The city - sliced, diced and served with a dash of sauce
Pic/Pradeep Dhivar
Stand by me
This canine was happy to accompany his parent on a morning errand in Bandra on the weekend. Pic/Pradeep Dhivar
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So long, Darius uncle
Darius Ferzandi. Pic/Dhawal Bumb
Anyone who has walked into Byculla Restaurant and Bakery, for a mutton samosa and chai, will remember the bespectacled man, often seen dressed in white, sitting behind the counter. Darius Ferzandi, the co-owner of the iconic Irani café that shut down in January this year, passed away over the weekend. Ferzandi took over the reins of the restaurant from his father — who had come to India from Iran — when he was a boy of 18. Referred to as 'Darius uncle' by many patrons, old and new, Ferzandi was known for often regaling them with nostalgia and narrating his father's stories of how he came to the city. Parvez Patel, owner of the Fort-based Ideal Corner, remembers him as a disciplined and religious guy.
"Ferzandi was fairly easy-going. The good thing about him was he did not have any airs about him. It was nice to simply catch up with him. As we were in the same business, we had common interests. We spoke of running the restaurants and new ingredients in the market, always over chai. He will be missed," says Patel. Last year in April, mid-day had paid tribute to Ferzandi's café and nine other last surviving Irani cafés at its annual food and beverage celebration, The Guide Restaurant Awards. To watch a video of Byculla Restaurant and Bakery, log on to https://bit.ly/2A155E7
Syncing it live
(From left) Gayatri Asokan, Purbayan Chatterjee, Mahesh Raghvan, Shravan Sridhar, Darshan Doshi, and MT Aditya Srinivasan in the video
Musicians may be collaborating left, right and centre through pre-recorded or live performances but six Indian classical musicians have put up a unique virtual session with four tracks. Purbayan Chatterjee, Gayatri Asokan, Darshan Doshi, Mahesh Raghvan, Shravan Sridhar and MT Aditya Srinivasan engaged in a live show from their homes without latency (the time delay between what is played and what is heard), a challenging feat to achieve.
City-based sitar virtuoso Chatterjee told this diarist how it was possible, "Aditya and I were having a discussion on mixing a track we produced. Meanwhile, Mahesh and Aditya were trying to figure out how to play together. The three of us came together." The rest came on board with Raghvan figuring out the engineering, yielding a variety of genres and sounds. For Chatterjee, the icing on the cake was a thumbs-up from none other than Ustad Zakir Hussain.
Artful salute from Kulavoor
The iconic CEAT Mahal, the Mumbai headquarters of the RPG Enterprises, is being made a canvas for a stunning tribute to the frontline workers with a mural by artist Sameer Kulavoor. They hope to unveil this wall of gratitude today.
"Harsh Goenka [chairmain of RPG Enterprises] came up with the idea of the tribute. I felt Sameer was the best person to work on this given his expertise with large works like this.
This mural is about 120-ft high and serves as a metaphorical wall where squares are drawn as windows to represent the people at their homes. We started work two weeks ago," design consultant Elsie Nanji told this diarist, while Kulavoor highlighted the safety precautions taken with limited entry to outsiders, strict working conditions and sanitising/disinfecting everything they work with. "Accommodation and food is arranged on site itself for the duration of work so, we are being quarantined through this," he added.
Literary comeback
Nether Quarterly, stylised as nether, is a literary journal that saw the light of day between 2009 and 2014, as far as its print edition was concerned. It was available online and people could buy a hard copy from e-commerce sites.
But then the pressures of self-publishing an independent effort started mounting and founder Avinab Datta-Areng admitted that he couldn't keep up with the costs after a while. Now, the journal is back in an online avatar, and there is an open call for submissions. Poet Arjun Rajendran is the guest editor of the revival issue, and he will give preference to experimental literature while selecting the pieces. "We are also open to general submissions," Datta-Areng clarified, adding that interested folk can log on to netherquarterly.com to know how to get started.
Standing up
Stand-up comic Nitinn Miranni was watching a discussion between social media influencer Malini Agarwal and Dr Nayreen Daruwalla about domestic violence when he saw trolls making derogatory comments and typing out laughter emojis. He addressed it on Instagram calling them out.
"Women's safety is everybody's problem; I don't know why we think any other way in our country. It's our job to speak up. This mentality has to change," Miranni told this diarist.
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