Mumbai Diary: Thursday Dossier

Pic/Kirti Surve Parade

The Big Clean-up job

Just like these workers are sprucing up the BMC building before the rains, we hope the civic authority is also ensuring that the city is ready for the monsoon.

These kids keep rolling on

Aarvi Shah and Atharva Agarwal

The recent 6th Ranking Roller Skating Championship in Goa saw a couple of Mumbai kids from the INDRS club in Kandivali set the rink alight. While Atharva Agarwal won gold in 500 m, and a silver in the 1,000 m race, Aarvi Shah brought home the bronze medal in the
500 m race at the competition that concluded on May 19. "Initially, I was a little nervous to see a huge number of skaters from South [India]. But my coach boosted my confidence, reminding me that I can do this," shared Agarwal. Shah added that while her competitors tried hard, she fought for space. "I was confident that I would get my space. I had to fight hard since there were close to 43 racers on track," she remarked.

Watch over our vultures

Adult long billed vulture; (right) adult white backed vulture

Conservation is hard work. Kishor Rithe would know. The Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) recently presented about their 20-year-long campaign to breed and rehabilitate three species of vultures in India at the World Species Congress last week. Conducted in collaboration with the Maharashtra Forest Department as well as other state forest departments, the campaign has successfully raised 800 vultures across four captivities across India, Rithe shared on World Biodiversity Day yesterday. "We began in 2002 with three species - the white backed, long billed and slender billed vultures," he shared. This year, they changed their strategy to release and rehabilitate these birds in tiger reserves. "In 2023, we brought 10 white back and 10 long billed vultures to the aviaries in the Tadoba National Park, since these parks have larger spaces," he revealed.

Kishor Rithe

Churning a legacy

Raghunandan Kamath

Founder of Naturals Ice Cream, Raghunandan Kamath, passed away at the age of 75 due to an illness last Friday in Mangaluru. "His sons currently run his business, so he could shift back to his native place a few years ago," his friend Firoz Haider Naqvi told this diarist. Naqvi, who remembers Kamath as a visionary, shared that the two met 20 years ago at an exhibition in Germany. "We were from the same delegation from India. That's where we became friends," he recalled. Business kept bringing them back together. "He once told me that he started out as a fruit seller. The wooden churner in which he made his first batches of ice cream is still in his office reception," he shared, adding that Kamath was an easy-going, down-to-earth person, who was also a great advisor. "What I loved about him was that apart from his ice cream, he knew and loved his food. He was a great companion to share a meal with," Naqvi revealed to this diarist.

Mapping India is on his mind

Samarth Bharadia; (right) Bharadia's map of Mumbai and MMR region marks out a party-wise breakup

For Mumbaikar Samarth Bharadia, the recent election was more than just a duty. Even before he cast his vote, Bharadia (below) realised that there was a lack of awareness among the common voter about the parties contesting in their neighbourhoods. "I always wondered that while the infographics often show one contestant vs the other, they never clarify the divide according to the locality or regions in the city. That is when I decided to create these maps," the engineering student shared. A student of cartography, he had already been creating city and country maps since 2022. "I started [making maps] in October 2022. Since the onset of the elections, I have been designing them specifically to help people understand how the election is being fought. I would often read through the news, and check the website of the Election Commission of India for details and information to fill in," Bharadia explained. His charts are not limited to listing contestants. From seat counts and voting percentages, to marking out the seats going into polls in different phases of the election, Bharadia has mapped them all out. "It is not done yet. I will also be creating maps for Phase 6 i.e. the Delhi and West Bengal elections," he shared with us.