Mumbai Diary: Sunday Dossier

Pic/Sameer Markande

Hustling Hard

A pinwheel seller hawks his wares as kids practice cricket at the Shivaji Park ground in Dadar.

Thamb re, there was Amre!

KL Rahul received much deserved applause and kudos for his hundred against South Africa in the recent opening Test at Centurion. It got high rating when it came to all-time great hundreds by Indians overseas. Our in-house cricket nut reckons Pravin Amre's hundred on debut against Kepler Wessel's South Africans in 1992-93 is not talked about as much as it should be.

K L Rahul

Hence, let's refresh some memories. The Mumbai-based Railways batsman came in at 38-4 and was the eighth man out with the score reaching 247. Amre probably faced a better attack as well - Allan Donald, Brett Schultz, Brian McMillan and Meyrick Pringle - sheer quality although these men were playing their early Tests too. It was South Africa's first Test after being readmitted to the international fold.

Pravin Amre

And India managed to draw the game. Celebrating Amre's century is no disrespect to Rahul's effort. It was a fine hundred which deserved a better result than an innings defeat. This was Rahul's second Test century at Centurion and no one can rule out another splendid effort in the second and final Test at Cape Town. He'll be hoping for a pile of runs at a picturesque ground overlooking the mountains. Doubtless, Rahul scoring runs against that backdrop will make for a beautiful sight.

Life after fame

Divya Kharnare

Filmmaker Divya Kharnare's documentary, 15 Seconds A Lifetime, was screened at the Bangalore International Centre this week. The documentary is centered on former TikTok star Mayur Natekar, a close friend of Kharnare and his senior at SM Shetty College, Powai, where they both studied mass media. Natekar started his journey on TikTok in 2019, quickly gaining an audience. "He would attend college in the morning, and as soon as college was done, would make TikTok reels until night," Kharnare recalls. "At the same time, he is also a very private person, and convincing him to share his life in the open took time." The one-hour documentary uses Mayur as the representative of the class of social media stars who found their life's work gone overnight when TikTok was banned in June 2020. The crux of the documentary comes when Natekar reveals his disillusionment with losing the persona - and fan following - he'd so dedicatedly built. But the reality check, he explains, already occurred before the ban. Natekar was graduating college, and knew he had to face reality: the steady, if predictable, reality of a regular 9-to-5 job.

The keeper of roses

In the 12-plus years that this diarist has known producer, actor and teacher Anjoo Daswani (in pic), her mild mannerisms and soft-spoken words have instantly put us at ease. But what we love the most about her is the magic she has spun in her small window garden. Her pictures of her flowers, which she keeps posting on her Facebook page, have us going ‘wow' every time.

A white rose nourished in red soil blooms in Daswani's window

"I have never thought of myself as an expert on gardening. The only thing I make sure of is to avoid using Mumbai soil. I prefer red soil from, say, Lonavla or Matheran, which is more nourishing," she tells us, adding that even though she doesn't have balconies in her South Mumbai home, she does have big windows that are the synonymous with old ‘Bombay' buildings. "I call them my hanging gardens," she says.

We needle the avid gardener for tips on what we need to do to have our very own little hanging gardens in our windows. She starts off by recommending the Buddha Belly Bamboo, for those who want summon some luck into their lives. This particular species of the ornamental bamboo, she says, requires very little maintenance.

"Ultimately, it is trial and error. Eventually, you will come to know which plant needs direct sunlight and which thrives in the shade. But my most important plant-rearing tip is to make sure you pour water on all the leaves, as this washes all the dust away," she says.

Make some noise for this Royce

It may seem strange that, at a time when one looks ahead with the new year careening around the corner in a few hours, we choose to look back. Yet, does celebrating our past ever need a reason or a season? Mrinal Kapadia (in pic), Cumballa Hill resident, history buff, collector and researcher leaves us with this nostalgic nugget in the neighbourhood's newsletter.

The old Rolls Royce showroom at Kemp's Corner

"Kemp's Corner, now an upscale residential and commercial locality nestled between Cumballa and Malabar Hills, evolved from a thick forest into a suburb of Bombay before its slow rise into urban gentrification. Named so after an early 20th-century chemist and druggist, Kemp & Co., that existed well into the 1970s. A building that is today known for housing the chic Italian restaurant Gustoso as well as a Starbucks outlet and the iconic Chinese Room for decades past, was a showroom for Rolls Royce cars a century ago," Kapadia writes in his piece in the newsletter.

The piece is accompanied by an image all the way back from 1921, showing a Rolls Royce arriving at the ‘depot' in Bombay on ‘six bullock power, with a maximum speed of two miles an hour' - a nice way of saying that the luxury car was towed to the showroom by three bullock carts.

Tushar Prabhoo, who edits the newsletter, says, "The piece takes young persons back in time, while the older readers take great pride in knowing they live in a place with such an interesting history. I can only say when you go down memory lane, do so in style, like rolling along in a Rolls Royce, perhaps." We agree!