Mumbai Diary: Monday Dossier

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

Upside down

A youngster does a black flip to join his friends at Gaondevi Kamal Talav in Malad West. Pic/Satej Shinde

A lit valley

Valley of Words is an annual literary festival that takes place in Dehradun. It also involves an eponymous book awards event, the shortlist for which has just been announced for this year.

The different categories include English writing for young adults, fiction and translations, and some of the nominees for the upcoming edition include Bijal Vachharajani for A Cloud called Bhura: Climate Champions to the Rescue, and Supriya Sehgal (inset) for A Tigress Called Machhli and Other True Animal Stories from India. Best of luck to all the nominees.

Don't cop out of lending a hand

In a bid to protect Mumbai's frontline warriors in the pandemic, comedian Kunal Kamra has teamed up with a lifestyle brand for a campaign to equip the Mumbai Police with reusable and washable masks. These masks also come with a respiratory valve to ensure maximum breathability, have adjustive straps and ensure easy facial mobility.

"Our officers are working 24x7 to protect us. The masks come at a minimal cost of '300 for a pack of three. We are asking for a donation that will amount to merely '3.33 a day per person to ensure the safety of our officers for the next 90 days," Kamra told this diarist. Log on to maskformumbaipolice.in to make donations.

Good old magazine

The lockdown has been especially hard on senior citizens trapped between four walls, who have been robbed of the sense of community they had earlier. Rural Andhra Pradesh-based social worker Paroma S realised while talking to her mother in Kolkata, that her contact with the outside world was restricted to a gulmohar tree she could view from her window. Paroma told this diarist, "Ma would tell me, 'I can't see any people on the streets. What's going on?' The lockdown was an unknown thing for everyone at the beginning."

Paroma thus started planning a web magazine called Janala (meaning 'window' in Bengali) to alleviate some of the loneliness that had crept into the lives of the elderly. It's a publication for senior citizens, by senior citizens. The founder is inviting interested people to send in stories, recipes, photos and essays (send your applicatios to paroma.sengupta@gmail.com). The first edition is due later this month, and she plans to turn it into a print copy in due course.

Art into the future

Pick up your paint brush for a competition called From the Window that The People Place Project, a Mumbai-based research organisation that focuses on reimagining cities and communities, is hosting. The idea, founder Nisha Nair Gupta told this diarist, is to envision the kind of public places that people would like to see after the pandemic is over.

Applicants can also stick to the theme and create art based on the world we can view from our windows, which, Gupta said, leads to introspection. There are three categories for children under 12, those between 12 and 25 years old, and those above 25. "Choose any medium. It can be painting, illustration, collage or even photography," Gupta said, adding that depending on the quality of the submissions, she is also contemplating putting a publication together that merges art and poetry.

This scribe has a veggie good idea

The lockdown has given people the time to pick up new hobbies, even some offbeat ones like what Mumbai-based senior sports journalist Nandakumar Marar has taken up. He has utilised this period to start a project where he makes art out of vegetables that you commonly find in the market.

Spring onions and lady fingers were used for a piece titled Birds on the Trot, for instance, while he used a pumpkin and pointed gourds for another design. None of it is wasted, though. "The vegetables are rinsed in tap water for use afterwards," he told this diarist, adding that he plans to donate the images to an NGO called Indian Development Foundation so that they can raise funds to help people in this difficult time.

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