Mumbai Diary: Tuesday Dossier

The city - sliced, diced and served with a dash of sauce

In the right frame

The papz get Krishna Shroff while she checks another pic of hers at an event in BKC on Monday. Pic/Bipin Kokate

A 'wild' blast from the past

Being on social media could either be an endless exercise in scrolling through photographs uploaded by the million a second, or if you follow the right accounts, one of happy discoveries. The latter was the case with a city-based film researcher who goes by the moniker, Wildcat of Bombay, on Instagram.

Since the researcher couldn't find a poster of Kulin Kanta, he shared one for Kala Nag, another of the many films from the 1920s and 30s inspired by sensational scandals and crimes

Popular among film enthusiasts for his informative posts on 1930s Bombay cinema — he is also writing a book on the same— he came across a post by the Indian Memory Project on Mumtaz Begum, the favourite courtesan of Maharaja Tukojirao Holkar III of Indore, and around whom the infamous Bawla Murder case revolves.

Mumtaz Begum

No sooner did the researcher read this, than he dug out another nugget from the past, this time from his area of expertise. "The details in the sensational Bawla murder case made the perfect recipe for a film and Kohinoor film company made a silent film inspired by the case in 1925 — Kulin Kanta," he wrote, adding, "Instagram can be such a wonderful assemblage of shared interests and serendipitous connections." Indeed.

A master mess

George Calombaris, of MasterChef Australia fame, had his set of die-hard fans among Indian viewers of the show. So, it was disheartening to learn that the chef, a pioneer in the Australian food industry, had been underpaying the staff at his restaurants.

A Fair Work investigation revealed that Calombaris underpaid 515 current and former employees, with a wages theft amounting to $7.83 million. A petition by staffers has requested MasterChef to fire Calombaris, too, leaving the chef in a master-mess of sorts.

Telly bug bites Rishim

We've come a long way from our Sunday morning rituals that comprised a healthy mix of cartoons, movies and of course, cooking shows. From well-made web series to reality competitions, the world of cooking shows has undergone a huge transformation. So it is both surprising and understandable that a leading network is now showcasing one conceptualised around superfoods. Interestingly, the host for this one is our very own chef Rishim Sachdeva of Olive, Bandra. In the middle of navigating London's traffic, Sachdeva told this diarist over the phone, "On the first day in front of the camera, I was extremely nervous.

And while I grew up watching a lot of TV cooking shows, I never thought I'll do one myself. The only reason I agreed to it was because it aligned with my principles of eating healthy. I genuinely believe that food is about nutrition more than anything else." Speaking about how this series — which also has a neurologist on board who helped select the ingredients that each episode focuses on to talk about how they impact our brain — is a huge departure from the humdrum ones that focus primarily on ghar-ka-khaana type recipes, the chef concisely said, "About time, right?"

Just stick to cricket, Rahul

It seems that cricketer KL Rahul loves controversies. He was in a soup earlier after an infamous appearance on Karan Johar's chat show, where he didn't call out fellow cricketer Hardik Pandya who made misogynistic comments.

Now, Rahul has invited fresh criticism for taking part in an event organised by controversial spiritual figure, Sadhguru. The two were talking about the need to save the Cauvery river, but netizens felt that he should focus on his cricket instead of taking part in such events. Others felt that he was trying to peddle Hindutva to remain in the team. And one user wrote, "With this chat show with Sadhguru, Rahul has made us SADguru [sic]."

30 minutes to the moon

As all eyes were on the news with Chandrayaan's launch at Shriharikota in Andhra Pradesh yesterday, city-based artist Komal More who is the co-founder of the Instagram (IG) handle @tako_instaart that makes artwork using nothing but IG tools took to her phone to make a quick sketch with her fingers. She completed the image of the satellite rising on a funnel of fire in 30 minutes.

Sharing what prompted her sketch, she told this diarist, "In that very moment when I watched that rocket take off, I was awestruck. I want our Instagram page to use art document all the things that make us happy, inspire us, and leave us with a thought or a smile. That's why I painted Chandrayaan-2 – because it made me proud."

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