched in bodily functions of caste, purpose and allowances of belonging,” she says.
So very, Jerry poetic, isn’t it?
Performing poetry at Governor’s Palace, Goa Arts & Literary Festival
Mumbai’s man of many parts: Jerry Pinto, writer, poet, teacher, believes if all the world’s a stage, he had better be on it. Pinto will be sole protagonist in a theatre performance called A Life in Poetry to be staged on September 20 at Stein Auditorium in New Delhi. The credits said of this 45-minute act: “Written and directed by Jerry Pinto and solo performance by Jerry Pinto”. Pinto said in response to a question about this being a monologue, “I think of this as an interaction. It won’t be a monologue because I engage with audiences whenever I am on stage. I want them to understand the fire and the magic of poetry and I think that happens when there is breath and body involved.”
Though he is no stranger to the stage, this time it will be Pinto’s theatre debut as it is all his work: writing, directing and performing. Ask about the belief that poetry is passé and Pinto refutes, “Poetry has never been as alive as it is today. It is just that we tend to measure everything in the capitalist coin and so poetry looks like a poor cousin to the novel or the non-fiction book. But tell me, how many non-fiction books from the sixteenth century is anyone reading today? Poetry lives and it lives long and it lives in your heart.” Well that is being solo and so high… on poetry.
Hearts and rainbows
On the last day of three-day leadership workshop
The Humsafar Trust, under their initiative TRANScend and with the support of CSR initiative of TLG Pvt. Ltd and Viva Glam, successfully concluded the Emerging Queer Leaders Workshop (EQueL) 2024, a transformative three-day residential bootcamp aimed at fostering leadership skills of young Trans and Cis-queer leaders from Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities.
Vivek Anand
The three-day workshop concluded on September, Vivek Anand, CEO of The Humsafar Trust, says, “This is about equipping the next generation of queer leaders with the tools they need to create inclusive spaces and drive the queer inclusion in the society. It’s inspiring to see such passion and determination in this group, and I am confident they will bring about significant change in the communities in the regions they come from.”
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