Mumbai Diary: Thursday Dossier

Awesome foursome

Bhumi Pednekar and Taapsee Pannu pose with shooters Chandro and Prakashi Tomar during a media interaction ahead of a film the actors will star in based on the lives of the Tomar sisters, at a Goregaon five-star on Wednesday. Pic/Satej Shinde

All aboard the music bus

Look at this photograph. What does it look like to you? Does it look like a lounge room in an apartment? Maybe it looks like a swanky log cabin? Or does it seem like a high-end vanity van? None of those are the right answers, though. It is the bus that tabla maestro Ustad Zakir Hussain and flautist Rakesh Chaurasia are travelling in at present while touring in the US.

The other people with them are bassist Edgar Meyer, banjoist Bela Fleck and an unidentified fifth member. Hussain shared the photo with his social media followers, and if you've ever wondered how high-flying musicians travel by road, now you know.

Setting up a new stage in his career

Creator-producer Siddharth Malhotra who marked his arrival in the Indian television industry with popular medical drama Sanjivani in the 2000s, and relaunched it recently with a second season, now plans to make a foray into theatre. "I like challenging myself, and pushing the boundaries of content to explore how a story can be told differently every single time. With theatre, there is scope to do so much more and even though it has a niche audience, the platform itself has wide-ranging facets.

It's live and exciting, and I can't wait for the projects lined up to kick off," he told this diarist. The stage seems to be becoming popular with names from the film and television world. Actor Nivedita Bhattacharya was in Delhi this Dussehra for a Broadway-style production called the Legend of Ram, while the play Gaa Re Maa saw the return of veteran actor Bharti Achrekar and pop and playback singer Suneeta Rao to the stage after years.

Being cellfish

Language is changing in the digital age, and industrialist Anand Mahindra and actor Shruti Seth hinted at the same when they shared four words they have come across that perfectly describe the times we live in.

They are "textrovert", or a person who prefers texting than talking face to face; "cellfish", meaning someone who talks on a cell phone even when it's rude; "Internest", or the cocoon of blankets and pillows you surround yourself with while spending a long amount of time online; and "nonversation", or small talk.

Talk about changing times.

Graphic content

One is India's first female graphic novelist, known for works like Kari and Adi parva. The other is one of the foremost experts on Hindu mythology in the country, who's written scores of books on the subject. So, when Amruta Patil and Devdutt Pattanaik collaborate on a graphic novel, expectations are bound to be high, as they are for Aranyaka.

Pattanaik has conceived the story, which he gleaned from a quote in the Upanishads. Patil then wrote it and drew the illustrations to complete a work that, Pattanaik said, is about three rishikas.

They are Katyayani the Large, Maitreyi the Fig, and Gargi the Weaver, and the story deals with the "apprehensions and hunger that form the basis of human interactions at times". Pattanaik recently did the first reading on social media and was expectedly excited. Patil, though, was calm as a cucumber while unveiling the book's cover.

An ironic ticket

The Aarey issue may not seem entirely over, even though the government, by its own admission, has chopped 2,141 trees to build the Metro car shed proposed there. Citizens and activists haven't given up their fight.

And one result of this is a chilling Instagram page that was recently launched, called Tickets for Aarey. All the posts on it are images of a leaf that is supposed to be a pass for the yet-to-be-built Metro line, with a line at the bottom of the picture that says, quite ominously, "Your ticket has been paid for."

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