02 August,2026 07:04 AM IST | Mumbai | Team SMD
Pic/Sayyed Sameer Abedi
A girl clicks a picture of a woman's statue at Grant Road Bridge.
SIR has its challenges, and the challenge we faced was quite literal. This adventure occured in the futuristic (touted as) suburb of - Ulwe. When we went to the Marathi school that falls under Zilla Parishad, where we had also voted, we didn't anticipate the effect of the monsoon. The approach road was completely destroyed and the distance was so far that we couldn't get down and walk it up. At one point, our small car began to feel like bullock cart as we tried to navigate potholes to avoid damage. That's exactly when a plane zoomed across the sky right above us and with sound, we laughed at the irony of it all. Did we complete the process: It was a mess, but we are happy to report, the form has been submitted. Now, it's all up to greater powers.
Our in-house cricket nut rushed to our bay the other day, armed with a photograph, saying, "I've got something exciting for you." We wondered whether this was a prank. But our man was serious and showed us his "catch" from the photo library. It's a photograph reproduced here of the late Sir Garfield Sobers at the Wankhede Stadium in the late 1980s. Sobers was accompanied by a friend and watched the proceedings from a stand below the press box. Don't miss what the recently departed cricket legend is holding with his left hand - of course, it's your favourite Sunday newspaper.
When Kritika Kamra got married earlier this year, choosing her wedding sari was, in her words, "the easiest decision". The actor wore a custom Chanderi sari commissioned by her mother and woven by the artisans associated with her handloom brand, Cinnabar.
"It was an emotional decision," Kamra shares, "My mother wanted it to have real zari, tussar, and Chanderi silk which we don't generally see in Chanderi saris."
Kamra's love for Chanderi runs deep. Her hometown is close to the weaving town in Madhya Pradesh.
Its new festive collection launches around National Handloom Day on August 7. "Handloom [saris] aren't mass-produced, so a lot of thought goes into each collection," Kamra says, "This collection is for the modern woman, who doesn't see fashion as just beauty, but as a way to tell a story. Handloom, especially, it's an heirloom piece. My mother has so many Chanderi saris she's passed down to me. So this collection is for the women who believe in timelessness."
Luxury rehabilitation and wellness centre Veda has expanded to the Eastern Himalayas with the launch of its newest centre in Sikkim. Already operating facilities in Mumbai, Delhi, and Bengaluru, the new property is designed as an intimate retreat with just 11 suites, offering guests greater privacy and highly personalised care for addiction recovery, burnout, and other mental health conditions.
Founder Manun Thakur, who previously worked in real estate, said the idea for Veda came after his own struggle with mental health in 2020. "I went to a psychiatrist and paid Rs 19,000 just for a diagnosis. That made me realise there was a need for a wellness space that went beyond conversations and prescriptions," he said.
The project also carries deep personal significance. Thakur revealed that he discovered his late mother had been secretly taking antidepressants, and her passing motivated him to build a place focused on holistic healing. "When you do something for someone else without it being transactional, it feels meaningful. I gave up real estate to build Veda," he added.
Veda accommodates only eight to 10 residents at a time to ensure personalised treatment. Alongside clinical care, guests have access to yoga, tai chi, an infinity pool, and other wellness activities aimed at building long-term healthy habits rather than dependence on medication or correctional facilities.
The centre offers two-sharing accommodation at Rs 2 lakh per person for a month, while a private suite is priced at Rs 4 lakh per month.
These are strange times. We have gone from one movement that united lakhs of youths from all walks of life to fight for an education system that is just to all, to another campaign that now threatens to tear that unity apart with a call to end reservation. If you're feeling confused, distraught, or wired, you're not alone. But this diarist humbly suggests that the answer lies not in doomscrolling, but in turning your fingers instead to the pages of a new poetry collection we have found quiet solace in.
Journalist-poet Soumya Mukerji, who was once features editor at mid-day, has just released her first book, Cries (Westland, Rs 350), which she describes as "a slim collection of urgent poems that attempt to articulate our cries in these strange and desperate times... both for the unparalleled beauty and the unbearable burdens of this life. It is an ode to our collective cries - unexpressed, silenced, unheard, unvoiced".
"The poems thread through climate and COVID, spin within cyclone and war, spread themselves across the 600-million-year-old islands of Langkawi [Malaysia], conflicted Kashmir, and melting mountains. They plunge deep into depressive states of mind and at other times delight in the lightness of spring rain and self-love. The eco-poetics channel the continuum of seasons, species, sentiments," she says.
Journalism and poetry, Mukerji offers, are not all that different. "Honestly, poetry was always a part of my life and my attempt has been to look at things with an intuitive lens, a poetic gaze, even in my journalistic narratives. So I tried to excavate the underlying poetry through stories," she says, "I believe that poetry is also, from another lens, non-fiction when it is rooted in the truth. The hope is to bring the truths and tumults of our times and the human experience of journalism to poetry itself."
