Mumbai Diary: Friday Dossier

Tiger Shroff

Ek Tha Tiger

Tiger Shroff pops out of a vanity van to wave to fans and papzz. But what we're wondering is how these folks are looking at the camera and not those abs. Pic/Satej Shinde

Outage? No problem

Scherezade Shroff Talwar

On Wednesday night, netizens in India faced difficulties viewing, uploading and downloading images, videos and audio clips across WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook. It was, in fact, a worldwide outage, which has been linked to the company's endeavour to integrate the technology that runs all three apps. Back in Mumbai, and contrary to what you would have guessed, blogger Scherezade Shroff Talwar, was relaxed. "I didn't have any posts scheduled, but even if I did, I wouldn't make a big deal out of this. Sometimes, such things make you realise how addicted you are to your phone," she told this diarist.

Speaking about the threat to privacy that is likely to arise from this integration, Shroff added, "If you like a pair of trousers online, they keep popping up everywhere. That means that we are being watched. While that is unfortunate, I have to say that going digital has made my life much easier. So, you have to look at it from both sides."

Hoezaay-ing around with the CM

Former VJ and all-round funnyman Jose Covaco, better known as Hoezay, has a penchant for raw satire. Recently, he uploaded a rib-tickling video where he used a news clip of CM Devendra Fadnavis watching footage of flooded parts of Maharashtra, and ran it with a voiceover mimicking a casual conversation between those involved.

"Yahan bhi flooding hai, sir," he says and follows it up with a nonchalant, "Achaaa" lip sync from the CM. It will make you laugh, but also think about the inaction that the powers that be display towards a recurring and crippling problem the city faces during this time.

Well, that's what you call finding comedy in tragedy, we guess.

A song and a dance

We've seen it in the way hip-hop and breaking have helped lift children out of the slums, giving them a platform to express themselves creatively and showcase their talent. Now, Sumeet Nagdev Dance Arts - a Dadar-based academy - has taken a step in the same direction, after it invited low-income-group kids to dance on stage for their students' graduation day. The kids from Dadar and Govandi put up an original performance accompanied to eight different rap songs. And some of the academy's students, too, joined them on stage to shake a leg.

A ear for vision

Over the years, podcasts have steadily gained traction, which is why it's easy to see new ones cropping up each month. A few days ago, a podcast hosted by Swati Rawat called Vision-Nari launched to talk about the stories of visionary Indian women. And we weren't surprised to see that the first person featured was city-based Upasana Makati, founder of White Print, India's first lifestyle magazine in Braille (English).

Here, Makati talks about being a Bombay girl - her education and a job she took up in the 11th grade, which became a defining period in her life, and how she started the magazine chasing corporates for advertisements. She also revealed that it took eight months to finalise the title of the magazine, before it was released in May 2013. We look forward to seeing wmore inspiring women featured soon.

To order or not to order

It's raining cats and dogs, which means online orders have shot up. That's come as a bane for delivery boys, who sometimes have to wade through knee-deep water. But when an online food aggregator put up what we thought was a sensible post urging people to eat home-cooked food, many of the responses were hilarious.

Some conjectured whether it was a promotion for a new app for home chefs. Others asked in jest if the aggregator put up the post about eating home-cooked food since they got orders wrong. But the one we liked best was this comment - "Mom, when did you join Twitter?"

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