Mumbai Diary: Sunday Dossier

Pic/Anurag Ahire

Track the ice cream

A young consumer In Goregaon East looks with laser focus at a treat that could be his.

Bond is now on your laptops

The Neev Book Award 2021 is back, to showcase and celebrate distinguished children's literature in India. And guess who is doing a keynote conversation? Our favourite Ruskin Bond, who is probably doing this virtual event for the first time since the pandemic. Kavita Gupta, co-founder and curator of Neev Literature Festival for Children, says, "Ruskin's 70-year legacy resonates with Neev's mission of curating India's stories for children, its relationship with nature, and philosophy of kutumb (community). His range of the scary, humorous, touching and everyday, is a testament to his wide-ranging mind. It's also the first time he is taking part in an online festival." If you wish to participate, pre-registration is advised.

Shoutout to Tehran's Sikhs

After giving Mumbai its first Irani cafe in 50 years in 2015, filmmaker Mansoor Showghi Yezdi is all set for his next outing - a documentary on the Sikh community in Tehran. Titled A Bit of Punjab in Persia, the film will put the spotlight on the community and the Masjid-e-Hindan gurdwara in Tehran. "The Sikhs stand out as the dominant Indian community in Iran," he says. "Their innate sense of adventure and capacity to assimilate themselves within the milieu of far-flung lands without losing their distinct cultural identity has been one of its great strengths. They are warm-hearted and make friends easily, which has invariably held them in good stead. As a filmmaker, I wanted to showcase this."

How elastic Derek Randall got his tie!

Nottinghamshire's Derek Randall fools around with a magnum whisky bottle at Trent Bridge, Nottingham, in 1991. Pic/Getty Images

While India's cricket head coach Ravi Shastri will continue to be vilified for having the team over for his recent book launch in London without anyone wearing masks, the now-infamous function caused our in-house cricket nut to recall an event which was uncontroversial, yet funny. It concerned Tony Greig's England cricket team which landed in Mumbai to start their 1976-77 tour of India. At one of the functions in this city, the English tourists were given ties by their host as a parting gift. Batsman Derek Randall, known for his funny ways, decided to make his way to the stage to collect his tie in an acrobatic way. The Nottinghamshire man, according to Christopher Martin-Jenkins in his tour book MCC in India 1976-77, did as planned and brought the house down with his athletic approach. The Indian public later saw Randall do cartwheels on the field too and he's a sort of character that cricket is bereft of these days.

The fine layered art of burqas

Mumbai-based artist and software engineer Nargis Shaikh has been exploring the inner workings of Islamic geometry, an exercise that has helped her understand how "layering" works. Her limited edition screen prints titled Mohammad Ali Road - Burkhas is inspired by memories of her many visits to the iconic Mumbai street. "The artwork is mainly an interpretation of the patterns and movement around the burkha sellers during the sunset hours at Mohammad Ali Road," the artist tells us.

Nargis Shaikh

"I tried to capture the homogeneity that the veil creates and individuality reflected by the eyes and body gestures of the women wearing them." Layering informs not just the subject but also the process, with Shaikh selecting serigraphy (silk-screen printing) where one colour is layered on top of the other individually allowing them to interact with each other.

A film about Hindi cinema's ace cinematographers

Around six years ago, when Hemant Chaturvedi decided to call it quits as cinematographer, he remembers experiencing a lot of disillusionment. "I was getting the sense that things were changing very rapidly, and at a more humane level, in Bollywood. It wasn't a change that I was comfortable with," he shares. While Chaturvedi turned to still photography during this time, he still had many questions unanswered about his work. "That's when I felt I should speak with those who worked much before me, in the era that I saw the fag end of, before I started off in the mid-80s." Chaturvedi managed to track down some of these elderly cinematographers, and ended up interviewing 16 of them, including Peter Pereira, who was famous for having shot all of Manmohan Desai's films, Ishwar Bidri who passed away this year, and the legendary Govind Nihalani. Their stories, shot in 2015, will soon make it to a documentary, titled Chayaankan, which is currently in the edit stage and is expected to be ready by December this year. "In addition to this, I have also interviewed Waheeda Rehmanji and five elderly lightboys, who've worked very closely with many of these cinematographers. They have shared some wonderful stories, including what they think a cameraman should be," says Chaturvedi, adding, "It was a way of understanding how their lives had been. My interpretation of that collection of interviews also helped me sort out my own head. It was a very personal journey."