The city - sliced, diced and served with a dash of sauce
Pic/Satej Shinde
Blue is the warmest colour
ADVERTISEMENT
A visitor to Juhu beach on Wednesday morning covers her face from the scorching sun.
Pen is mightier
The batch of 1981 with Rajdeep Sardesai (fourth from right, last row) and Atul Kasbekar (second from left, first row)
The batch of 1981 of Campion School has set up a writing grant worth Rs 1,00,000 that starts locally but aims to become a national writing competition in three years. Photographer-filmmaker Atul Kasbekar, an alumnus from the batch, told this diarist, “This was planned last year but got pushed due to the pandemic. Our batch had Rajdeep Sardesai, Ashish Bhasin, Rahul Patel, and many doctors and financiers. They make for a decent vintage of professionals. We wanted to do something for the school that honours two of our late teachers — Joe Sheth and Stanley Gomes — and also continues as a legacy. We created a corpus from the students of the class of ’81 so that the prize money comes in annually for the coming years.” He added that their Sheth-Gomes invitational competition will enable other schools to participate. Its launch is scheduled for this weekend; the essay topic will be shared that morning. They chose writing to encourage youngsters to read and write outside of textbooks.
Shashi Tharoor, also a Campion boy, will be the guest of honour at the event
The show goes on
Divya Cowasji grew up fascinated by Parsi theatre. “I would listen to my grandfather’s stories of how he would roll on the floor with laughter,” recalled Cowasji. Her documentary feature, The Show Must Go On, which captures the bonhomie of aging icons of Parsi theatre who return to the stage for a final show, has made it to IFFI, Goa. The film “came together on the edit table” with her brother Jall, who is the editor, co-producer and co-director. “While filming for Qissa-e-Parsi, I learnt that these old-time actors who had been away from the stage for 30 years had come together for a play because of city chronicler Meher Marfatia’s book, Laughter In The House. In 2017, I was informed they were going to do it again, one last time. I shot their rehearsals to gift them the footage. But I fell in love with what unfolded. It was interesting to see the bond between the senior actors, in their 80s and 90s, and the young performers,” she reminisced.
Farewell, the Kulture club
Co-founders Kunal Anand, Jas Charanjiva and Arjun Charanjiva
Did you, like this diarist, pepper your Bandra and Kala Ghoda visits with some intuitive graphic art browsing at Kulture Shop? Sadly, the platform that sells art prints and merchandise by some of the most talented emerging Indian artists is shutting shop. Founder-CEO Arjun Charanjiva told this diarist that the decision to close followed because the pandemic had rendered their business model unviable. “We had to shut down both our stores in 2020 and 2021. They were dependent on international travellers. The business has effectively been knocked back five years.” Currently, the platform is hosting an online clearance sale for the art community to pick up their favourites. Charanjiva added that they intend to convert kultureshop.in into a non-commercial site archiving the artists, artworks and memories gathered since 2014.
The Kulture Shop store at Bandra
Food for thought
When this diarist congratulated novelist Khalid Javed for The Paradise of Food — translated into English by Baran Farooqi — winning the fifth JCB Prize for Literature 2022, he said, “It will be instrumental in helping my novel garner acceptance and critical acclaim. With this, the circle of readers for a book on food — and its representations as a metaphor for carnal desires, gluttony and aberrant sexual appetite — widens. The novel views the kitchen as that part of the house which has a direct connect with the battlefield.”
A lit affair for school children
An authors’ meet at a previous edition of Litventure
With a literature venture returning to its physical format after two years of COVID-19, books and authors will take centre-stage at the Children’s Academy Group of Schools, Malad. The weekend fest that is being organised in association with horror fiction writer and ex-student of the school, Neil D’Silva, will involve book discussions, workshops, author meets and more. Ronit Bhatt, the school’s communication head, shared with this diarist, “Litventure, our event, will encourage students to read. It will bring students close to authors and help them know their perspectives while writing a book. This is not something they get to do regularly, so it’s an exciting opportunity for them.”
Subscribe today by clicking the link and stay updated with the latest news!" Click here!
