04 March,2015 07:48 AM IST | | Contributed by: Dharmendra Jore, Shreya Bhandary, Vidya Heble
The city — sliced, diced and served with a dash of sauce
Irony in the city
It was almost a season of assault on freedom of expression recently, when the All India Bakchod got fried for their Knockout Roast, and musician Mihir Joshi's song had the word "Bombay" bleeped out by the censors.
Mihir Joshi wins the GIMA Best Rock Album award
Well, it's almost ironic now that Joshi or rather, his group, the Mihir Joshi Band has won the Global Indian Music Academy's 2015 award for Best Rock Album, for Mumbai Blues, which contains the "offensive" word.
Of course, the censors would probably argue that the quality of the music has nothing to do with the name of the city. But we would argue for the quality of mercy. Which is not strained. And congratulations, Mihir!
Is this how it will be?
Sometimes, the humour in some tweets is so black that it makes us want to weep. We saw one such tweet yesterday, from Overrated Outcast (@over_rated).
A jail cell, Dec 2015:
What are you in for?
"I cracked a joke."
"I ate a plate of beef."
"I said Bombay in public."
"Greenpeace activist."
Changing school of thought
Even while the Union Finance Minister was yet to announce plans for the much-needed focus on girl child education in Delhi, students of the city's Gloria Convent High School organised a street play focusing on the same topic.
A street play is often most effective in bringing home a social message, and Gloria Convent aims to achieve just that. Pic/Ganesh Pawar
Enacted on Pardiwala Lane at Reay Road (E) by parents, teachers and students of the school, the play drew the attention of hundreds of passersby, especially the slum dwellers of the area, to the importance of educating girls.
When it comes to daily needs, sending a child to school often falls low on the list of priorities and the girl will probably get pushed off the list altogether, but with increasing awareness, this is changing.
The play highlighted that educating girls is the first step towards dispelling the darkness and moving towards empowerment. Truly, ladki padhao, ladki bachao as the slogan goes.
Small voice, big results
Marine Drive's renovated Taraporewala Aquarium, inaugurated on Tuesday by CM Devendra Fadnavis, had been stalled for many years as the successive Congress-NCP governments could not take any decision on the renovation because of many issues.
It took a child's query to speed up the aquarium's renovation. Pic/Maleeva Rebello
When we probed what led the Bharatiya Janata Party government, especially fisheries minister Eknath Khadse, to get the job done within a short span of two months, we discovered, from the minister himself, that the credit for expediting the project should go to the minister's six-year-old grandson.
The child would insist on visiting the once-famous tourist spot whenever he travelled with his grandpa to the city, but would return disappointed because of the lack of variety of fish and other marine life. And when Khadse became a minister, the kid asked him whether he could now expect "wonderful fish" in the aquarium. His wish was translated into command.
