<img style="float: left;" src="http://images.mid-day.com/images/2015/dec/Malavika-op.jpg" alt="" width="100" height="57" />Her sweet publicist insists that Sonam Kapoor is 'taking over Melbourne,' but hyperbole aside, the actress whose Neerja, will be screened at the film festival for Australian filmmakers and students will also engage in a discussion with them, following the screening.
"This year, the film festival's theme is women empowerment," says the publicist, adding, "and Sonam has even been nominated for the best actress award." Time to practice that acceptance speech?
<img title="Sonam Kapoor" src="http://images.mid-day.com/images/2016/aug/11-Sonam-Kapoor.jpg" alt="Sonam Kapoor" /> Sonam Kapoor
Enviable lineage The apple doesn't fall too far from the tree, or as in this case, the apple pie. "My mother, the Cordon Bleu-trained patisserie chef, Arunika Shah's culinary interests influenced me to study at the Cordon Bleu in London, and the Atelier des Chefs, and many other cooking courses," says Swati Piramal, Vice Chairperson, Piramal Enterprises, who when she's not delighting guests with her Siberian Kombucha tea and Valencia Paella, is discovering newer ways to combine nutrition and science to combat disease.
<img title="Swati Piramal and Arunika Shah" src="http://images.mid-day.com/images/2016/aug/Arunika-Shah.jpg" alt="Swati Piramal and Arunika Shah" /> Swati Piramal and Arunika Shah
And next week, the octogenarian Shah along with progeny Devina and Supriya Shah, will be presenting a day-long extravaganza of desserts, savouries and fashion jewellery at a SoBo venue. "In her eighties, mother insisted on learning molecular gastronomy and studied techniques to make cheese, fruit and chocolate souffles light as a cloud. I had to take her to the master class in modern gastronomy, and yet her foundation is "the taste, the taste", and using the freshest ingredients", says Piramal who also appears to have inherited her mother's porcelain beauty.
Of scientists and sages "Over the years several of my works have investigated ideas of time, sustenance, recursion...mapping the celestial on to the terrestrial, and examining regularities, anomalies and everyday patterns to understand our world," says artist Jitish Kallat, who will be participating in this year's instalment of Sages and Scientists, a conference of scientists, thinkers, philosophers, doctors, musicians, and artists, curated by Deepak Chopra.
<img title="Deepak Chopra and Jitish Kallat" src="http://images.mid-day.com/images/2016/aug/Deepak-Chopra.jpg" alt="Deepak Chopra and Jitish Kallat" /> Deepak Chopra and Jitish Kallat
"Kallat's numerous exhibitions, his writings and his acclaimed curatorial project at the Kochi-Muziris Biennale have revealed the manner in which aspects of physics and metaphysics interlace in his thinking and his art works," says a spokesperson of the artist. "I do very much look forward to sharing ideas across so many disciplines with fine physicists such as Dr Leonard Mlodinow, who wrote the Grand Design with Stephen Hawking," says the artist.
Speakers like Amanda Gefter, science writer specialising in fundamental physics and cosmology, and Donald Hoffman, cognitive scientist and author, will be participating along with Kallat at the symposium, which takes place at the famous Four Seasons' Beverly Wilshire in Beverly Hills, California next month.
Gallery Go Round It's being called 'the great Gallery Go Round.' Ever since gallerist Dadiba Pundole shifted his historic Pundole from its decades long perch at Fountain to occupy the site previously occupied by Geetha Mehra's Sakshi Art Gallery (which in turn shifted to one of Colaba's atmospheric buildings), art insiders are riveted by what they see as a musical chairs of art institutions.
<img title="Geetha Mehra and Dadiba Pundole" src="http://images.mid-day.com/images/2016/aug/Geetha-Mehra.jpg" alt="Geetha Mehra and Dadiba Pundole" /> Geetha Mehra and Dadiba Pundole
"The move to Colaba was prompted by the need for the gallery to have a larger dedicated space for their auction business," Pundole had said at the time of the shift. "It will also allow us to do more events throughout the year and engage more with the local art community."
And now, the merry go round appears to have cranked up again, as news comes in that Pundole will be shifting once again &mdash; this time to Mumbai's most stately district &mdash; Ballard Estate. Will other galleries succumb to this migratory virus going around? Watch this space.
Go Fish Richard Holkar, who hails from the erstwhile royal clan of Indore, is a man of many parts: hotelier, conservationist, textile revivalist, traveller and foodie.
<img title="Richard Holkar then and now (below)" src="http://images.mid-day.com/images/2016/aug/Richard-Holkar.jpg" alt="Richard Holkar then and now (below)" /> Richard Holkar then and now (below)
This mid-seventies Black and White portrait reveals the Maheshwar based-Holkar to be something of an unconstructed hippie in his salad days. "It was taken in Kashmir on a fishing expedition," said Holkar when we enquired about the snap. "The person next to me is Lakshman who was my driver and major factotum," he says.
"And next to him is Ghulam Mohiuddin, whose firm Munawar Shah and Sons, made all the bandobasts for fishing trips undertaken by the royal families of that time," said Holkar, a veteran of many such trips to catch the delicious brown trout found in rivers like the Lidder and the Bringhi. Do you recall what he was telling you, we enquired from the once-hirsute Holkar. "Most likely how to catch the best fish," he chuckled.
Another kind of atrocity When cities are being bombed across the planet and twisted pieces of metal and shards of broken glass are the liet motif of once great neighbourhoods, is it absurd to protest the objectionable aesthetic sensibility of Mumbai's city planners? Joy Bimal Roy, the son of iconic film maker Bimal Roy, and Bandstand's resident aesthete, whose daily neighbourhood walks mostly yield charming vignettes on his social media timeline, quite rightly directs his ire at this nausea-inducing atrocity on Bandstand's famous promenade.
<img title="Joy Bimal Roy and Ila Arun and (right) the dustbins he wrote about" src="http://images.mid-day.com/images/2016/aug/Joy-Bimal-Roy.jpg" alt="Joy Bimal Roy and Ila Arun and (right) the dustbins he wrote about" /> Joy Bimal Roy and Ila Arun and (right) the dustbins he wrote about
"A reflection of the fine aesthetic sensibility of our Bandstand Trust," was his delicious comment. "This garbage (literally) installation is as shocked to find himself here," he commented, adding, "And don't miss Mickey Mouse, his partner in crime!" Welcome to the newest avatar of Kitsch art: Trash art.

This Independence Day-weekend, skip Lonavla and Khandala

Her sweet publicist insists that Sonam Kapoor is 'taking over Melbourne', but hyperbole aside, the actress whose Neerja, will be screened at the film festival for Australian filmmakers and students will also engage in a discussion with them, following the screening

Then we take Melbourne

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Then we take Melbourne

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