Mumbai Diary: Saturday scene

Click, learn and donate
If you are at a loss for ways to pass the time - say, during the extended Republic Day weekend vacation, perhaps - then timepass with an added benefit is just a click away. The website freerice.com, which is an initiative that is owned by and supports the United Nations World Food Programme, donates 10 grains of rice to the needy every time you answer a question in one of the many quizzes on the site. This way, not only can you do a good deed, you can enrich your knowledge in a variety of subjects while doing so.

As Freerice says on its site, its goals are twofold - provide education to everyone for free, and help end world hunger by providing rice to hungry people for free. It adds, "Whether you are CEO of a large corporation or a street child in a poor country, improving your education can improve your life. It is a great investment in yourself."

You can take the quiz, at a level of your choosing, in any of a wide range of subjects from Humanities to Chemistry, English vocabulary to Maths. Clicking is so much fun that you hardly realise how much you are donating. But you can keep track, by registering as a user (you can also remain unregistered), so you can compare quiz notes and rice amounts with others.

Here's one to get you started. Who said, "Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened."?

Rainbow over Juhu
If you cannot go to the movies, well, the movies can come to you. That seems to be the message of Kashish, the Mumbai International Queer Film Festival which is bringing a slice of its festival to the suburbs with the ‘Best of Kashish' to be held as part of the ongoing Mumbai Pride Week. The ‘Best of Kashish', is a four-hour programme of Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender and Queer (LGBTQ) films that have won awards or have been audience favourites at Kashish 2014. These will be screened at this event to be held today, January 24 from 4pm-8pm at SNDT Women's College, Juhu. Some notable films are Families are Forever (Winner of Kashish 2014 Best Documentary Short), and audience favourites, Spooners, and Luigi & Vincenzo. The lesbian feature Margarita from Canada will also be shown.

"These films touch a chord within us and make us realise that LGBTQ persons are human beings with the same human emotions, as everybody," said Sridhar Rangayan, festival director, Kashish.

What: Best of Kashish screening
When: January 24: 4pm to 8pm
Where: Mini Auditorium, SNDT Women's University, Juhu
How much: Free entry Seating on first-come first-served basis.

Sniffing out canine hierarchy
Humans are not the only ones to differentiate on the basis of hierarchy, be it caste or class. Just look at the way we sneer - maybe not openly - at people who appear poor or shabby and enter the first-class train compartment. And those who are termed the lower classes harbour exactly the same sentiments towards the privileged ones.

Smart Stepper: Sniffer dogs are a cut above. Representational pic

Perhaps learning from us two-legged beings, dogs who hang around the train stations observe similar practices, as we recently saw. At Thane station, a purebred sniffer dog was going on his rounds with his uniformed human handlers, when a small commotion broke out. The stray dogs who reside in the station premises had decided that the good-looking cop dog did not belong there, and they were heckling him in the universal language of dogs - but from a safe distance! The barking stopped when the police posse crossed to another platform, though the local louts maintained a lookout in case the "gentleman" returned.