The city - sliced, diced and served with a dash of sauce.
Two delivery personnel chit-chat on the Western Express Highway in Goregaon East
Baat ban jaye
Two delivery personnel chit-chat on the Western Express Highway in Goregaon East on Thursday. Pic/Anurag Ahire
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Curtain call
The whole idea of attending a music festival is to enter a sonic wonderland that helps you leave the real world behind. But the real world is such right now that two of the biggest fests in the world, Coachella in pic and Stagecoach, both based in the US, have just announced that there will be no edition this year. And as we start approaching festival season in Mumbai, city organisers told us that the future looks grim here, too. Jai Anand of events firm Milkman told this diarist, "I don-t see how parties will happen till we get a vaccine. I myself won-t feel safe in a crowded place. So, it-s time for us to hit the reset button."
Padding up
The virus-induced lockdown has compelled us all to start doing things on our own in all walks of life. And Delhi-based NGO Goonj has initiated a project called WOOH With Our Own Hands. They have put out an easy, step-by-step tutorial that teaches you to make your own cloth sanitary pad in under two minutes. Speaking about the initiative, Debashree Chatterjee of Goonj told this diarist, "We have initiated the project with an understanding that there is a large number of people who still don-t have access to a lot of basics like sanitary pads, face masks etc. It is to open up the communication to the masses, so that people are able to take care of their needs and well-being, and have more control over their own lives with whatever basics they have, and not have to keep depending on markets and other agencies."
Home chefs taste success
Fodni bhaat chaat by Mar Coelho
We had written in mid-May that a platform called Food Connect and Malad eatery Snyder-s Bistro had organised a competition for home chefs during the lockdown. The winners have now been announced. They are Inderpeet Nagpal, who made beetroot thoran kebab; Mar Coelho, who prepared fodni bhaat chaat; and Uzma Nizam, who cooked a dish called leftover ka makeover. "Given the present situation, one of the criteria I kept in mind was zero wastage," said chef Ananya Banerjee, who judged the entries.
Decoding Kolatkar-s Mumbai
The Kolatkar Crawl is a group that tries to bring the city of Mumbai alive through the eyes of the late poet, Arun Kolkatkar. They recently held a talk featuring writer-researcher Saranya Subramanian, poet Arundhati Subramaniam and academician Laetitia Zecchini, where they discussed what reading Kolatkar-s works during the lockdown means. "I don-t know if it-s the right way to read a poet or not, but I can-t dissociate him from the city," Subramanian shared with this diarist.
Relief pours in from musicians
The Priyonath Manna Bustee Community Kitchen is an initiative that was started in Kolkata-s Howrah district during the lockdown to provide food for the needy. But after restrictions were partially lifted in the city, the people behind the effort decided to shift their focus to Cyclone Amphan victims. They have now roped in a host of celebrities, who are putting objects from their personal collections up for auction. Rahul Ram has donated one of his signature kurtas, for example, while Shubha Mudgal has offered a set of pens. "We are focusing on four specific districts first — North and South 24 Parganas, Howrah and East Midnapore — where we will donate food. There are local actors and musicians including Joyraaj Bhattacharjee and Arko Mukherjee helping our cause. We had also visited the Sunderbans recently where we gave villages 150 kg of milk powder meant for babies. We saw for ourselves the scale of devastation there and how the state government has failed to reach people, despite the authorities saying they are well-equipped to handle the situation," Riddhi Rit from the initiative told this diarist.
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