Mumbai Diary: Saturday Dossier

Pic/Sameer Markande

Let sleepiing dogs lie

A man and his best friend share a snooze at a garden in Chembur on Friday.

Grove state

Let's not forget that Mumbai's coastline is protected by mangroves, which provide a buffer to this concrete jungle that we inhabit. Biodiversity by the Bay is a festival that is returning for its second edition. The first initiative they have undertaken is to call out for entries from creators to send in videos, artwork, poems, songs and other activities that highlight the need to protect Mumbai's mangroves, one of the city's lifelines. "The youth is the future, and art is the tool to create it," shared Nayan Shrimali, who is organising the initiative with Vaishali Chudasama. Log on to @nvillustration to send in your entries.

Women first

Sometimes, films become a medium of communication that travel across the world. Frore, a short that deals with the life of a woman married to a farmer in India, has made it to the official selection list for Toronto Women International Film Festival, in Canada. Mumbaikars Vidhatri Bandi (in pic) and Madhur Mittal, who played a leading role in Slumdog Millionaire, feature in it. This festival recognises the role that women play in the global film industry. Bandi told this diarist, "It's about a woman who marries and her life changes," to briefly sum the plot up. There's more to the narrative, but the point of the festival is important - women play a leading role in the global film industry. It's high time that we all woke up to that fact.

Anju's art in Brussels

An exhibit from The Tower of Slowness on view at Galerie Templon in Brussels

While Mumbai grapples with another lockdown, we're happy to hear that noted city-based artist Anju Dodiya's works have made their way to Europe after five years. The solo Tower of Slowness, a series of 20 new watercolours, is on view at Galerie Templon in Brussels. About the works, installed by her through video calls, that reflect the present, isolation-ridden times, she shared, "The past year has been an unusual one for all of us. Suddenly, we all share a common wound - the painful recognition of the uncertainty of our lives." Our congratulations.

Mum's the word

How do we define motherhood as a concept in the 21st century? A new book that Meghna Pant is aunching, called The Terrible, Horrible, Very Bad Good News (Penguim random House India) tries to question whether being a mother necessarily entails tying the conjugal knot or not, or if being a single mother leads to inevitable loneliness, or what sort of ‘body' a woman who has given birth is supposed to have. Child birth isn't a walk in the park. But it can also be a fulfilling emotion. Read the book to know more.

Mental health is real wealth

The physical ramifications of the pandemic have been documented in numbers. We see figures of cases and deaths that are recorded every day. But there are mental health issues that are not as quantifiable. What sort of implications does sustained isolation bring about? How has the pandemic rewired our brains? Organisations like The Mind Clan are trying to answer these questions. It's built a curated list of inclusive support groups, therapists and other such resources from across India that aim to help people in need of succour. The Mind Clan has just won The Laureate 2021 Community Award for Technology, conferred by The world Happiness Foundation, which aims to provide inclusive access to people in the fields of technology, research and policy-making among other allied fields. "We have always believed that technology can be used to provide free access to inclusive mental-health providers in India. This award is a testament to that at a global level as well," shared Mani Kumar (in pic), co-founder of The Mind Clan. Let's come back to the main point, though. Physical health is one thing. Mental health is another. Both need to be addressed at a time when the human population is vulnerable to either.