Mumbai Diary: Sunday Dossier

Bhool Bhulaiyaa: Two attendants try and fit a motorcycle amidst a sea of two-wheelers at a parking lot on SV Road, Borivli West. Pic/Satej Shinde

Aanchal Malhotra's book returns home

Oral historian Aanchal Malhotra's deeply researched 2018 book, Remnants of a Separation, which was a unique attempt to revisit the Partition through objects that refugees carried with them across the border, is now being translated into Punjabi. The new translation titled, Batvare Di Kahani Vastaā Di Zubani, is being published by Unistar Books. "The translation of the book into Punjabi feels like a return to the mother tongue for many of my interviewees. I am so pleased that it has been done keeping the linguistic landscape of pre-Partitioned Punjab in mind, and I hope it will widen the readership of the text and pave the way for other regional translations," Malhotra told this diarist. Incidentally, starting this week, her book will also be available in French, titled Vestiges d'une Separation, becoming the first non-South Asian language that the text has been translated into.

Bach in Tardeo

In 2019, this newspaper had covered a cool, homegrown music school called 88-The Piano Academy, founded by siblings Shivani and Vivek Patel from Nepean Sea Road. The duo has now opened a new studio at Tardeo, where they offer lessons in drums, western vocals and guitar. "We have over 250 students and the age group starts at three and goes up to nearly 80!" says Shivani. During the pandemic, their global footprint increased, and they now conduct online lessons across the US, UK, the Middle East and the Far East. "Every student is different, so we have designed a specialised curriculum that caters to their personality and interests," adds Vivek.

When Waugh was not on the mark!

Mark Waugh, that elegant Australian batsman, who is now a TV pundit in Australia, got his sums wrong on Thursday after Australia bundled out Bangladesh for a mere 73 in the T20 World Cup. During the innings break, Waugh and his colleagues Brett Lee and Brendan Julian were discussing on Fox Cricket how soon Australia should reach their target to do their net run-rate a world of good. Waugh felt it would be eight overs and said: "Eight 12s were 76 when I went to school, so hang on, eight overs." If Waugh had used a calculator he would have known that 8x12 equals 96. Australia went on to achieve their target in 6.2 overs. Where Waugh's student days are concerned, he admitted in his biography written by James Knight that maths was not a favourite subject for him and twin brother Steve. In fact, he said they were "hopeless." The viewers needn't have been surprised by his gaffe, after all.

Will the Raymond feud ever end?

Pic Credit/AFP

Former chairman emeritus of Raymond Group and an aviator, Vijaypat Singhania's autobiography, An Incomplete Life, may not see the light of day just yet. On Thursday, the Bombay High Court vacation bench restrained Macmillan Publishers India Pvt Ltd from publication of the book. It may be recalled that Singhania is embroiled in a legal battle with his estranged son Gautam Singhania and Raymond Ltd over the release of the book for over three years. In response to the HC order, the publishing company has issued a statement, which reads: "We want to clarify that Pan Macmillan India was not party to any proceedings in the Thane district court in 2019 between Raymond and the author's previous publishers. As such, we were also not made aware of any injunction by the sessions court at Thane regarding any prior version of the book. The contents of the manuscript submitted to us were vetted by a legal expert and we believe the book published by us to not be defamatory. While we are fully complying with the order of 4 November 2021 passed by the Honourable High Court, we are seeking legal advice as to the remedies available to Pan Macmillan India."

A well-deserved honour

Writer and columnist Sumedha Raikar-Mhatre has won the Laadli Media and Advertising Award for Gender Sensitivity 2021 for her mid-day article Conquering the Enemy in the Kitchen about the challenges of everyday cooking during the lockdown and the social and psychological pressures of ambitious recipes that were routinely shared online by others at the time. "It's enthusing to know that the writing on my pandemic time kitchen experiments was appreciated by the Laadli jury. For me, the citation is a validation of the worldview presented in my mid-day culture column, which has been such a precious space for me for the last eight years," said Raikar-Mhatre about her win.