Mumbai Diary: Tuesday Dossier

Pic/Satej Shinde

A viral picture
A woman carrying water walks past a wall with a mural themed on the Coronavirus vaccine, at Kandivali on Monday.

Pride paused

Members of the LGBTQAi+ community at an earlier edition of Mumbai Pride

It's around this time of the year that members and supporters of the city's LGBTQAi+ community turn out in droves for the Mumbai Pride parade, to assert their rights and strive for a more equal society. But that won't happen this year, since the event has been called off. It won't even take place virtually, and Harish Iyer, a member of Queer Azaadi Mumbai, which organises the parade, shared, "The reason is simple - it's because of the pandemic. We are not doing anything online since there is already a deluge of stuff happening in the digital space. We are open to the idea of holding it again next year, but nothing is confirmed yet."

Fresh out of the oven in Oshiwara

After doling out sushi, dim sums, baos and other Asian delicacies for two years, the Oshiwara-based Yazu: Pan Asian Supper Club is off to a sweet start in 2021. The brand is set to launch Yazu Patisserie, a one-stop-shop for creative bakes, including dessert gifting, next week. Think pull-me-out, piñata, keto and guilt-free cakes to cookies, cakesicles and hampers, head of design, Shreya Nagpal, told this diarist. "The gap in the industry for an exquisite-looking product in the desserts space, something that is also great in terms of quality, led to the creation of the patisserie," shared Nagpal, who is running the show. The brand is set to operate as a standalone shop, next to the restaurant, near Infiniti Mall. Nagpal believes that what will set them apart in the slowly saturating gourmet dessert brands space is the use of pure Belgian chocolate and quality control. "We'll make sure to bring out the freshest cakes and concepts," she promised. We wish them luck.

Show us the money, will you?

It's one of the worst-kept secrets of the music industry. Online streaming services and digital distribution platforms often cut such a large slice of the pie from sales that artistes are invariably left with only the crumbs. Heavy-metal veteran Sahil Makhija found this out recently, when he received a shocking amount of '0.03 from one such platform, which was credited directly to his bank account. His social media post regarding it opened up the can of worms further, with more musicians recounting similar horror stories. Makhija told this diarist, "I'm not sure what this particular amount was for, but generally speaking, payments for music are rubbish - you get $0.000001 or something for every stream." That's grossly unfair, isn't it?

Sing it to win it

Music platform Sing Dil Se is hosting a competition where applicants have to send in a video of them singing a song, with the top 10 winners getting a chance to have a video of theirs shot and uploaded on the site's YouTube channel, which has over 1.7 million subscribers. CEO and founder Munmun Joshi (in pic) shared, "One of them will later be offered the opportunity to record an official song for us." Log on to singdilse.com if you think you've got the right notes.

Look who's set for Broadway

In what's a significant development for singer-director Isheeta Ganguly, her play, Shakuntala Awaits, will be staged at Here Theatre on Broadway in New York on January 31. The plot is an adaptation of a tale from The Mahabharata, and deals with the chance encounter of two people at a Mumbai bookstore in 2019, before they are torn apart from each other. The play had premiered at NCPA in 2016, before being performed at the Indian Consulate in New York the next year. Speaking about how the play got picked up for Broadway, Ganguly (in pic) told this diarist, "Purva Bedi, one of the actors in it, is affiliated with Here Theatre, and they heard about the play from her. They later got in touch with me and said that they would love to stage it. It will be performed live and streamed digitally, and though I am not a big fan of Zoom screenings, I thought this would be the best way to premier it on an online platform, given the prestige that Here Theatre has."