The city - sliced, diced and served with a dash of sauce
Pic/Satej Shinde
Go carting
A vegetable vendor couple speed their way to the wholesale market in Kandivali-s Thakur Village on Tuesday. Pic/Satej Shinde
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Dig into a new festival
Intesaab 2020, which claims to be India-s first student-run online festival, will kick off this Friday. Helmed by the Ishan Foundation Trust, the three-day event will include panel discussions, talks, performances and workshops covering pressing subjects including feminism, geopolitics, domestic violence and transphobia.
The line-up has storytelling collective Jashn-e-Qalam, city-based musician Nush Lewis, and social scientist and author Deepa Narayan among others. "We came up with the idea on May 2 and began working immediately. We made sure to have a diverse line-up, cutting across the political spectrum and fields of expertise," festival director Suryansh Deo Srivastava told this diarist.
Arth and Sanchos bite the dust
Arth, Khar
The pandemic has brought the food and beverage industry on its knees. Running a restaurant works on tight profits, large cash flow and, of course, packed tables. With none of that happening in the lockdown, we hear that the staff has not been paid their dues since February at Khar eateries Sanchos and Arth.
While employees have not been given clarity on pending dues, Kyta Hospitality accounts have been ceased by banks, this diarist has learnt. The closing of both restaurants seems to have happened after owner Dhiraj Wadhawan aka Baba Dewan and his brother Kapil were taken into custody in April in a fraud case involving a bank.
In December 2019, Chef Amninder Sandhu, who had created an entire gasless menu, exited Arth, after which footfalls fell too with food quality dipping, according to regulars at the restaurant. Meanwhile, at Sanchos, chef Victor Murguia took over from Esdras Ochoa, who Sandhu had brought down after she met him on the sets of The Final Table on Netflix.
Animated unlock
We had written in these pages last month about city-based animation filmmaker Debjyoti Saha releasing Korona, a six-part series on issues during the lockdown. Now, Saha has released the final episode titled Korona. The End. A short. It-s a tongue-in-cheek take on the unlocking of the nation, which talks in Saha-s trademark style about the "end of nature-s long-overdue vacation" and climate change, set to the Louis Armstrong classic, What a wonderful world, in the background.
"As it was the final episode, I wanted to shift the focus to perhaps the biggest problem facing mankind; climate change. It is more than a chapter in our environmental education books. We are fast approaching our predicted dates of climatic disaster and doom," he told this diarist.
An ode to Mumbai
Stuck in a sealed building during the lockdown, city-based poet Navaldeep Singh was dearly missing the city. But then he found himself pondering one question over and over again —what if the city also misses me? This prompted him to write To Mumbai, With Love, a sweet tribute to the city and its quintessential haunts — Marine Drive or Prithvi Café, for instance.
The piece has been released as a video featuring Singh along with poets Mehak Mirza Prabhu, Amandeep Singh, Abhaya Mishra and Kopal Khanna. Singh, who hails from Gwalior, told this diarist, "Mumbai is an emotion and even people who aren-t from this city feel attached to it," while Khanna added, "It-s like a living, breathing entity. And it will eventually get back on its feet."
A win for language and art
Art is a Verb is a book for young readers that delves into the work of noted Indian artists while also engaging in verbs. Written by Likla, designed by Rohina Thapar and published by Art1st, the title has now won a bronze medal in the Interactive Children-s Book category of the IPPY Award 2020, an international event that honours independent publishers and authors.
This year-s contest drew 4,750 entries, of which 419 medals were awarded to independent authors and publishers from 44 US states, seven Canadian provinces, and 15 other countries. Our congratulations to all of them.
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