Mumbai Diary: Sunday Dossier

A yogic future
Juhi Chawla is taking her passion for yoga to the next level. The actress, who has been practising yoga for 10 years, is working towards opening a yoga centre.

"Thanks to yoga, I now adapt more easily to situations," she told this diarist. She owns a 20-acre property on the outskirts of Mumbai which she would convert into an institute. "People can stay there, practise yoga, and occupy themselves with healing concerns. I hope the universe makes my dream come true." Amen.

Girl interrupted

Pic/Pradeep Dhivar

Actress Kangna Ranaut ducks to save her head at an event held at a Lower Parel mall on Saturday.

Once a mate, always a mate!
Former Australia cricket captain and this newspaper's long-serving columnist Ian Chappell is never short of an anecdote. Somehow, he always has one which not many have heard before. This diarist, a sucker for cricketing yarns himself, discovered a new ‘delivery' in Chappell's latest interview to ESPN Cricinfo concerning television commentary which Chappell has done regularly since 1980.

The season after he criticised his brother Greg in print for the infamous underarm incident in the summer of 1980-81, Chappell was instructed by his Channel Nine producer David Hill (a legend in television coverage down under) to interview Dennis Lillee after he kicked Pakistan's then captain Javed Miandad in the Perth Test match of the 1981-82 season.

This put Chappell in a spot. He had to do justice to his job as a television commentator. On the other hand, Lillee, his former teammate, was a friend and Chappell believed that the controversial fast bowler would be in more trouble had he granted his ex-captain an interview on cricket's ugliest on-field controversy.

Chappell reveals what he did: "So I went to him (Lillee) and I said, "Mate, David Hill wants me to do an interview with you about the incident, but as a friend I am suggesting that you don't do it." He said, "Okay, I won't do it then." So, I went back and told Hilly, "No, he hasn't agreed to it." That was smart, Chappelli.

Paris encounters
Earlier this month, designer, Nandita Mahtani toddled off to Paris along with her pals-turned-business partners, Bhavana Pandey and Dolly Sidhwani, to showcase their new women's wear line, Love Genration.

That's ‘generation' without the e. "Being a bunch of girls, we had a great time. We did a bit of sightseeing like visiting Montmartre and the Eiffel Tower combined with some good food," says Mahtani, who was there for a week, and spent two days at the Maison d'objet sourcing for her interior design projects.

"We had an excellent response from buyers, plus a surprise visit from and discussion with our very own minister of textiles, Smriti Irani," she gushes. Not a bad start, we say.

Friendly, but not friends
It appears that television journalist Suprita Das's new biography, Shadow Fighter (HarperCollins India), which chronicles the story of ace boxer Laishram Sarita Devi, isn't just a tale of a small town Manipuri girl making it big on the world stage. Devi, who courted controversy in 2014 Asian Games after she refused to accept the bronze medal, has lived in the shadow of fellow boxer MC Mary Kom.

And, though the two Manipuri fighters share a decent professional camaraderie, their personal relationship, Das tells us, has suffered many ups and downs. "What they share is bittersweet," says Das, while relaying an incident from two years ago. "After the Asian Games incident, there was a lot of support for Devi across social media because people thought she had been given a raw deal.

On that same day, Mary Kom had won a gold medal. But, because there was such a build up around Devi's story, Mary Kom who is used to being in the limelight, didn't receive the attention." Turns out, the world champion didn't take it too well. "That incident changed the relationship between the two girls, and they haven't been on talking terms since." Das has invested an entire chapter that boxing fans wouldn't want to miss.

It's showtime
In February 2015, when Bungalow 8 held a teaser of select works by exhibition designer and artist Mark Prime, gallerists Mortimer Chatterjee and Tara Lal knew he would be their next. In October, their Colaba gallery will host Prime's solo show, his first in Mumbai since he came to India from London nearly a decade ago.

Mark Prime

Prime helps the Jhaveri sisters, Priya and Amrita, with their exhibitions, among other galleries and institutions of repute; with Chatterjee and Lal, however, this is going to be a "fresh association as an artist". "Tara and I were struck by the quality of his works, which have grown in number and scale. There is a quiet dignity about his works which look like geometric constructions," says Chatterjee.