Mumbai Diary: Thursday Dossier

Pic/Ashish Raje

This city is lit

Flora Fountain and its surroundings bedazzle the eye with this play of light and movement

Say it in Korean

Seung Ah Kim. Pic courtesy/Instagram

Fans of everything ‘K' have reason to celebrate. This diarist learnt that South Korean storyteller and 2019 Global Korea Award winner Seung Ah Kim will make a trip to a Thane venue to participate in the Hello Korea cultural event on October 11. That leaves you with just enough time to brush up your Korean vocabulary, we say.

The homecoming of laughter

(From left) Ankur Tangade, Abish Mathew, Krey Kannojia, Sumit Kumar and Ravi Gaikwad after their show in Mumbai. Pics courtesy/Blue Material Comedy

Recently, when this diarist had chatted with the all-Dalit, queer comedy club Blue Material, the comedians were excited about their first-ever recorded tour when we wrote about them in the August 14 edition of mid-day, in The Guide's story, ‘When resistance turns to comedy'. Now that the tour has wrapped, we reached out to Ankur Tangade for an update.

Ankur Tangade

"It was better than what we expected. We opened our show in Mumbai on August 16 and toured to Goa, Pune and Delhi, concluding in Bengaluru on September 20. The audiences were very warm and we can't wait to share the recording with everyone towards the end of the year or early 2027 on Instagram and YouTube," shared Tangade. Log on to @bluematerialgigs for more.

Let's all eat cake

Megha Kwatra Madan with the five- feet-tall wedding cake in Brisbane. Pic courtesy/Megha Kwatra Madan

What do you get when Swiss winter meets a Spanish carnival? A pretty spectacular cake made by cake artist Megha Kwatra Madan at Brisbane's International Cake Show Australia 2026, as she emerged as the runner-up among 10 artists with a wedding cake that brought two contrasting cultures together. Kwatra Madan shared about her achievement, "Representing the country internationally was a pleasure. A wedding cake can be much more than something beautiful - it can tell a story, and for this, it was the contrast between quiet winter traditions and vibrant carnival that became the soul of the cake."

This list is worth reading

Devesh Kapur, Sam Dalrymple and Arvind Subramanian

The word is out on the much-anticipated Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay NIF Book Prize 2026, with 10 books making the longlist from over 150 entries submitted by publishers and authors. Among the titles are A Man for All Seasons: The Life of K.M. Panikkar (Context) by Narayani Basu, Shattered Lands: Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia (HarperCollins-Fourth Estate) by Sam Dalrymple, and A Sixth of Humanity: Independent India's Development Odyssey (HarperCollins) by Devesh Kapur and Arvind Subramanian, along with other notable mentions.

Niraja Gopal Jayal

"This year's longlist reflects the diversity and depth of non-fiction writing on modern and contemporary India, offering distinctive perspectives on the people, ideas and movements that have shaped the country," said the chair of the jury, professor Niraja Gopal Jayal.