The city - sliced, diced and served with a dash of sauce
Sane Guruji Udyan as it used to be.
More power to protests
We see turbo-charged activism as the effort to save Patwardhan Park at Bandra West goes on. The civic authorities have planned a car park underneath a part of this garden, a move, green warriors say, will result in loss of this much-relished space. The pitched Patwardhan battle takes one back to 2016, when the first rumblings to take over Prabhadevi’s Sane Guruji Udyan started. This garden, near Siddhivinayak Mandir, has been taken over for the Siddhivinayak station on the Mumbai Metro III line from Colaba to Seepz. Though there were some protests before trees started being hacked at the garden, the protests certainly lacked muscle and the high-profile visibility that Patwardhan Park protests have had. Today, this garden is well and truly gone in Prabhadevi. We hope to see better luck for Bandra.
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Also Read: Mumbai Diary: Friday Dossier
For the love of Ravi Varma
Ganesh Shivaswamy
Advocate Ganesh Shivaswamy, founder of a foundation which focuses on structuring the legacy of Raja Ravi Varma, is ready to release his six-volume book called Raja Ravi Varma: An Everlasting Imprint, on April 9. The writer had started writing in August 2018 and had aimed to release the book for Ravi Varma’s 175th birth anniversary on April 29, 2023. “It is different as it takes Ravi Varma out of isolation and places him in the context of a larger happening,” Shivaswamy says. When asked why such a large exploration was necessary, he adds, “The world was and is changing but some legacies have been frozen in time. A reassessment of the Ravi Varma legacy was essential.”
When umpire Aleem Dar had to face a near-fatal situation
A 2007 image of Pakistani umpire Aleem Dar who has called it a day. PIC/GETTY IMAGES
Pakistani umpire Aleem Dar, who stepped down as an ICC Elite umpire the other day, is happy to let someone else take his spot after spending 19 years on the international cricket road. Through those years, Aleem experienced many significant moments while officiating on the highest stage. We reckon one of them would be about the time he was fortunate to duck a major injury to his face. Aleem took quick evasive action to avoid a fierce uppish drive from the blade of Sachin Tendulkar in the India v Namibia 2003 World Cup match at Pietermaritzburg, South Africa. Believing that Aleem would consider this a very lucky escape, this diarist, who was covering the match, tried getting in touch with Aleem over the phone. Pietermaritzburg is not a big city, but he tried at least seven to eight hotels that night to check where Aleem was put up. When he finally got through, Aleem admitted that he had indeed escaped death. “I could have been killed. I got saved because of my good eyesight. I still play cricket, you know. In my four years of umpiring at the international level, this was the most powerful drive I ever saw,” he said. Doubtless, Aleem feels lucky to be alive and we wish him all the best in his retirement.
An uncredited cameo
Josy Joseph
Journalist and author Josy Joseph was in for a pleasant surprise recently, when his book, A Feast Of Vultures: The Hidden Business of Democracy in India (2016), found a mention in the Hindi web series The Night Manager. In the Anil Kapoor-Aditya Roy Kapur starrer released on an OTT platform, a senior intelligence officer played by Vikram Kapadia shows the book to his subordinate, played by Joy Sengupta. Kapadia goes on to draw a parallel with a story from the book to nail his junior’s lie. “It was like my friends Shridhar Raghavan and Sandeep Modi [writers of the show] winking at me,” chuckles Joseph, who only learned about it after a friend tagged him on Twitter. He adds, “It is actually quite interesting that a chapter in my book about Indian arms dealers, which I wrote in 2016, was in many ways similar to what Le Carre wrote in his book in 1993, in terms of the way arms dealers enjoy the good life, surround themselves with a trusted circle of friends, use complex systems of payment and manipulate governments.” Le Carre’s book of the same name was first adapted into a British web series in 2016 before the Hindi version this year.
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