Mumbai Diary: Tuesday Dossier

Message in the bottlesKids reuse plastic bottles as planters to decorate a mural at MatungaA chapter for the coastYou can always expect citybased author Katie Bagli to draw inspiration from nature in her works Only last December she released a book to unpack food for kids Now Bagli is working on another title to be published by the Mangrove Foundation Itrsquos called Ishaanrsquos Treasures and has been illustrated by Chetan Sharma The author told this diarist that the title is all about the rich flora and fauna on Mumbairsquos seashore ldquoI went on a marine walk at Haji Ali two years ago and was awestruck by how much life I saw among the bouldersrdquo she said More importantly it will be released as an ebook in the hope to be a free resource for school kidsDancing her way to the topFrom narrowly escaping death when she was buried alive as a girl child to being the first woman dancer from the nomadic Kalbeliya community of Rajasthan folk artist Gulabo Saperarsquos life has been about living life on her own terms In these gloomy times the Padma Shri awardeersquos chat at the 2021 edition of Jaipur Literature Festival with mentor Tripti Pandey yesterday offered a ray of hope and motivation Ahead of her talk the performer who conceptualised the Kalbeliya dance form shared with this diarist how she grew up with snakes ldquoSince childhood Irsquod shadow my father a sapera snake charmer and drink the same milk as them In a way I found inspiration in snakesrdquo The dancer revealed that her first break was at a mela near Pushkar where she sneaked in with other women and started dancing ldquoThatrsquos where Pandey ji spotted me and offered me a girl of five or six a stagerdquo Since then the performer has braved the barbs of patriarchal norms in her community that would kill women at birth and eventually travelled to Jaipur Delhi and then the world Sapera who is now a visiting faculty at international dance institutions and is building her own school for girls asserted that it feels good to see her community walk on the path of progress now Her mantra for all girls Make your own rules and chase your dreams We agreeMood of the timesOne of the upsides if one could call it that of lockdown or Work From Home mode is the temporary drop in pace of life for some Which gives Mumbaikars on the WhatsApp whirl plenty of time to post messages observations and lifersquos philosophies For instance one that is going around is lsquoThe Monk who sold his Ferrari knew about the petrol price hikersquo While that quip is apt for our times we also have a slice of the past An archival photograph of the Gateway of India from the 1920s or 30s it states While we are not sure of the exact date itrsquos a frame that beautifully encapsulates the prevalent public transport of the time There is a line that reveals that these are taxis meant to pick up passengers from the Taj Mahal Hotel With a cow spotted on the lawn this seems to be a walk down moomemory laneThe encore by ValliWersquore happy to hear that celebrated Bharatanatyam exponent Alarmeacutel Valli has received the prestigious Balasaraswathi Award Dance for 2019 The Chennaibased dancer told this diarist that the award is especially significant as it comes at a time when due to health and economic concerns the arts are often marginalised ldquoIt was abolt from the blue and I got to know only a couple of days ago about the award The first thing that struck me like a ray of light was the fact that it was in Balamarsquos name the danseuse mdash for me she represents the highest ideals in dance poetry and musicality which have been key to my understanding and interpretation of dance Itrsquos an honourrdquo she shared adding that attending the function was like ldquocoming alive again after being in kind of a limbordquo and that it was reassuring to see many folk and rural artistes get their due at a time when the arts need backingLadies get ready to take over artAfter being postponed indefinitely last year due to the pandemicinduced lockdown the Ladies First Street Art Festival an allwomen affair is set to come back on March 7 and 8 making a noise in not just Mumbai but Dehradun and Gurugram too Omkar Dhareshwar cofounder of Wicked Broz that organises the festival shared that although the festival is travelling to two other cities the total scale will be smaller due to COVID19 restrictions ldquoIn terms of square foot area itrsquos a smaller affair Last time we had done seven to eight walls in Marol but this time wersquoll go with three to four walls in each city Registrations are open Wersquore looking forward to itrdquo he added