This evening the Bombay Gymkhana will be a cricket lover's paradise when it will host the fourth Dilip Sardesai memorial lecture in memory of the celebrated late Test cricketer.
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>> This evening the Bombay Gymkhana will be a cricket lover’s paradise when it will host the fourth Dilip Sardesai memorial lecture in memory of the celebrated late Test cricketer.
No less than former Indian Captain Sourav Ganguly will deliver the keynote address and Harsha Bhogle will moderate the discussion to follow.
Sardesai’s equally illustrious son TV anchor Rajdeep who along with his mother Nandini have worked tirelessly to present this event says, “We started a memorial lecture in my dad’s name because he loved cricket as much as he loved life.
The memorial lecture is a chance to remember him, talk cricket and brings friends and cricket watchers together once a year. This is the fourth lecture and the aim each year is to have some of India’s cricket greats share their ideas on the game.” We like!
Diary of a football mum
>> There was a time in our lives when terms like last man and midfielder and centre-back were part of our vocabulary being as we were parent to an enthusiastic little boy in love with football. In those days, Anjali and Nirvan Shah were just starting out as Mumbai’s premier couple in the game’s evolution.
They have been running PIFA — the Premier India Football academy for 10 years now, organising camps abroad and now we are happy to learn that they have set up a full time academy in Mumbai managing centre’s, which train nearly 500 children. “Last year, we launched the JFL to accommodate newcomers into the tournaments. This year the venue is a brand new international standard Astro Turf pitch in Parel. The junior football league JFL is for children between 5 to 12 years and the Premier Football League is for 13 to 18 years. The league will be conducted on Saturday mornings from Nov 10 to Feb 16,” says Anjali adding, “As parents of a child who aspires to play for India some day, we initially started by taking children on camps abroad to expose children to coaching methods being used in the best football academies around the world.”
Geometry Rules
>> This lady has certainly been in the news and very active if the overheated grapevine is to be believed. Not only is her name being linked to an NRI businessman who divides his time between Europe and India, but now a third angle has been added to the arrangement (fourth if you count her hapless husband actually). This one happens to be that of a middle-aged very prominent industrialist — certainly an A-lister — and a bit of a social recluse who has become the latest scalp in her collection of moneybags. Our take on this whole messy business? The poor girl’s obviously fallen foul of some prominent city hostesses and is being made the scapegoat in much idle chatter!
The auteur and the DJ
>> He’s a trained Chartered Accountant, an acknowledged auteur, a Bollywood hit director, Deepak Chopra’s 4 am buddy when he wants to discuss life’s existential questions and of course, the thinking woman’s pin-up, but who would imagine that Shekhar Kapur would also be fan of that particular genre of house music known as the ‘French Touch’?
This new nugget of information was made public when Kapur who was attending one more international film festival as a panellist posted a picture of himself looking suitably groupie, like in the company of French record producer and House music artist DJ Sinclair (Love Generation and World, Hold On). “DJ Sinclair sending his love to India from Venice,” was the comment that accompanied the picture featuring Kapur with his idol. We like!
Hair today
>> On Wednesday, India’s most famous homeopath Dr Mukesh Batra hosted a dinner to celebrate his son Akshay’s ‘anointment ceremony as the first Indian President of the Trichological Society, London’. Though we thought only the extremely religious or regal got ‘anointed’ and perhaps Batra had meant ‘appointed’ (when we checked the dictionary it described anointed as consecrated blessed or ordained) we were still very happy for the Batra family.
After all, Mukesh’s dad had been doctor to our dad and the families have known each other for Yonkers. When we asked Batra about his son’s interest in Trichology, he said, “Indians are getting balder. Blame it on the changing lifestyles wherein we are faced with increasing stress levels and the diet that is rich in calories but poor in nutrients. But interventional procedures such as mesotherapy and hair transplantation are on the rise. Our aim in opening Dr Batras B-Perfect, a chain of day care aesthetic surgery centres, was to make hair transplant affordable and accessible to all. A lot of Indians are now getting hair transplants done to cover up their bald patches.”
Art Smart
>> And now as we go to press there’s an even funnier story that involves the NRI business man who the lady in question is being linked to: apparently, according to reliable sources, part of his modus operandi has been to ‘catch hold of an art dealer a few days before he throws a big party at home and say he’s interested in buying some serious works of masters like Raza, Hussain and Gaitonde.’
We were told, “Once the canvasses are delivered he mounts them on his walls, receives compliments from his impressed guests for his fabulous art collection-and then returns the paintings the next morning saying he’s not buying.” The chutzpah involved in this fraud scam takes our breath away. And art dealers who haven’t seen through this little scam, deserve to be conned! u00a0