The city - sliced, diced and served with a dash of sauce
Healing spiritual-lee
Australian cricketer Brett Lee seems to be saying a little prayer at a dental care centre in Bandra. Pic/Bipin Kokate
Designs on a mall
The malls in the city house different art forms that change with every season and festival. And in a city that's home to Bollywood, whose members are foraying into interior design, it doesn't come as a total surprise that one such non-actor from the film fraternity, Sussanne Khan, has decided to lend her artistic skills to make a Kurla mall look vibrant via her tribute to the Mumbai rains.
Khan has designed a dragonfly, lotus and mandala installation that is a reflection of the rain, which signifies renewal and rebirth. "This installation embodies growth, change, dreams, adaptability, strength and rebirth.
The dragonfly is a dream-like creature that signifies transformation and the positivity that comes post dark times, where it waits for ages to transcend into this magnificent being. The lotus is the embodiment of perfection, which also symbolises being raised from the darkness of the earth with a new thinking and a way forward.
The mandala is a spiritual and geometric symbol that represents the universe, while the ripples personify your actions — and that even the smallest act of care can affect many people," Khan told this diarist. That's quite a mouthful, and hardly an interpretation for the mall rat who is all but looking for a pretty selfie with the dragonfly.
Is this a cop out?
Actor Payal Rohatgi has landed herself in yet another controversy. Or something of that sort. For, the actor and the Mumbai Police, known for their social media-savvy approach, are in something that can only be described as a squabble between someone and their ex.
The actor had raised quite the ruckus when she lashed out at the Mumbai Police for blocking her on Twitter. However, the cops responded soon enough, stating that no account is ever blocked by Mumbai Police, by policy and principle. "Every Mumbaikar's safety is our responsibility. We request users to not misuse an earlier screenshot, which was duly addressed," they wrote, after which they faced more flak from Twitterati, with some even demanding they apologise to the actor. Either way, we hope the two parties figure things out soon.
Money well spent
Mumbai-based author Kiran Manral posted quite a nostalgic question for Twitterati yesterday, when she asked them what the first thing they bought for themselves with money they had earned was.
She confessed that her first big indulgence using her own salary was to buy a leather bag from Dharavi when she began working at 19, and followers responded in large numbers with common answers like mithai, a phone or a saree for their mother and grandmother, with the Shiv Sena's Priyanka Chaturvedi, saying that she bought one for her grandmother because she was the only one who stood by Chaturvedi when she expressed her desire to work part-time while in college. When one bookworm confessed to splurging on the Harry Potter series, a grateful user also said that she actually invested her money, aided by her mother.
And on a lighter note, one person said that he bought a whole tandoori chicken and ate it by himself on the banks of a lake, while another said that he only started dating when he was earning.
Jab Ali met Nathalie
Can you imagine the hot-headed Guddu Pandit (from the web series Mirzapur) and cool and calm Missandei (from Game of Thrones) beings friends?
Well, actor Ali Fazal posted a picture with his Fast and Furious 7 co-star Nathalie Joanne Emmanuel recently, and called it a reunion, which made many users stop scrolling and reflect. For, both actors shot to fame after appearing in their respective series, and not many would have registered them back in 2015, when their movie released.
Stray blessings
There's influencer Rytasha Rathode who ticked off almost all her followers when she boasted about how she had upgraded a stray dog's residential area when she displaced him from Andheri to Khar before abandoning him, and then there are those like Deepa Talib, who heads The Anubis-Tiger Foundation, a new NGO that works to rescue and rehabilitate abandoned dogs.
The self-funded venture, which has given over 165 dogs new homes, is now sending a one-year-old paraplegic Indian dog, Oskar, who lost his hind legs as a puppy, to the US to his forever home on July 24. "We try and rescue these dogs, and place them in foster care where they receive basic medical aid, vaccinations and meals. We work on their mental and emotional state," Talib told this diarist.
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