Mumbai Diary: Thursday Dossier

Share the joke, please!
Actors Ishaan Khatter and Jhanvi Kapoor crack up at an event they attended at a Goregaon film school on Wednesday. Pic/Satej Shinde

Mahela Jayawardene, Kapil Dev, Murali Kartik, Shaun Pollock, Ajit Agarkar, Charu Sharma

A new pitch for cricket stars
It's not often that you see cricketing personalities across generations and nationalities in one frame. What's more rare is to see them swap bats for golf clubs. That's what happened at a recent golf tournament in Bengaluru, where fans got to see a different side to cricketers, many of whom have been golfers for years. Among them was Kapil Dev, who has been a veteran on the fairway, Shaun Pollock, Mahela Jayawardene and Ajit Agarkar. "Former Ranji Trophy player and my good friend [the late] Rajesh Sanghi introduced me to golf. Cricket is what I grew up with. Golf is how I sustain the sporting spirit," Agarkar said.

Pic/AFP

Festive news
One moment that the country's indie fans wait for with bated breath is the annual announcement for the NH7 Weekender festival line-up. And that moment arrived yesterday, when it was revealed that a mix of international biggies will share the stage with local talent at the Pune edition. Probably the biggest name of them all is guitar god, Joe Satriani (in pic). Other exciting names include French electronic artiste FKJ, and post-rockers God is an Astronaut. So, you're not alone if you're already rubbing your hands in anticipation.

Harsh Mander, Natasha Badhwar and John Dayal

Chronicling a journey of love
On his visit to Mumbai in October last year, noted human rights and peace worker Harsh Mander spoke to this diarist about the journey he had undertaken in the preceding months, where he travelled across eight states of India meeting families of victims of hate attacks. Accompanied by a team of chroniclers, he had also mentioned how writers, poets, photographers and videographers would document what they saw during the journey in the coming months. Reconciliation, Karwan e Mohabbat's Journey of Solidarity through a Wounded India, is the result of this documentation.

Co-authored by Mander, independent filmmaker and columnist Natasha Badhwar, and human rights and political activist John Dayal, the book will release on August 16. As horrific incidents of mob lynching make it to the headlines every day, a book on a movement that seeks to douse the fire of hatred couldn't have come at a better time.

Jaydeep's second innings
For 16 years, chef Jaydeep Mukherjee headed the food innovation at de Gustibus Hospitality's Indigo Delis. Now, we hear that Mukherjee is moving to Riyaaz Amlani's Impressario, which makes things interesting, since earlier, Amlani got chef Clyde Comello on board - who was Mukherjee's sous chef - for Flea Bazaar Cafe.

"I will play the role of a brand head, so everything, from hygiene, leaking roofs to the food and beverage, is going to be my baby. My role is to look at Smoke House Deli and re-engineer the brand. Riyaaz has done a beautiful job with it. I don't intend to take a different route, but would like to freshen it up a bit, add from my experience, and have fun with it. I would like keep the food modern western, but make it cheerful," the chef told this diarist.

Curators in the making
Last month, this newspaper had published the heartwarming news that the inaugural exhibition at Mumbai's first children's museum, set to open in October, will be curated by children. As a step in that direction, the Chhatrapati Shivaji Vastu Sangrahalaya (CSMVS) organised two competitions recently, where students from IB, state board as well as BMC schools wrote essays and created artworks on the theme, My Little Museum. "We received over 240 art entries and 150 submissions in creative writing, from which we chose five winners in each category. There was an entry that visualised a museum of teeth. Dinosaurs and other extinct species was another popular theme, as was digitisation. Children always have better imagination than adults!" artist and CSMVS education consultant, Brinda Miller told this diarist. While she judged the art competition with artist Sunil Padwal, Saker Mistri and actor-host Tara Sharma Saluja judged the essays.

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