Meet thy neighbour
Aside from her continuing spat with Hrithik Roshan, the news about Kangana Ranaut is that she has bought herself a bungalow in the Pali Hill area of Bandra. Now there’s a metaphor for you. Bollywood is an incestuous world, where stars are begat by stars. She’s the self-willed, self-made outsider from Shimla. And she’s now made it to the neighbourhood of the Who’s Who.
That’s quite a passage, quite a story of handicaps overcome – she did not speak the English! -- and formidable self-taught skills. Now amidst B-town efforts to carve her into the Parveen Babi stereotype, she’s announced her own production company. It’s the Bombay story then. If you have the grit, the city finally does yield that space for you on the park bench.
New kid on the block
But Narayan Rane’s is the other Mumbai story. He too lives in Bandra now but he started out from Chembur where as a teenager in the sixties he was a member of what used to be called the Harya-Narya gang that ruled the streets of the eastern suburb. After the Shiv Sena came into being in 1966, he rose up the ranks: shakha pramukh, BMC corporator, chairman of the BEST committee, MLA, minister and chief minister.
After a 15-year hiatus in the Congress, he is offering himself as the makeweight in the BJP-Sena equation. However, despite his boast that he would bring a boat load of Congressmen with him, hardly anyone, including his MLA son Nitesh, were with him when he announced his new party, the Maharashtra Swabhiman Paksha. When Nitesh Rane was asked about the lack of quorum, he pointed to his two-year-old son: “My son has joined his grandfather’s party.”
The neighbours brought you summons
Just as it matters to film stars who the neighbours are, so it does to political parties. They’ve all had to shift their offices from the comfy locale of Nariman Point, very close to Mantralaya, to make way for the Vidhan Sabha Metro Rail station. They didn’t like what they were given as an alternative, an empty Port Trust building at Ballard Estate. The building is just one lane away from the Enforcement Directorate’s Mumbai headquarters.
The NCP grudgingly accepted the place but the Congress rejected it place outright. Who wants the ED wallahs as neighbours, really? So the GOP was given space at Tanna House in Colaba. But hardly anyone in the party is willing to shift to that building because it houses the CBI state headquarters.
Green goes here
As of Gandhi Jayanti, urban Maharashtra is ODF. Now before you send us pictures from the beaches of Versova, please be advised that it’s a bit notional. It only means that the latrines are there if you care to go. While the Fadnavis admin is inviting people to the ISLs, the BMC took pains to get Mumbaikars to rid the streets of garbage. The idea is to make bulk producers of garbage – housing societies, namely – to segregate rubbish at source and process the biodegradable stuff on the premises itself. Entreating notices were sent to nearly 5000 societies, but only 7 per cent started working on the plan ahead by Swachch Bharat Divas.
London’s Dabbawala restaurant
Six Sigma and Prince Charles is old hat, Mumbai’s incredible tiffin carriers have another laurel in their topis. The Leela group’s new Indian restaurant in London, scheduled to open next month, will have its interiors themed on the Dabbawalas and the Mumbai local trains.
While one section of the restaurant will have the look and feel of the 9.36 am Borivali Slow – First Class, please – another will resemble the retiring rooms of the Indian Railways. The tables will bear the iconic Dabbawala alpha-numeric markings and the food will be served by liveried Dabbawalas.