The city - sliced, diced and served with a dash of sauce
Pic/Kirti Surve Parade
In the Ascending order
Numbers in yellow mark the floors of a high-rise building under construction in Mahalaxmi.
Trashy move, that!
The Coldplay kiss cam fiasco seems to have become a gift that keeps on giving. Most recently, it taught Mumbaikars a lesson in unethical waste management. At a beach cleanup on Carter Road last weekend, collective Carter Cleanup stumbled upon a discarded porcelain showpiece that had an uncanny resemblance to Astronomer CEO Andy Byron and Kristin Cabot’s now-infamous moments-before-disaster pose. While the collective — co-founded by Freishia Bomanbehram (below), Harold Fernandes, Maansi Desai, Ashwin Malwade and Nupur Agarwal — had a hearty laugh upon the discovery, the incident highlighted a more serious concern, this diarist learnt.
A moment from the Coldplay concert (right) the figurine found during the cleanup. Pics Courtesy/Carter CleanUp
“Items like these washing ashore indicate the prevalence of illegal dumping in the city. The doll is just one of the many unusual things we have chanced upon in the 197 weeks of our operations,” said Bomanbehram. Among these were an intact sofa and a bread packet dating all the way back to 2005, ironically the year Coldplay released their hit Fix You. “We have been encouraging people to segregate and discard waste responsibly for four years now. Every Saturday morning, we conduct a dry waste collection drive at the Amphitheatre on Carter Road,” she revealed to this diarist. Those keen to know more can log on to @cartercleanup to learn more.
Dadar se Bandra tak
Pic Courtesy/@bombay.daak
For chef Niyati Rao (right), Bombay Daak’s first year has been a culmination of a dream that began during her time at Dadar Catering College (now Institute of Hotel Management). “As friends, we would visit these little bars around the neighbourhood, and gorge on Schezwan chutney. We often debated on what happens when chefs from fine-dining spaces enter the daaru-chakna market?” she recalled.
With a menu sculpted from research and conversations with people from past generations, the venue is now a bridge between Gen Z-ers and old-timers, both. “Plus, Bandra is a melting pot of Gen Z-ers and an older generation. It makes the restaurant a wonderful little space of amalgamation.” she shared.
Just jamming with Prasanna
R Prasanna (extreme left) plays a few chords with the children on stage. Pic Courtesy/@tenderroots India
When ace guitarist R Prasanna dropped by for a visit in the city, it made for a rare experience. But for the children of Shishuvan School in Matunga, the New York-based guitarist put on an impromptu performance on July 21. Invited by the Banyan Tree and Tenderroots India, the performance was to be a simple one. “He [Prasanna] came in right after a performance the previous night. He made it so interactive,” shared team member Manjari Venkat. Leading the students into song, the guitarist then invited a few of them on stage to sing, and play with him. “The children were
very hesitant initially, but as the session went on, everyone was on stage,” revealed Venkat.
Gamechanging scenes
It has been four years in the making, but the co-founder of Memesys Culture Lab, Zain Memon (above) and filmmaker Anand Gandhi are back on the writing board. This time, they are working on a project across multimedia forms. Memon revealed, “Our upcoming project surpasses everything we’ve previously created. This is our definitive response to the question we have been asked over the years — what happens when a game designer and filmmaker build a world together?”
It’s a MAD, mad world
A panel from the parody comic. Pic Courtesy/@toonfactory
Sometimes, you can hide a treasure too well. In between moving house, writer Alok Sharma discovered some rare and treasured collectables from a DVD collection to old comics. “Among the finds was an old edition of Lambu Motu’s adventures with Dracula. I remember being traumatised reading it at the age of 10. It was quite a creepy series,” he revealed. But the better find was a series of parodies along the lines of MAD magazine. “These were parody comics from the 1970s titled Deewana, unofficially styled after MAD magazine. They had their own Alfred E Neuman named Chilli. Many of their covers were parodies of films from Guide and Khilona to Bill Wale Dhamkiyan De Jaayenge,” he laughed. Now, that’s an SRK twist.
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