The city - sliced, diced and served with a dash of sauce.
Couple Goals
Young players catch a break after a game of football at Juhu beach.
Reel life by the Ganga
Children from a fishing community play in the river in Bengal. Pics courtesy/Siddharth Agarwal, Shridhar Sudhir
The river Ganga is synonymous with India's identity, flowing into a large part of the population's belief system, and raising generations and ecosystems along its nearly 3,000-km-long course. Siddharth Agarwal, founder of the Kolkata-based Veditum India Foundation, a research and media organisation, spent nearly a year walking along the river, from Ganga Sagar, West Bengal, to Gangotri, Uttarakhand, as part of Moving Upstream, a project to chart the course of rivers in India. The journey will now be released as a film, Moving Upstream: Ganga, he told this diarist. "The idea behind the project was to capture the river and the people thriving on its banks, beyond the popular notions of the Ganga. It highlights the voices that are generally not taken into account during policy-making decisions," he shared about the film, whose trailer releases this week. To take a peek into this journey, head to veditum.org.
Polo is back
Action unleashed at the green emerald of SoBo
Hooves that? Horses, of course. The Amateur Riders' Club (ARC), a civilian horse riding and equestrian centre at Mahalaxmi Race Course, hosted the first match marking the opening of the polo season a couple of days ago. Polo, like so much else, came to a screeching pandemic-induced halt in March last year. The polo season is usually held in March and April in the city, as the Mumbai racing season tapers off. The Mumbai racing season was called off in the city centre last year, and is being conducted at Pune instead. "We have revived polo though, and will be having tournaments through this month," ARC president Shyam Mehta confirmed with this diarist. As for safety and social distancing, you have eight players on nine acres, and that too, on horses. You cannot get more distanced than that.
Live by spices
When food chronicler and writer Rushina Munshaw-Ghildiyal shut her Mumbai studio in 2019, she had imagined 2020 to be a year of travelling. Of course, the pandemic derailed her plan. Considering masala dabbas were the centre of culinary activity during the lockdown, she decided to dive into this world with the Instagram Live series #SpiceChroniclesWithRMG. The series, where she delves into the usage and stories behind Indian spices, is clocking 100 episodes this week. Her virtual trail from Kashmir to Mangalore not only brought to light several lesser-known spices, but also created a community of foodies, often found exchanging notes in the comments. "Indian cuisine is so vast that I thought it was best to concentrate on one thing but be thorough. The live platform allowed me to travel to nearly 100 kitchens. We've always showcased our diversity, but I truly realised the influence of geography and communities on food," she said, adding she made friends out of followers who enriched her repertoire of knowledge. In the run-up to the 100th episode, she will discuss what defines cuisine, how flavour profiles of communities evolve and the way food affects identity with, Shylashri Shankar, Krish Ashok, Ragini Kashyap and Himanshi Munshaw Luhar. Tune in for some food for thought.
Making a noise
The lockdown brought forth a range of emotions in people considering how cut off we were. Social Desolation is a compilation of Indian independent songs that sought to capture that mood in a sonic form. The album has now been featured in British music magazine The Wire's top 10 albums of last year in the 'Noise, industrial and beyond' category of genres. Varun Desai, who curated the compilation, said, "We were looking to bring together a sound that the mainstream normally doesn't acknowledge as traditional electronic music, or even as music sometimes. But the sounds are not only relevant to what individuals go through emotionally, but also what we as a society are going through." Here's hoping that more people wake up to this music that exists in the margins.
Green dates
While we may be occupied with ushering in 2021 with pomp, it is also important and high time for us to take note of the environmental damage that increases with every passing year. To help acknowledge what is at stake and spread awareness about it, city-based non-profit iNaturewatch Foundation has released an eco-themed calendar to remember important dates such as Animal Welfare Fortnight and World Wetlands Day. "We are trying to highlight that there are dates as important as the festive ones which need to be recognised. At the same time, we needed to give people a ready reference," founder Dr V Shubhalaxmi shared about the online calendar.
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