Mumbai Diary: Friday Dossier

No strings attachedMusician Agnelo Cardozs morning gig at BKCs city park offers visitors a sweet start to the dayDebut successPaanchika was also selected for the New York Indian Film Festival 2020Its not often that one scores big in their first attempt But citybased Ankit Kothari was in for good news when he heard that his debut short film Paanchika will be the opening film at the International Film Festival of India IFFI this year under the Indian Panorama NonFeature categoryThe film is about sevenyearold Miris journey to deliver lunch across a desert of salt pyramids and about the honour Kothari told this diarist Nothing beats the satisfaction of watching my short film on the big screen especially in these timesIndia by the bookIn an age where disinformation about the country and its past spreads by the minute turning back to history is the only way forward And Namit Aroras new book Indians A brief History of a Civilization Penguin India is a step in that direction as it traverses nearly 5000 years of Indias history Its garnered praise from esteemed writers and researchers like Pankaj Mishra John Keay and Assa Doron Arora who spent two decades in Silicon Valley before moving to India shared that he was yearning for a book that would bring alive this social and cultural history in the context of specific iconic sites a book that combined narrative history with archaeological travel writing which connected the dots to illuminate some of the most consequential trends transformations and fault lines of Indian civilisation He didnt find a title that satisfied him and so decided to write one himself He hopes readers will discover amazing new stories of our ancestors We hope so tooRemembering AkbarPriyasri Patodia with Akbar PadamseeOn January 6 last year the art world lost Akbar Padamsee at 91 But the modernists legacy lives on in his work and in the memory of the lives he touched including Priyasri Patodia On his first death anniversary the gallerist took to social media to share a warm memory of her first meeting with him in 2005 at his studio in Prabhadevi eager to work with him But he refrained from talking about art or commerce and instead asked her to sing a thumri and inquired about the languages she could read and speak in It sounds like an odd thing to say but in the course our meetings I somehow began to feel I had known him for a long time she reminiscedBanking on the sareeLast year we had written in this section about how designer Joy Bimal Roy son of filmmaker Bimal Roy had begun upcycling his late sister Yashodharas sarees and launched a new venture called Touch of Joy His work is being showcased at the Kala Ghoda gallery ARTISANS Now taking off from Roys venture the gallery has started a saree bank to give old damaged sarees a new lease of life The sarees from saree bank go to Touch of Joy and to some of the other upcycling projects that we work with We welcome natural material sarees like handmade or handloom or handprinted ones We plan to set up a barrel outside our gallery If the person can add a small note about what the saree means to them wed like to carry the memories and meaning gallerist Radhi Parekh inset saidSounds from the farmIf youre interested in electronic music be it as a producer or just as a listener what do you feel about spending a week at a scenic location in Keralas Pallakad district learning the tricks of the trade Thats what the folks at Bhoomi Farms left in the southern state are offering with a music residency slated to start on July 23The programme is called Free Wav and involves participants being taught modules on field recording beat making and the sampling history of electronic music among other things Nithin Shamsudhin one of the instructors told this diarist The idea was inspired by a similar residency in Kolkata called Synth Farm But that runs only for three days and we thought why not have people over for a week and delve deeper into the subject Check out bhoomifarms on Instagram to apply