Every time there's a crisis in the country or in the world, it is bound to attract mixed responses and debatable opinions on social media. The Coronavirus pandemic or pandemonium, if we say so, is nothing different. The world began to get plagued to an extent that a worldwide lockdown had to be declared that's now likely to continue longer.

And during this lockdown, a majority of the Bollywood and Hollywood celebrities began sharing their videos and pictures on Instagram. Some shared their workout videos, some shared their new haircuts, and many of them showed us their culinary skills and candid shots of their gorgeousness. This was bound to be met with scathing criticism and subtle and sly digs. And now, a video has surfaced on social media where some people are taking that very dig on these influential people's privileges.

Seeing this video, filmmaker Karan Johar has realised how insensitive his videos may have been and how he feels the need to apologise profusely. Taking to his Twitter account, he wrote- "This hit me hard and I have realised many of my posts may have been insensitive to many...I apologise profusely and wish to add none of it was intentional and came from a place of sharing but clearly may have lacked emotional foresight ....am sorry!" (sic)

Have a look right here:

This hit me hard and I have realised many of my posts may have been insensitive to many...I apologise profusely and wish to add none of it was intentional and came from a place of sharing but clearly may have lacked emotional foresight ....am sorry!🙏❤ï¸Â https://t.co/MO3kHkDQdo

— Karan Johar (@karanjohar) April 25, 2020

Johar, for the last few weeks, has been sharing some funny videos of his children, Roohi and Yash, and their shenanigans. It seems he has sensed the fact that sharing these videos amid this crisis may not be the right thing right now since a lot of other people, the underprivileged, continue to suffer for livelihood amid this catastrophic crisis. Can we expect someone else to come forward and say sorry? Let's see!

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Representational picture

Washington D.C.: While it is no secret that there are good calories as well as bad calories, turns out, in the bad category, there are variations too. According to the University of California, Davis, sugar-sweetened beverages play a unique role in chronic health problems. Calories from any food have the potential to increase the risk of obesity and other cardiometabolic diseases. The disease risk increases even when the beverages are consumed within diets that do not result in weight gain.

Twenty-two researchers explored whether all calories are equal with regards to effects on cardiometabolic disease and obesity. The study provided an extensive review of the current science on diets that can lead to obesity, cardiovascular disease, and Type II diabetes.

"What's new is that this is an impressive group of scientists with vast experience in nutrition and metabolism agreeing with the conclusion that sugar-sweetened beverages increase cardiometabolic risk factors compared to equal amounts of starch," said lead author Kimber Stanhope.

Another interesting point of consensus among researchers was the role of the sugar substitute aspartame.

The authors agreed that aspartame does not promote weight gain in adults. Stanhope said this might come as a surprise to most people.

"If you go on the internet and look up aspartame, the layperson would be convinced that aspartame is going to make them fat, but it's not," said Stanhope. "The long and short of it is that no human studies on noncaloric sweeteners show weight gain."

The authors also agreed that consumption of polyunsaturated (n-6) fats, such as those found in some vegetable oils, seeds and nuts, lowers disease risk when compared with equal amounts of saturated fats.

However, that conclusion comes with a caveat. Dairy foods such as cheese and yogurts, which can be high in saturated fats, have been associated with reduced cardiometabolic risk.

The paper reviewed the significant challenges involved in conducting and interpreting nutrition research.

"We have a long way to go to get precise answers on a lot of different nutrition issues," said Stanhope. "Nevertheless, we all agree that a healthy diet pattern consisting of minimally processed whole grains, fruit, vegetables, and healthy fats promotes health compared with the refined and palatable typical Western diet pattern."

The study appears in the journal Obesity Reviews.

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Representational Image

A 28-year-old labourer died after he fell off the 20th floor of an under-construction building in suburban Malad, police said on Tuesday. The incident occurred when Abu Tahir was doing a plastering work on the 20th floor of the high-rise in a Malwani area, said a police official.

Tahir was rushed to a hospital by locals where doctors declared him brought dead. A case was registered under section 304 (A) (causing death due to negligence) against two persons for not ensuring the safety of the labourer, he said, adding that further investigation is on.

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The bus met with an accident soon after the accused drove it out from the depot

Unable to get a rail ticket for his native place Uttar Pradesh, a mentally unstable man decided to drive a state transport (ST) bus to his destination on Tuesday morning. However, his attempt failed when he banged into a roadside tree, soon after driving the vehicle out of the depot in Palghar.

According to the Boisar police, accused Sabir Ali Mansori, who is a Palghar resident, works as a scrap dealer. Around 10 am on Tuesday, he went to the ST bus depot and found a Boisar-Palghar bus parked in one of the slots. He immediately got into it and started the vehicle. The moment he left the depot, the bus collided head on with a roadside tree.

Accused Sabir Ali Mansori. Pics/Hanif Patel

The bus driver Amolsingh Rajput mentioned in his complaint that after parking the bus, he had gone to the control room to inform the officials that he would take the vehicle out on its route. On hearing a lot of commotion outside, he rushed back to see that the bus had met with an accident.

Police sources said that soon after the incident, the people who had gathered at the spot, beat up Mansori and handed him over to the police. The Boisar cops have booked him under sections 379 and 511 of IPC. Speaking to mid-day, Prakash Birajdar, senior inspector, said, "Following his arrest, the accused was produced in court and later sent to police custody. Even he was in a state of shock after the incident. We have received his medical reports, which will be verified before the next course of action."

Also Read: Aadhaar Scheme Helps 31-Year-Old Mentally Ill Woman Reunite With Family

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After months of stiff resistance to the high-speed train, villagers in Palghar finally took the bullet for their community. In return for their land, the bullet train authorities have not only promised the residents of 73 hamlets handsome compensation, but will also give them long-pending basic facilities, such as hospitals, schools and water supply.

This is the first time the authorities are using such a tactic to acquire land for government projects. Since June, the villagers have rebuffed all attempts to persuade them to get on board with the project, despite promises of hefty compensation. But when the authorities decided to ask individual land owners what they wanted, most of them demanded basic facilities that would benefit the entire community, which they had long been deprived of.

Authorities built a medical centre and school in pre-fabricated pods

Basic needs met
The locals' needs were simple enough - hospitals, schools, water - and easy to address. The National High Speed Railway Corporation Limited (NHSRCL) used shipping containers and train coaches set up the first two requirements at a cost of just R5 lakh per container, and around R4 lakh per year for salaries. The team is also looking at providing schools. The existing school at Dahanu is being upgraded, and the NHSRCL will ensure that it is staffed.

At Virathan Khurd, a medical facility was built in one of these pre-fabricated pods. At Silte village, the dilapidated health centre is being upgraded and converted into a permanent hospital. Dahanu's civic body will supply doctors and nurses who will visit the villages twice a week.

"Another health centre will be set up in a container at Silte. We are also planning to deploy a mobile health unit once a week in every village with the help of the local  civic body," said Dhananjay Kumar, NHSRCL spokesperson.

On Saturday, Railway Board chairman Ashwani Lohani will visit the villages to inaugurate the facilities. As for the water supply, the authorities will explore the possibility of tapping groundwater. If it is not feasible, then alternative arrangements will be made, said sources.

Everyone wins
This novel approach to appeasing project-affected people (PAPs) was born out of equal parts necessity and empathy. The Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train project requires a total of 350 hectares of land in Maharashtra alone, and the lion's share of this land is in Palghar (221 ha). Of the 104 affected villages in the state, 73 are in Palghar tehsil. The resistance from these villagers threatened to derail the project from its 2022 deadline.

"The village sarpanchs have now authorised only a select set of people whose land is actually affected, and only they and the representatives of the sarpanch's office can deal with the land issues. No outsiders are allowed to deal with the NHSRCL teams," said Kumar.

"During conversations with the villagers and the sarpanch, they showed us a new road and other developmental projects for which the authorities had taken land from them. They said that despite these new projects, their village's condition had not improved. They lamented that they did not even have a hospital, and they had to travel far for medical attention," said the official.

"Our teams held extended discussions with the locals and made a list of all their requirements. We prioritised their needs and fixed them one by one, after which the villagers realised that we were serious about their welfare," he added.

All this is in addition to the compensation to be given to the land owners. "We are giving compensation at five times the value of the land, and an additional 25 per cent of the value to those who have willingly consented to the land acquisition in Maharashtra and Gujarat," said Kumar.

Sarpanchspeak
Speaking to mid-day, Dilip Bhoir, sarpanch of Silte village, confirmed: "The bullet train officials have indeed been working for our welfare. We gave them a list of our needs, and accordingly, they are upgrading the medical units. We have strictly told them not to get in touch with anybody except the affected land owners. This way, there will be no political interference or unnecessary activism."

Also Read: NHRCL: Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train fares likely between Rs 250 and Rs 3000

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In a positive step towards the conservation of wildlife, 295 Indian star tortoise seized from Vasai by Maharashtra Forest Department along with NGO PAWS-Mumbai were successfully released at Banarghatta National Park in Karnataka.

Speaking to mid-day Sunish Subramanian Kunju from NGO PAWS-Mumbai said, "Plant & Animals Welfare Society(PAWS-Mumbai) along with the Range Forest Officer(RFO) Yuvraj Gite and team successfully released 295 Indian Star Tortoise at Banarghatta National Park, Bangalore. Of the 295 tortoises, 293 Star Tortoise were seized from Vasai and two-star tortoise were saved by Amma Care Foundation."

Indian star tortoise is a threatened species and protected under schedule 4 of the Wildlife Protection Act, 197. It is thus illegal to keep them as pets.

This is not the first instance where Indian star tortoises have been released at Banarghatta National Park. In September 2017, mid-day did a story (Rescued Star Tortoises To Fly Back To Karnataka Today) in which it was 285 star tortoises rescued over the past year by various NGOs and government bodies from Mumbai were released in their natural habitat.

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Head to the ninth edition of NCPA Sama'a: The Mystic Ecstasy which is back this weekend and will acquaint attendees with Sufi ideology through music and dance performances by Indian and international artists.

The three-day festival will feature four events. On the first day, for which the theme is, One truth, many paths, musician duo Sourendro and Soumyojit and Saleem Hasan Chishti and Group will perform. On day two, enjoy musical and dance acts by Sanjukta Wagh, Radhika Sood Nayak, Hitesh Dhutia and Vinayak Netke as well as a performance by the Egyptian mawlawiyah group.

End the extravaganza on a happy note with Sufiana songs and in the company of artistes Salim and Sulaiman, as well as Rajasthani folk singers.

ON February 22 to 24, 6.30 pm
AT NCPA, Sir Dorabji Tata Road, Nariman Point
CALL 66223754
COST Rs 250 to 3,000

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Rajendra Jadhav, a traffic constable who remained in a comatose state for the last eleven months died on Sunday night at his residence in Worli. Jadhav, who was posted at Tardeo Traffic Division, had collapsed while on duty in April 2018 after suffering a stroke.

After treatment in Bhatia Hospital, he was shifted back to his home as per doctor's instructions as there was no improvement in his health. He passed away in his residence, his last rites were performed at the Worli Crematorium on Monday afternoon.

A batchmate on condition of anonymity said, "Jadhav's family was receiving his salary up until now. But the worry is what happens to his 7-year-old son, who suffers from rare congenital heart disease and needs an injection every alternate day for the same? We are currently trying to collect funds in order to aid his family," he added.

The fateful day
On 2nd April 2018, Rajendra Jadhav was walking towards a traffic chowky at Nana Chowk, Tardeo, when he suffered a stroke and collapsed on the ground. He was rushed to Bhatia Hospital, where it was revealed that he suffered a cardiac arrest due to which his brain was deprived of oxygen supply. After a month’s treatment, he slipped into a coma.

After being treated at Bhatia Hospital, which is not on the panel of the Mumbai Police Health scheme, he was shifted to Bombay Hospital followed by JJ Hospital. "Due to cardiac arrest, Jadhav went into a vegetative state," informed a colleague of Jadhav on condition of anonymity.

Babasaheb Dhangar, the constable in-charge at Tardeo Traffic said, "I worked with Jadhav for almost 4 years. He was very loyal and always ready to lend a helping hand. From the day he fell ill, we tried our best to help him and his family. We collected around Rs 4 lakh through contribution and his batch mates, too, contributed as much as they could," he added.

After initial treatment at Bhatia Hospital, Jadhav was shifted to Bombay Hospital. After a brief stay for a month, Jadhav was taken home as per instructions by the doctors. Another surgery was performed on him at JJ Hospital but it was not successful. 

Also Read: Mumbai: 25-year-old constable risks life to save family from blaze in Girgaum

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Before there was any conflict between India and Pakistan, there was the Bhakti movement, and Sufism. And when Moinuddin Chisti first brought the latter philosophy to our shores in the 13th century, he came with an inclusive mindset that helped assimilate Sufism with the Hindu way of life. And that message of harmony is also the theme of a concert in the city this weekend.

The performance, called Sounds of the Sufis, will also entail the launch of an album, Ek Hi Rang. It's the brainchild of vocalist Anuraag Bhoundeyal, storyteller Priyanka Patel and percussionist Karan Chitra Deshmukh, who have been working on this debut effort for over a year. Bhoundeyal says, "On the face of it, we are tracing the journey of Sufism through the album. But what we are essentially saying is that instead of looking at the periphery, let's look at what lies at the core of Sufism — and that's love and oneness."

ON March 15, 6.30 pm
AT The Royal Opera House, Girgaum
LOG ON TO insider.in
ENTRY Rs 499 to Rs 1,200

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We're instantly intrigued by the images of coloured burgers topped with motifs from superhero fiction, posted by a new café in Kemps Corner whose opening we spotted while on an errand. We share the image with a friend, an avid comics fan, who aptly responds, "What the hell is that?" And that's the sort of bait it takes to convince someone from Central Mumbai to come to town.

The badges around the menu

We make a trip to the newly opened Pop Culture Cafe (PCC) on a Saturday afternoon. On entering the space we feel it is a true reflection of the city's real estate crunch. With keychains and baubles put up for sale, there are four high stools — good luck if you're vertically challenged like us — and a ledge that can accommodate about three people. If you plan on bringing a big group of friends and if you love them all, invite only one and let them breathe.

The menu includes pasta, pizza, burgers, shakes and waffles — all vegetarian and named after popular movies and TV shows.

Keychains available for sale

So, we pick the Hulk smaash pasta (Rs 250), the Hogwartz pizza (Rs 350), and a watermelon cooler (Rs 170). While we try to make conversation, the soundtrack of The Dark Knight by Hans Zimmer plays in the background. And even though we are fans, the vibe is a bit too weird. While we grumble about how there is no room for a quiet bite, let alone privacy, the food is literally handed over to us from the counter a few inches behind our backs.

Hulk smaash pasta

The cooler tastes more like a party punch with no trace of watermelon. One glance at the four-cheese pizza is enough to tell you it's unappetising; one bite, and you are convinced it is. You can only taste the mozarella and cheddar, and you'll be able to find a similar and tasteful variant at local food chains for a two-digit amount. Our last hope is the pasta. While we click a picture of the dish blended in pesto sauce with mozzarella sprinkles, the staff places a piggy bank shaped like the clenched fist of the Hulk next to it (resembling our fists at the moment). Our friend has the first go, and we nervously watch him drop his spoon in disappointment. It's bland, as is the presentation. He's kind to sum up the experience as average, but we sure as hell want our money back.

Watermelon cooler

Even though the place might appeal to the die-hard fan, it doesn't do justice to its price point. And it is also situated in a building that houses a popular coffee chain, a brewery and a Neapolitan restaurant. If you happen to get lost in the narrow alleyways in search of PCC and land up at any one of these, you can thank your stars.

Coloured burgers 

AT Pop Culture Cafe, Kwality House, Kemps Corner.
TIME 12 pm to 11 pm
CALL 8452928428

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Pop Culture Cafe didn't know we were there. The Guide reviews anonymously and pays for meals

A 64-year-old woman sustained serious injuries on Monday morning when a part of reinforced cement concrete (RCC) roof collapsed in BDD chawl number 18-A in Dadar's Naigaon area. The victim identified as Chanchala Londe and her family were asleep when a huge part of the roof fell on her at around 4.30 am in the night.

Pic courtesy/ Suraj Ojha

Londe's son Vijay Londe told mid-day," This is not the first incident when something collapsed from the building. Several incidents have occurred before in other buildings this, however, this has happened for the first time in our home. My son was in the same room and immediately alerted other family members residing in other flats. We then rushed my mother to KEM hospital."

When asked the victim about the incident, she stated that a huge block of cement fell on her head and she was shocked to hear the loud noise followed by blood trickling down from her scalp. The doctors from KEM suggested for an X-ray and after a few medical check-ups, Londe was allowed to go home with 12 stitches. After the incident, PWD sent a few men at around 9:30 am to repair the RCC roof.

"I do not know when the redevelopment will start. We did not oppose to government plans but we do have certain demands and expectations from the government. Since they have been ignoring these demands, our redevelopment has been delayed and this is how such incidents take place at BDD colonies," Londe added.

Also Read: CST foot overbridge collapse: Victims yet to receive any official letter of compensation

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Breakfast is the most important meal, which many of us tend to skip due to hectic schedules, leaving only Sundays to indulge in a lazy brekkie. Ours consists of pork sausages, creamy and cheesy scrambled eggs made in the sausage fat, and toast, with of course, coffee.

Chef Pablo Naranjo Agular of Le 15 Cafe, has fond memories of waffles in the shape of Mickey Mouse, with a pair of sunny side ups, drizzled with sriracha and sesame oil sauce. And so, for this edition of the eatery's monthly Table 13 evening on Wednesday, they are serving breakfast for dinner so you can eat at leisure.

Chef Pablo Naranjo Agular

"Making breakfast was a family activity and a beautiful memory. My parents loved cycling, so they would go off on Sunday mornings for three hours, which gave me enough time to cook something for them, with my little sister. I loved how happy they were when they came back and we sat down to eat. We would listen to old Colombian salsa that my father would put on," chef Agular shares.

Pablo's waffles 

While he is currently struggling to narrow down his list of 48 breakfast items, you can expect pancakes, waffles, bacon, and of course, eggs, along with some Indian options, all with a signature twist. "The menu will be inspired by what the French eat, which is on the sweeter side, as well as the not-so-sweet Colombian flavours," he says. And the idea too germinated when he was eating his favourite breakfast — waffles topped with egg and bacon — and owner Pooja Dhingra walked in and tried it. Book ahead because seats are limited.

Pooja Dhingra

ON March 27, 8 pm
AT Le 15 Cafe, shop number 18, Lansdowne House, MB Marg, Colaba
CALL 9769341994
LOG ON TO insider.in
COST Rs 2,800

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A man died after he fell into an uncovered drain near Kurla signal at Eastern Express Highway in Mumbai. The incident took place last night. The identity of the man is yet to be ascertained.

The locals in the area said that they had been facing problems because of the open drain since past few days.

One of the locals told ANI, "There are several uncovered manholes in the area. We had been complaining about this for a year."

The body has been shifted to the hospital for autopsy and probe has been initiated.

Maharashtra: Man died after falling in an uncovered manhole near Kurla signal at Eastern Express Highway last night. Identity of the man is yet to be ascertained. Locals say 'There are several uncovered manholes in the area. We had been complaining about this since a yr.' #Mumbai pic.twitter.com/Ak63VI2nNQ

— ANI (@ANI) June 23, 2018

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The Lodhs of Ghatkopar loathe Tata Power, because they received a Rs 27,000 power bill from the company in May. This was shocking for the family because the only people who reside in the 1BHK flat in Amrut Nagar are Kalidas Lodh, 76, and his wife Gopa, both of whom make use of only basic electrical appliances.

Kalidas, the owner of the flat, is a Navy veteran and has been following up the issue with the service provider since May with the help of his son Kaushik, who is visiting him from the USA. The family alleges their complaint of electricity theft has been ignored. They've switched to another service provider after the incident and were stunned to see their electricity bill for the month of June, which was only Rs 2,000.

Meter is fine
The Lodhs had been receiving odd electricity bills since June 2016. However, the May bill this year shocked the family, after which they finally complained to the service provider. "Their technical team visited our house to check the problem. But they kept saying that the meter is working fine and if there is any tampering done beyond the main meter, it is out of their control to check and verify it. They kept insisting that we should check it ourselves with help from another electrician.

Isn't it the responsibility of the electricity service providers to verify the theft?" asked Kaushik, who said their former electricity service provider completely shrugged off their responsibility.

Kaushik added, "In one of the visits, even their technician saw how the meter showed units being consumed even when the main electricity supply switch of the house was off. It only made our doubts of theft stronger. But shockingly, in their written report, there was no mention of this observation as they kept insisting the service provider has no control over tampering beyond the main supply point of the building." Kaushik also approached the police to complain about the theft, "But officers at the Parksite police station told me that the right platform for me to complain is the consumer forum and not the police." Vilas Jadhav, senior police inspector of Parksite police station remained unavailable for comment.

Tata Power says
Ranjit Ganguly, group head of customer relationship management, Tata Power said, "For the excess billing, we'd checked the functionality of the meter, which was intact. He'd installed a separate meter in his house; we checked that one as well and found it to be in sync with the main meter. The complainant suspected tampering through the wires going from the main meter to his house. Regulatory guidelines for service providers clearly state that any wiring beyond the point of supply, which is the main meter box, is in the purview of the consumer... So...Tata Power as a utility service provider is unable to help."

Also read: Mumbai: Inflated power bills continue to haunt 61-year-old widow

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It was the dead of night, but when Suraj Gavai, 28, heard his dog growling and whining outside the house, he couldn't resist checking on his pet. But when he opened the door, he found an entirely different animal staring at him — a leopard. The big cat sprang at Suraj and gouged his eye.

Suraj was rushed to hospital, where his condition is stable. Experts are calling the incident an 'accidental attack', as the leopard likely pounced out of fright. A camera trap was put up in the area and patrolling was boosted following the incident.

Suraj was found in a pool of blood by his mother, Baby. Pics/Datta Kumbhar

The incident took place at 2 am on Sunday, when the Gavai family was fast asleep in their room at Mulund's Rahul Nagar slum pocket. The area falls under the Tulsi Range of the Sanjay Gandhi National Park (SGNP), which is home to several leopards.

The spot outside the house where the dog was chained

Blood everywhere
Suraj woke up when he heard his Rottweiler yapping desperately outside the house, where it had been chained. Second after he opened the door to check on the dog, the leopard swiped at his face at him. His parents woke up to see him in pain and blood. They instantly raised the alarm and called Suraj's elder brother Jayesh, who lives nearby. "My wife and I quickly rushed there to see the doorsteps covered with blood. Suraj was in pain. We rushed him to the local hospital. While we are praying for his quick recovery, we are also frightened since the incident," said Jayesh.

Suraj was moved to KEM hospital due to the serious nature of his injuries. Having undergone a surgery on his right eye at the Parel hospital late on Sunday morning, he is currently under observation. The dog suffered a minor injury too, and was taken to a local vet hospital, where his condition is said to be stable.

Hospital report
"The patient was evaluated by ophthalmology, general surgery and plastic surgery departments. He has contused lacerated wounds (CLW) over the right lower eyelid and scalp. The plastic surgeon sutured the CLW in the plastic operation theatre; the wound was sutured too. In the wake of the patient feeling giddy after taking scalp sutures, we have admitted him. His condition is currently stable," said Dr Avinash Supe, dean, KEM hospital.

High leopard activity
Wildlife and human-leopard conflict experts told mid-day that a combination of factors contributed to Sunday's incident. Krishna Tiwari, founder of the Forest and Wildlife Conservation Society (FWCS), said that the area, with its proximity to SGNP, is prone to leopard activity.

"The area is often unkempt and leopards in search for food are frequent visitors. Upon hearing the dog bark, the man should not have opened the door to begin with," Tiwari added.

Nikit Surve, a leopard researcher from Mumbai said, "The leopard and the man caught each other by surprise. In distress and panic, the leopard attacked the man."

Pawan Sharma, honorary wildlife warden with the Forest Department, said, "Just last week, locals had reported a leopard sighting in the area. Citizens need to be vigilant and abide by the dos and don'ts listed by the authorities.

He added that following Sunday's incident, camera traps were installed in the area to track leopard movements. Patrolling is also going to be increased. Despite repeated attempts to contact Jitendra Ramgaonkar, deputy conservator of forest, he remained unavailable for comment.

Also Read: Mumbai: Forest department trains people from Thane society to deal with leopards

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A 54-year-old man on Monday attempted to commit suicide at Mumbai's Kurla railway station. The incident took place at around 1:30 pm when the man suddenly jumped off and lied on the railway track. 

The man was saved by Railway Protection Force (RPF) personnel and other co-passengers.

The man said that he was fed up with family issues and which is why he tried to commit suicide. Later on, the man was handed over to his family after police verification.

Watch Video here

#WATCH: A man was saved by Railway Protection Force (RPF) personnel & other passengers after he attempted to commit suicide at #Mumbai's Kurla railway station. (30.07.2018) (Source: CCTV) pic.twitter.com/6Yz5WB2Tsw

— ANI (@ANI) July 30, 2018

Edited by mid-day online desk with inputs from ANI

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By holding on to a tree branch, one-year-old Atharva Barkade survived what could have easily been a fatal fall. Atharva fell from the balcony of his fourth-floor home in Deonar on Thursday morning, after curiously crawling to the edge of it. Luckily, he escaped with a few bruises. Preliminary tests have not indicated any injuries, but he has been admitted in the ICU as a precautionary measure.

The Barkades reside on the fourth floor of Jay Gopi Krishna CHS at Deonar. Around 8:45 am on Thursday, Ajit, Atharva's father, was getting ready to go to work. At the other end of the house, Atharva's grandmother was going to the balcony attached to the living room to put out clothes to dry. Atharva crawled behind her and out of the balcony.

Crawling and falling
Just then, Ajit entered the living room and saw Atharva crawling out of the balcony and yelled when he saw his baby fall from it. "I was cooking when I heard Ajit shouting. All the family members rushed to the living room and he just kept pointing to the balcony," said Anjali, Atharva's aunt. "We all rushed to the ground floor and to our surprise, found Atharva crying and trying to stand up," added Anjali.

The fourth floor balcony from where Atharva fell. Pic/Rajesh Gupta

Ajit and Mangal, Atharva's parents, checked his body for injuries. They were able to only find bruises on his back. But they decided to go for a more professional assessment. "Without giving it a second thought, we rushed to the main road looking for an autorickshaw and took him to a private hospital in Chembur, where we were told that they don't have the facilities to admit a baby. Then, we took him to the Fortis Hospital in Mulund," said Mangal, Atharva's mother.

Admitted in ICU
Atharva has been admitted in the paediatric ICU and currently kept under observation for 48 hours. According to the family, the CT scan and other reports have not shown any internal bleeding. The Govandi Police have made an entry of the incident. They were alerted when Atharva was taken to the hospital. According to cops who examined the spot, "The baby must have fallen on a flexible tree branch and held it until he lost its grip and fell, which reduced his speed. Had he fallen directly on the ground, it could have been fatal." The cops suspect he gripped on the tree first as he was found holding a few leaves after he fell.

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In a tragic incident, a 14-year-old student from Navjivan school Nalasopara East allegedly died falling from water sliding ride tower in Suraj Water Park on Friday afternoon. According to the police of the deceased has been identified as Deepak Gupta, a resident was residing with his parents at Pragati Nagar area, Nalasopara East. He was studying in Class X at Navjivan school situated in Oswal Nagri area and had gone for schools picnic.

The incident happened when Gupta climbed on the water slide tower and suddenly fell down on the tower platform. He was unconscious. Gupta was taken to the hospital where the doctor declared him dead. No one from Suraj Water Park said anything but the incident was confirmed by night duty security guard who mid-day that the incident took place between 1 pm to 2 pm. He said that the boy used to suffer from epilepsy and he fainted while climbing on the sliding ride tower.

The boy's parents alleged that he did not want to go to the picnic but the school authority had made it mandatory for students to attend and also alleged that the school authorities had threatened to not issue examination hall tickets for students appearing for SSC students.

A social worker Prashant Bhosle says the school management is responsible for the death of the child. If the student did not want to go to the picnic, how could the school management force? The school authority is totally responsible for the death of Gupta and they should be punished.

Hundreds of peoples including the parents gathered outside the school but no official from the from came out. And accidental death case has been registered at Kasarvadavali police station and further investigation is on.

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A woman's spirit is one of ability, perseverance, and courage no matter the situation or circumstance. This women's Day Viviana Mall in association with Nina Foundation is celebrating these abilities and perseverance of differently-abled women. The abilities of Women on wheelchairs.

A stand - up comedy act, a wheelchair acrobatic performance and a fashion show all by women on wheelchairs to celebrate the many abilities these women have that makes them just like us. In addition, there will be a special talk by Virali Modi and Dr. Ketna Mehta on the special occasion of Women's Day.

The event will kickstart a campaign to provide job opportunities and the required skills training to equip them with opportunities for the future by inviting organisations and institutes to make provision for these women!

When: March 7, 2019 at 5.30 pm onwards

Where: Viviana Mall, Thane

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Enjoy a vegan gourmet experience this Wednesday where you can tuck into dishes like cauliflower pistachio quinoa with cauliflower cream and roasted garlic panisse; beetroot kibbeh with a beetroot walnut pomegranate cream and salted vegan feta; and cacao olive oil cake with cacao oil and lemon coconut ice cream.

The event is curated by chef Raveena Taurani, who says, "Normally, when we step into a restaurant, the main course always focuses on an animal protein or a carbohydrate-heavy dish, but I was keen to showcase the vegetable as a true hero and show people how even veggies can be wholesome and flavourful in a meal."

ON February 27, 8 pm to 10 pm
AT Yogisattva, Pinnacle House, 15th Road, PD Hinduja Junction, Khar West 
CALL 9867455009
LOG ON TO yogisattva.com
COST Rs 2,700

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In what can be termed as an important discovery from Mumbai, a new jumping spider species has been discovered from Aarey Milk Colony once again highlighting the fact that the area has a rich biodiversity and the need of the hour is to protect the forested patch in the area. The species has been named after Senior IFS officer Sunil Limaye the Additional Principal Chief Conservator of Forest APCCF; Wildlife who during his tenure as the Chief Conservator of Forest of SGNP had started the Mumbaikars for SGNP project.

Senior IFS Officer Sunil Limaye

The study was carried out by a team of arachnologists including Rajesh Sanap, Archaeologist Dr. John Caleb T.D and Biologist Anuradha Joagalekar. With the new discovery of jumping spider from Aarey, Wildlife Lovers and green activists have once again demanded that the Aarey Milk Colony forest needs to be protected from unplanned development and illegal encroachments that are eating into the green space of the one the most important green space of Mumbai.

According to Sanap who has discovered several species from Aarey, the jumping spider family (Salticidae) is the most diverse spider family, with their world fauna consisting of 6126 described species. These tiny creatures can be easily recognised by their lager anterior median eyes. They are diurnal hunters and possess brilliant vision and swift reflexes. In India, there are about 256 species of jumping spiders known till date. In fact, the total diversity of jumping spiders represented from India is greatly understated compared with that from other regions. For example, countries like Australia, Brazil, and China are represented by a diversity of more than 450 species each. There is, therefore, a great diversity in India still waiting to be uncovered, which needs to be discovered and conserved before it is lost forever.

Rajesh Sanap

"The new species belongs to the hisponine jumping spider genus Jerzego, which was established by Maddison in 2014. The genus currently comprises three described species in the world. Of these, only one species is known from the Indian subcontinent (India and Sri Lanka). Two other species are known from Southeast Asia from Sumatra and Borneo. All three species were described based either on immature females or both males and females, but no details of their natural history were reported. Jerzego sunillimaye is the first ever species of this genus whose taxonomic details, mating behavior and egg development have been documented. The observations are supported by excellent digital images of the spider in life," said Archaeologist Sanap.

Species: 'Jerzego sunillimaye'

The researcher, after carefully studying its feature form photographs and published papers and discussing with experts, arrived to a conclusion that this is the new species. :

"Initially, species identification was challenging since we had data on females only. So we planned another survey and found two males. After a comprehensive examination, we notice that the morphology of this species closely resembled that of a Southeast Asian species, J. corticicola, which was described from Borneo in 2014. Hence, we placed this species tentatively under the same genus. Jerzego sunillimaye can be easily distinguished from other known species by the larger body size (Females, 10.30 mm) and a different colour pattern on the abdomen. A transverse crescent-shaped golden–yellow stripe is present in the posterior half of the abdomen. The males (5.52 mm) can be readily distinguished by their unique genitalia (palps) with a flattened and twisted embolus. " added Sanap.

Archaeologist Dr. John Caleb T.D

"It should be noted that the new species Jerzego sunillimaye was found for the first time in 2016 during a survey in the unique, eco-sensitive, dry-deciduous habitat of Aarey Milk Colony in Mumbai. The research was carried out for almost 3 years to understand the natural history of this species. Within this period, we reported some interesting observations, which have never been documented before."

In this research, the researchers explored different habitats such as grasslands and rocky and forested patches to find out the habitat these tiny spiders preferred. These spiders were found in areas covered with a thick canopy, largely dominated by trees, such as Mangifera indica, Adenanthera sp., Acacia auriculiformis, and Anacardium occidentale. The forest floor was covered with dry leaf litter, and the habitat was shared by other jumping spiders such as Hasarius sp., Stenaelurillus sp., Langelurillus sp., and Langona sp. Several males and females of various life stages were observed throughout the years. Specifically, in monsoon, females were observed guarding their egg sacs, while males were observed wandering under the rocks. There were variations in vegetation cover in the landscape during summer and monsoon. In winter and summer, spiders were mostly found on the underside of rocks, in dry leaf litter, or sometimes under tree barks close to the ground; most sub-adults were ground dwelling. The sub-adults of the species appeared like ants. Interestingly, four to five sub-adults were observed in close proximity with small brown ants of the genus Crematogaster. Two to three adult females with egg sacs were observed under rock surfaces and were surrounded by small black ants of the genus Paratrechina. However, there is no evidence to suggest a mimetic relationship with these ants and further behavioral studies are warranted.

Anuradha Joglekar

Speaking to mid-day Biologist Anuradha Joglekar said, "Aarey Milk Colony has constantly been in the limelight for the discovery of several new species of spiders and scorpions. The vegetation structure is particularly undisturbed and is home to several interesting species. Aarey Milk Colony is also home to other enigmatic jumping spiders such as Langelurillus onyx and Langelurillus lacteus, both described in 2017. Piranthus decoruswas also recorded for the first time in 122 years from the same location. More studies pertaining to their complete biology, habits, and interactions with other species are yet to be carried out. Moreover, their conservation status has not been assessed yet because of lack of information on their population status, distribution, ecology, and biology."

Spiders are microhabitat specialists and are highly sensitive to minuscule changes in their immediate environment. Habitat loss due to anthropogenic activities (encroachment and degradation of forests) is the main concern. The recent discovery of several new species from this region adds to the pressing need for conservation of this particular region, which may harbor much more undiscovered life.

Jumping spider. Pic/Rajesh Sanap

About IFS Officer Sunil Limaye:

Senior IFS Officer Sunil Limaye was a former Director and Chief Conservator of Forest (CCF) of Sanjay Gandhi National Park(SGNP) and has been involved in the conservation of urban biodiversity in Mumbai and the neighboring areas. He is also the same officer who started the Mumbaikars for SGNP project in SGNP along with Biologist and Leopard Expert Dr. Vidya Athreya. The MfSGNP project which has seen involvement and participation of various stakeholders like people staying on the periphery of the park, BMC officers/Police officers /Schools has been a successful model which is being replicated in other states including Uttarakhand /UP too. As a part of the project, awareness sessions among various stakeholders related to Human-Leopard interactions are being done on the periphery of the park and people are being taught the measures that they should take to prevent man-animal conflicts.

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Chunky Panday held a house party at his Bandra residence, and it was attended by his close family and friends. But Malaika Arora-Arjun Kapoor walking in together has already taken the internet by storm. The duo was clicked entering the party in the same car, and they were seen shying away from the camera when clicked by the paparazzi. 

Arjun Kapoor and Malaika Arora/picture courtesy: Yogen Shah

Arjun and Malaika were spotted twinning, and the duo shared the same colour of love, blue. While Arjun Kapoor was seen wearing a blue t-shirt, paired with blue denim, Malaika too looked pretty in a blue outfit. 

Malaika Arora just came back from her beachy vacations, and it is said that the actress was celebrating her bachelorette with the girl gang. In fact, Arjun Kapoor also accompanied the lady love to the Maldives. 

Arjun Kapoor and Malaika Arora are said to tie the knot soon. Though the details are yet to be out, the couple is not going to exchange the vows on April 19. Malaika-Arjun-marriage has been the talk of the town ever since they were spotted walking hand-in-hand at the Milan airport, where they were out to celebrate Malaika's 45th birthday overseas. 

In a media interaction, Arjun Kapoor, neither confirming nor denying, said - "One can pick how much information to share in the public domain".

Arjun was quoted saying, "It's your choice how much you put out there or yourself and your availability. Today, you have a lot of control over how much you want people to know about your life. Speculation and gossip is a part of it. I am not the first actor or the last. Our entire tribe is immune to it... because it is the nature of the business."

Also Read: Malaika Arora shares her piece of mind on Instagram; see photo

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Aiming to disrupt India's mid-segment smartphone market, Samsung is set to launch four new smartphones -- two each in Galaxy "A" and Galaxy "J" series -- this month.

The upcoming Galaxy A6 and Galaxy A6+ smartphones could be priced between Rs 20,000 and Rs 25,000 while the devices in Galaxy "J" series could cost customers Rs 15,000 to Rs 20,000, industry sources told IANS on Friday.

Two of the four smartphones in the upcoming line-up would come with dual camera set-up, the sources added.

All of them will be made at the company's Noida facility. The smartphones will feature Samsung's super AMOLED "Infinity Display" -- bezel-less screen that creates an immersive viewing experience.

Notably, Samsung's flagship smartphones such as Galaxy Note 8 and Galaxy S9 series feature the "Infinity Display". Now, with the upcoming devices, the display feature would be introduced at lower price points in the Indian market.

The South Korean giant first introduced the "Infinity Display" in Galaxy S8 series in 2017.

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This story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed, agencies. Mid-day accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability, trustworthiness, reliability and data of the text. Mid-day management/mid-day.com reserves the sole right to alter, delete or remove (without notice) the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever

Facebook has rolled out new updates in its Stories feature that are available for the users in India first and will reach the global users later.

One such update is "Voice Posts" that will let users share their thoughts via audio to their friends and families.

"Voice posts lets you share in the moment without having to share a photo or video. This could also help people who can't necessarily write in the language they want to share in," Connor Hayes, Director of Product Management, Facebook Stories, wrote in a blog post on Wednesday.

People will now be able to save the photos and videos they capture through the Facebook camera, where only they can see them when they log into their Facebook account.

"This allows people to save the photos and videos they capture without taking up space on their phone," the post read.

It can also be used to save photos you might want to share later, so you don't have to edit or post them while you're out with your friends and instead enjoy the moment and share them later.

"In the coming weeks we're rolling out an archive for people to save the stories most important to them. After a photo disappears from your story, you can find it in your story archive - a place only you can see. You can always choose to not save them," said the post.

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This story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed, agencies. Mid-day accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability, trustworthiness, reliability and data of the text. Mid-day management/mid-day.com reserves the sole right to alter, delete or remove (without notice) the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever

Pics/Gautam Benegal

The setting of Gautam Benegal's A1 Chiken Sope cartoons is largely familiar to those who get their meat from the local market. The air is thick with down feathers, and dismembered bits of chicken scattered about, with butchers being none too fussy about our sensitive nerves. In Benegal's hands, however, this scene is turned into a humorous commentary of our contemporary socio-political scenario.

A1 Chiken Sope series, where we meet a butcher named Salim Bhai and his rather chatty coop of chicken, has been one of Benegal's longest series. The National Award-winning animation filmmaker and cartoon first invented A1 Chiken Sope in 2006 for the supplement of a newspaper, after a bird flu scare, when people had stopped consuming chicken. The poultry business was evidently suffering. A minister smuggled in a tandoori chicken leg into the Lok Sabha, and started eating it to prove that it was perfectly safe. "I drew a cartoon of a chicken shop where one bird boasts to another, showing the headlines, 'Hey guys check this out, my second cousin, twice removed, made it to the Lok Sabha'," says Benegal, 52. In 2009 A1 Chiken Sope found more takers, the year when Benegal joined Facebook.

Having made nearly a thousand cartoons in this series, he says, "On social media, you can post a rough sketch and it becomes a mass pool of conversation with several people contributing to it, which is not the case with mainstream media," he says. The chicken, or chiken as Salim Bhai's shop terms them, play the role of both the naive public and the court jester. In one cartoon, the chicken bid adieu to their former coop-mate, bundled in a black bag, as Salim Bhai hands it over to a customer. "There goes Sonu... recruited into the militia," says one hen. "The chicken's work is to get slaughtered. They are a captive population, but a large percentage is happy at being kept. There is a person who is their benefactor, and is selling them out. We are all chicken," he says, adding, "There is an existential angle to this. The only way to escape is to stop being chicken," he says.

About 35 of these cartoons will be shown at Chemould Prescott Road, Fort, starting May 25, for 10 days. You may want to pay close attention to Benegal's caricatures, where the strength of these cartoons lies. Rather than state the obvious visually, Benegal thrives on allusions and references. Everything is an open secret. "I draw a lot from the earlier part of the century, when cartoons were couched in symbolism and stylised references. The latter is true in my case — it's like guerrilla warfare. You won't be able to put your finger on it, but everybody knows and everybody smiles about what they are seeing," says the cartoonist, whose first brush with the art was as a 15-year-old with Satyajit Ray's children's magazine, Sandesh.

There is a certain rawness to them, with a lack of standardisation that we may see with daily cartoons in mainstream media. And Benegal is not interested in polishing them up either. His taste in cartoons, for that matter, is very James Thurber, the American cartoonist who was featured regularly in The New Yorker, and the late Abu Abraham, whose worked for several publications, including Punch and The Observer. "We are used to a very gentle form of cartooning in India, be it themes or visuals. I wanted A1 Chiken Sope to be very ad hoc, much like how politics in India is," he says.

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Photographer and graphic designer Anusha Yadav started the Indian Memory Project, an online, visual, narrative-based archive in 2010, to trace the history of the subcontinent via photographs and letters. Pic/Ashish Raje

EarLier this week, artist and oral historian Aanchal Malhotra, 28, travelled nearly 240 km to Chandigarh from Delhi, to meet a nonagenarian, who had lived through the Partition of 1947. As she speaks about it now, there's a lump in her throat. "I couldn't sleep that entire night," Malhotra confesses. "Even 70 years on, the woman is so afraid to talk about it. It had everything, from gun fire, to fleeing from her home in Pakistan, to her brother and mother being taken as prisoners, and to giving birth in a forest on her way to India. When she first delivered the baby, her immediate response was to throw it away. You can imagine what trauma she was experiencing." What surprised Malhotra most was when the 90-year-old asked her what she would do with her story. "I said that I wanted to publish it. The woman's immediate response was, 'who will read this?'. They really think that nobody cares. But, this is the story that has shaped the future of contemporary India."

The jewellery Aanchal Malhotra is wearing, was made in the North-West Frontier Province and was given to her great-grandmother, Lajvanti Gulyani, by her in-laws on her wedding to Hari Chand Gulyani in the year 1919. But it could have been in the Gulyani family before that as well. Since she became a widow quite young and was a single mother at the time of Partition, it was carried by her to India in 1947 because she thought she would be able to sell it and earn money to put her children through school. She then gave it to Malhotra’s grandmother, who has now given it to her. Pic/Nishad Alam

Malhotra is the author of Remnants of Separation (HarperCollins India), a book that revisited the Partition through objects carried across the border, and the co-founder — along with Navdha Malhotra — of The Museum of Material Memory, a digital repository of material culture of the Indian subcontinent, tracing family histories and ethnography through heirlooms and objects of antiquity. Since the launch of the archive last year, the founders have put together over 35 heartwarming object stories. Closer home, photographer and graphic designer Anusha Yadav's Indian Memory Project — an online, visual, narrative-based archive, founded in 2010, which traces the history of the subcontinent via photographs and letters — has helped us see history in another light. There is also Paris-based perfumer Jahnvi Lakhota Nandan, whose recently-published book, Pukka Indian: 100 objects that Define India (Roli Books), documents the most coveted symbols and designs representing our culture, by tracing its origin and significance in our lives. All three projects while different in essence and form, have one common intent — to record untold stories from our history and preserve them for posterity. But, as Malhotra's subject asked her, why should anyone be curious?

The chakla and belan originated in 7,500 – 6,000 BCE in Punjab. At the time, this region was cultivating wheat and barley extensively. Rather than using the flatness of the chakla and the pressure of the belan to what we might expect to be used around the country to make flatbread, whatever the ingredient might be, it is only in this region of north India that the chakla and belan were used simply because wheat and barley lend themselves to kneading. What must have been perceived as a high-technology kitchen tool then, the chakla and belan soon spread to other parts of the country. Text courtesy/Pukka India by Jahnvi Lakhota Nanda, Roli books; Pic/Shivani Gupta

Celebrating the mundane
Nandan, an alumnus of the School of Art and Design at Tsukuba University, Japan, admits that her project stemmed out of her curiosity to find out about the designs that define us an Indian. "Design is a mirror of our attitudes and habits. Through the course of writing this book on Indian design, I found that uniquely Indian gestures like churning, combing and calculating were reflected in it," she writes in the book. From the dabba, agarbatti, and kulhad, to Babuline gripe water, most of the objects Nandan chose for the book, have "either been made or originated in India, or have an element that is very Indian, or are being used in a very Indian context".

This picture is of Purvi Sanghvi’s grandfather Dwarkadas Jivanlal Sanghvi (extreme right in a black coat) and his brother Vallabhdas Jivanlal Sanghvi with their business partners at a Pen Exhibition in Bombay around 1951. The family ran Wilson Pens that quickly rose to huge fame and became a preferred choice of pens across the country. All government offices, law court, used the Wilson pens. The Wilson Pen Family made the orange, thick-nibbed pen that wrote the most fundamental document that defines the state of India: The Constitution of India written by Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar. Pic, Text Courtesy/Indian Memory Project/Contributed by Purvi Sanghvi, Mumbai

It's while working on the book that Nandan realised how "our own homes are a repository of history". Here, she relays an incident when Shivani Gupta, the photographer for Pukka Indian, had been anxious about finding a mandira — a butter churner — that Nandan had mentioned in the book. "She went home, and realised that she had five of them in her kitchen. She didn't even know she was sitting on so much wealth." Nandan adds, "We don't tend to celebrate the mundane. What we celebrate are things that have obvious value, like jewellery, the beautification of the body or the exotic."

Paris-based perfumer Jahnvi Lakhota Nandan's recent book, Pukka Indian, documents the most coveted symbols and designs representing Indian culture, by tracing its origin and significance in the lives of its users. Pic/Suresh Karkera

Object as a catalyst
Malhotra's interest in people's histories began while working on Remnants of Separation, which was an extension of her Master of Fine Arts thesis project for Concordia University, Canada. Malhotra's research began after she came across a gaz (a measuring device) and ghara (a pot), which belonged to her nana's family, and had crossed the border. "Sometimes the Partition is too traumatic to speak about. When I started my research, I didn't know where to begin or what I could ask, without sounding frivolous. The object became a catalyst to enter into that conversation. So, rather than me saying 'Oh! You lived through the Partition, that must be awful,' I was now asking relevant questions, like 'why did you choose to take this gold bangle with you?'. The object then, didn't become something that recessed into the background, but something around which the entire background was arranged."

That's when she and Navdha decided to start The Museum of Material Memory. The duo encourages everyone to contribute, provided the object is from or before the 1970s. The archive comprises everything from a 5-inch-long, mottled sewing needle to a chaddar with traditional baagh and phulkari embroidery and a former Class II Income-Tax officer's diary filled up with the repeated words 'Sri Rama Jayam', meaning Jai Sri Ram. Each post is accompanied with the story behind the object. "Material ethnography is so vastly explored in the West, especially when it comes to events of trauma and crisis. What we are recording here, will never be found in any textbook. We need active memoralisation, not just of traumatic events, but of our tradition and culture, which is primarily oral."

Not just for nostalgia's sake
The indianmemoryproject.com, says Yadav, started off as a book idea, where she wanted to collect old, wedding photographs. "I wanted to document the idea of weddings in different cultures, and explore the entire phenomena behind the crew that makes it possible," she says. "While the book didn't happen, the pictures stayed with me." That's how, her archive, a first-of-its-kind in India, took off. "If you are fascinated with history, you will know that India really is a melting pot. Every civilisation has passed through it. And so we have all kinds of DNA in us. And considering photography was discovered two centuries ago, we did have a lot of content to discuss," says Yadav.

She admits that it wasn't as easy to get people to share their photographs or talk about their stories. "But, there needs to be integrity, transparency and you need to earn the trust of your subject. When you have these value systems in place, people are more open. I always thought of the archive as an institution." Funding for the project has been tough, says the archivist. "When I began, I was very clear that I didn't want to become a trust. Unfortunately, that's the channel through which most of the money comes from. But, there's a server and maintenance cost and the site constantly needs to be upgraded. Now, I have started putting in requests for honorariums. The only way I will get money is through a private funder, who is fascinated with the idea, and wants to back it as well. Sometimes, when a good sum comes from my own work as a photographer, part of the profits go to it. At the end of the day, it is an unofficial record of history, and I'm doing my best to sustain it."

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Without access to modern technology like refrigeration, people in developing countries often have to throw away a significant proportion of the fish they catch. EU-funded researchers have delivered innovative, low-cost solutions to help such communities around the world make their fish stocks go further.

Accepting the futility of genres, of boxing songs into different compartments like stacked products in supermarket shelves, seems to be at the forefront of Rafiq Bhatia's musical endeavour. The 30-year-old American of Indian descent is the guitarist for a New York-based indie outfit called Son Lux. But it's his recent solo album, Breaking English, which makes the listener really question the need for musical boundaries, of sticking labels to a composition as if it's packaged meat.

The title track of the album, for instance, is not jazz, is not electronica, is not lounge, but all of these generic classifications rolled into one lush sound with a coherent narrative, where Bhatia's melancholic guitar plays the role of the protagonist. Each sonic detail in the track is well-defined, to the point where even though fellow Son Lux member Ian Chang's drum beats seem dissonant, they fit like a glove into the overall musical fabric. Bhatia describes this sensibility when he tells us over the phone from Berlin, where he's on tour, "Ryan (Lott, the vocalist for Son Lux) would say that instead of building a house, designing a room and then placing a chair in it, why don't we start with the chair first, and then design the room around it before building the house. There is a theory in poetry called organicism, where the poet lets each individual verse define the form that the poem will take. That is kind of similar to what I'm trying to do with my music."

He further explains his musical process when he narrates a story about one of his influences, Sam Rivers, the late American jazz great. "I've read that he would attend the concerts of all his peers, and purposely study their music to understand what they were trying to do. But this wasn't to replicate what they were playing. Instead, it was to consciously avoid it. Similarly, John Coltrane took the music of his predecessors and retooled the entire musical vocabulary keeping a similar underlying foundation, but with new pathways built on top of it," he says, giving us an indication of how he doesn't hesitate to flush rule books down the toilet.

Hybridity, in fact, lies at the core of Bhatia's creative evolution. The basis for this, he says, might well be his mixed identity. Born in North Carolina, he has never really fit in to any particular community. For, even though his parents are of Gujarati origin, they grew up in Tanzania, before moving to London and then finally to the US. So, while his brown skin stood out among the white kids in his school, he didn't feel completely at home among the Indian community either. "Everybody thinks that I am something else. So, my music is a result of a need to express my identity. It's a form of therapy at some level, because it's also a way of accepting who I am," he says.

He adds that this therapy started early. When he was about eight or nine, the older desi kids in Bhatia's neighbourhood would pick him up in a car and stop at a parking lot, listening to the hip-hop albums that became one of his earliest influences. Was he drawn to them because of the political overtones that such songs often embody? "Not really," he answers, adding, "I was only in the third grade at the time, and I couldn't even understand the words. So it was the musicality that I fell for. But the deeper question is, why were a bunch of brown kids sitting in a car in a parking lot and empathising with hip-hop music? What is it that was drawing them to the words? So you see, it's difficult to disentangle the politics from the music."

It follows thus that an intertwining of politics and music sometimes features in his own compositions. For example, Hoods Up, a complex instrumental piece, drew its inspiration from Trayvon Martin, a black teenager who was cruelly shot down because of a case of mistaken identity. The guitarist says, "I feel some amount of compulsion to express my [political] ideas. But sometimes, it's easy to get carried away with being overtly political because there is so much to be angry about, and often the responsibility falls on artistes to emphasise it. So I would say that politics is a general part of what inspires my music, because there are so many other facets of my personality that also make their way in."

Essentially, then, what Bhatia wants to keep doing is create genre-defying tracks where attention to detail is of paramount importance. "When you take the details and all the generalities of music for granted, that's when your songs start sounding more like other people's music. That doesn't mean you can't make great tracks. It's just that the less you consider those things, the less is the chance that you will make music that departs from convention. The flip side is that when you think actively about each decision, and each one comes from a place of individuality, it becomes hard to find a coherent logic that ties all those things together. And that ends up being the riddle that I am constantly trying to solve with my music."

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Representational picture

London: While scientists agree that the Sun will die in approximately 10 billion years, they were not sure what would happen next, until now. A new study now says that it will turn into a massive ring of bright, interstellar gas and dust, known as a planetary nebula.

"This is a nice result... We even have found out what the Sun will do when it dies!" said one of the researchers Albert Zijlstra, Professor at the University of Manchester in Britain.

A planetary nebula marks the end of 90 per cent of all stars active lives and traces the star's transition from a red giant to a degenerate white dwarf.

But, for years, scientists were not sure if the Sun in our galaxy would follow the same fate as it was thought to have too low a mass to create a visible planetary nebula.

To find out, the team developed a new stellar, data-model that predicts the lifecycle of stars.

The model, detailed in the journal Nature Astronomy, was used to predict the brightness (or luminosity) of the ejected envelope, for stars of different masses and ages.

"When a star dies it ejects a mass of gas and dust - known as its envelope - into space. The envelope can be as much as half the star's mass. This reveals the star's core, which by this point in the star's life is running out of fuel, eventually turning off before finally dying," Zijslra explained.

The new models show that after the ejection of the envelope, the stars heat up three times faster than found in older models.

This makes it much easier for a low mass star, such as the Sun, to form a bright planetary nebula. The team found that in the new models, the Sun is almost exactly the lowest mass star that still produces a visible, though faint, planetary nebula.

"It is only then the hot core makes the ejected envelope shine brightly for around 10,000 years - a brief period in astronomy. This is what makes the planetary nebula visible," Zijslra said.

"Some are so bright that they can be seen from extremely large distances measuring tens of millions of light years, where the star itself would have been much too faint to see," Zijslra added.

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This story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed, agencies. Mid-day accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability, trustworthiness, reliability and data of the text. Mid-day management/mid-day.com reserves the sole right to alter, delete or remove (without notice) the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever

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Busy Mumbaikars who cannot stop at the local vegetable vendor have found increasing comfort in stocking up their groceries from online portals offering attractive discounts and home delivery, a recent study has found.

The study, titled, Assessing the Impact of Online Grocery Shopping in Mumbai found that middle class citizens spent the highest amount of time shopping online due to time constraints.

The study found that people between the age group of 35-45, primarily married couples, are regular user of online grocery shopping portals. Representation pic/Getty Images

The survey, conducted among 117 respondents in Mumbai, found that people between the age group of 35-45 are regular user of online grocery shopping portals like Amazon Pantry, Grofers, Nature's Basket, Big Basket and others.

Married couples are more regular on the sites as well, due to their nature of their jobs. It also observed that websites combining offers or discounts on products along with home delivery services were the main attraction for customers.

Pick-up points to collect groceries ordered online, like this one by D-Mart in Bandra east, have also proved to be a hit. Pic/Pradeep Dhivar

Dr Rupali Rajesh, associate professor at the Vivekanand Education Society Institute of Management Studies and Research, who published the paper, said accessibility and discounts offered are the main attractions for buyers.

"Mumbai is considered as one of the busiest cities where people have to commute for hours. It becomes really hectic for people to go for grocery shopping, which is why the demand for online grocery shopping is growing. I found out through my study that discounts and saving time were the two biggest parameters for deciding the mood of the buyers," Dr Rajesh said.

Dr Rupali Rajesh

"Our data shows that as many as 41.9 per cent of the surveyed people who regularly use online grocery portals are in the age group of 35-45 years. This is followed by the age group in 25-35, who have a daily usage rate of 31.6 per cent. While interviewing respondents, it was observed that 68 per cent of the users who fall into these two age categories were married. They have to handle office work along with domestic activities, which hardly laves them with enough time to go to the markets," added Dr Rajesh.

The study also revealed that citizens earning in the range of R1 lakh to 5 lakh annually did the highest amount of online grocery shopping, mainly due to discounts provided there. Most of these sites provide discounts on groceries, with several offering the highest discounts on weekends. It also pointed out that the possibility of replacing products, wide variety and availability also proved to be a factor for online shopping.

41.9% People in the age group of 35-45 who shop for groceries online

31.6% People in the age group of 25-35 who shop for groceries online

68% Married couples in the two age groups who shop online

Rs 1 lakh -Rs 5 lakh Income range of middle class online shoppers

(The survey was conducted among 117 participants)

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Polling for the fourth phase of the Lok Sabha polls began on Monday in 71 Lok Sabha constituencies spread across nine states. Over 12.79 crore voters will decide the fate of 945 candidates today. Polling started on a peaceful note in 17 Lok Sabha constituencies in Maharashtra for the fourth and final phase of 2019 parliamentary elections, officials said on Monday.

Pic courtesy/Pradeep Dhiwar

As many as 3,11,92,823 voters, including 1418 transgenders, are eligible to exercise their franchise for which the Election Commission of India has set up a total 33,314 polling stations in these constituencies, deployed 68,018 balloting units, 39,977 control units and 43,309 VVPAT-EVMs.

Pic courtesy/Suresh KK

The 17 constituencies polling are: Mumbai North, Mumbai North-West, Mumbai North-East, Mumbai North-Central, Mumbai South-Central, Mumbai South, Nandurbar, Dhule, Dindori, Nashik, Palghar, Bhiwandi, Kalyan, Thane, Maval, Shirur and Shirdi.

Pic courtesy/Sameer Markande

Pic courtesy/Sameer Markande

Pic courtesy/Sameer Markande

Voting will be conducted from 7 am to 6 pm under stringent security measures with over 40,000 personnel on guard only in Mumbai, officials said.

Pic courtesy/Bipin Kokate

Anil Ambani was spotted casting his vote in Mumbai

Pic courtesy/Sneha Kharabe

Mumbai: BJP candidate from Amethi, Smriti Irani and her husband Zubin Irani cast their vote at a polling booth in Versova. #LokSabhaElections2019 pic.twitter.com/rPmk33TXlT

— ANI (@ANI) April 29, 2019

Priya Dutt and husband Owen Roncon cast their vote in Mumbai

Pic courtesy/Sneha Kharabe

Director Kunal Kohli casted his vote in Mumbai

Pic courtesy/Sneha Kharabe

Tennis player Mahesh Bhupathi cast his vote in Bandra

Pic courtesy/Ranjeet Jadav

Film maker Vishal Bhardwaj casted his vote in Andheri West

Union Min&BJP leader Piyush Goyal after casting his vote at Walsingham School, Malabar Hill in Mumbai: This election is now a Tsunami election. North South,East&West, Modi wave has overtaken the country. PM Modi is the tallest leader today in the country. #LokSabhaElections2019 pic.twitter.com/S6fXnrhLE1

— ANI (@ANI) April 29, 2019

Pic courtesy/Ranjeet Jadav

Sanjay Nirupam with family cast his vote in Andheri West

The Election Commission has set up 1.40 lakh polling booths/stations and has made elaborate security arrangements. 

Pic courtesy/Yogen Shah

Urmila Matondkar present at the polling booth to cast her vote.

Pic courtesy/Sneha Kharabe

Actor Amir Khan cast his vote in Bandra

Pic curtesy/Yogen Shah

Actor Anupam Kher cast his vote 

Polling will be held in 17 seats in Maharashtra, 13 each in Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh, eight in West Bengal, six each in Madhya Pradesh and Odisha, five in Bihar, three in Jharkhand and a part of the Anantnag constituency in Jammu and Kashmir.

Pic courtesy/Nimesh Dave

Gopal Shetty with family at the voting booth in Mumbai

Pic courtesy/Bipin Kokate

Milind Deora with family at the polling booth in Mumbai

Pic courtesy/Faizan Khan

Manoj Kotak cast his vote in Mumbai

In the first three phases, voting has been held in 302 Lok Sabha constituencies, and 168 more seats will go to polls in the last three phases. Election to 542 Lok Sabha seats is being conducted in seven phases between April 11 and May 19. Election in Vellore constituency in Tamil Nadu has been cancelled following excess use of money power. Results will be declared on May 23.

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A major fire broke out at a Big Bazaar outlet in Matunga West area on Monday afternoon. As per reports, the fire broke out in a ground-plus-one building housing. However, no casualties have been reported so far.

Several Fire Brigade personnel, one ambulance and a Quick Response Vehicle reached the spot to douse the flames. Five fire engines have also been deployed at the spot, said the officials.

All the people inside the store at the time of the fire were reportedly were to rushed out to safety and no casualty has been reported as yet. Firefighting operations were continuing.

A similar incident occurred last week in South Mumbai. According to reports, a fire broke out at the famous Crawford Market area. Reports also state that four fire engines were immediately rushed to the spot.

The fire engines are currently making efforts to douse the flames at Crawford Market. No casualty was reported in the incident, he said.

The blaze erupted around 10.50 am at the shopping centre located behind a mosque on Abdul Rahman Street and spread rapidly in the complex, the official said.

Several electronic goods, plastic, stationery items and electric installations were gutted in the fire, he said.

Four fire engines, as many water tankers, and a quick response vehicle were rushed to the spot, he said. The fire brigade personnel managed to extinguish the flames after hectic efforts for about an hour, he said.

Also Read: Mumbai: Major fire at a chemical plant in Dombivli MIDC

The exact cause of the blaze was yet to be ascertained, the official said, adding that a probe was on into the incident.

(With inputs from PTI)

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A still from Some Stories Around Witches

In the tribal villages of Odisha, a teenage girl kills an elderly relative believing that she is a witch and the cause of her father’s death. Overnight, a village turns into a mob to kill three people — a man and two women — who were identified as witches by a witch doctor. Meanwhile, a family is threatened and ostracised, for it is believed they bring ill fate, after they cook meat.

Lipika Singh Darai

The audience is engaged with three real life incidents in the 53-minute documentary, Some Stories Around Witches. Directed by Bhubaneswar-based FTII alumnus Lipika Singh Darai and produced by the Public Service Broadcasting Trust (PSBT), the film explores the politics of witch hunting and the humanitarian crisis surrounding it. It will be screened tomorrow as part of the 22nd edition of Dr Bhau Daji Lad Mumbai City Museum’s monthly screening programme, Movies At The Museum.

“There is a mystery surrounding tradition and myths about witchcraft but we should also see it in the light of socio economics and politics to understand the complexity of the events. The cases are very sensitive and my priority was to make the camera’s presence insignificant,” says Darai, who will be present for a Q&A session post the screening, which marks its premiere in Mumbai.

At the event, also catch the screening of another PSBT production, There Is Something In The Air. Directed by Delhi-based filmmaker Iram Ghufran, the Hindi-Urdu documentary is a series of dream narratives, and accounts of spiritual possession as experienced by women ‘petitioners’ at the shrine of a Sufi saint in north India.

Sanjay Sharma with his daughters Aayushi (left) and Shriya, both of whom enjoy skating. Pic/Satej Shinde

"When you get divorced, the people you used to hang out with disappear. Suddenly, you have no friends, and neither does your child," begins Hemant Amrute, 43, who has been raising his 12-year-old son as a single parent since 2010. Similarly, Goregaon resident Sanjay Sharma has had full custody of his daughters since 2013, when his older child was not yet five, and the younger two-and-a-half years old.

Hemant Amrute with his son Aryan before a parasailing trip in Goa last December

Taking on the role of both parents hasn't been easy for either of these single dads, but that hasn't stopped them from providing their little ones with an upbringing that isn't lacking.

Striking a work-life balance
Recently, actor Tusshar Kapoor and director Karan Johar made news when they became single fathers to children born via surrogacy. But while these men, who come from privileged backgrounds, presumably have help, this is not the case with most single dads who have to juggle work and kids.

A normal day in the life of the Sharma family is hectic. "Luckily for me, I run my own business, so I do all my work when the kids are at school. My job is to pick them up and later in the evening, drop them off for skating or swimming lessons. My older daughter has also been learning Kathak for two years, while my younger one takes singing lessons," shares 35-year-old Sharma, adding that his mother helps him out on the home front.

Amrute, meanwhile, is also a busy entrepreneur, but now feels confident enough to leave his son home by himself whenever required, as he's a little older. His challenge, however, lies in the kitchen. "I never learned to cook," laughs the Thane resident, adding, "We've had a string of cooks come and go, because both of us invariably end up not liking the food."

Not to mention that being a single parent still has stigma attached to it, which is multiplied when the single parent in question is the father. "In the beginning, people would say, 'Yeh nahin kar paayega (he won't be able to do it)'. Now, they've seen it for themselves," says Sharma. Echoing the sentiment, Amrute adds that once a couple gets divorced, people tend to look down on them, and your social circle shrinks to prevent the awkwardness.

Creating a lasting bond
Sharma's daughters and Amrute's son love being outdoors. Sharma takes his kids to the beach, park, as well as for kiddie events across the city. "We love going on holidays, too, even if they're to nearby places like Mahabaleshwar or Daman."

Amrute and his son Aryan spend weekends at their farmhouse in Yeoor Hills, and head to the cinema or the mall on other days. "We also spent Christmas in Goa last year, which was a lot of fun. A few years ago, I took him with me on a work trip to the US, and we visited a lot of places when I had some downtime," he shares.

Both men recently discovered and joined iSingleParent, a Facebook community that organises meet-ups and holidays for single mums and dads and their kids.

Amrute says that when not at school, his son would end up spending time playing with a smartphone. "We live in a standalone house, so there aren't any kids around for him to play with. But he loves technology, and scored full marks in Robotics. He also enjoys beatboxing and recently started trying out parkour. And now, thanks to the group, he looks forward to bonding with the other kids who come for the meet-ups," he says.

Milan Talkies
U/A: Drama romance
Dir: Tigmanshu Dhulia
Cast: Ali Fazal, Shraddha Srinath
Ratings: 

This film is so inherently inconsistent, uneven in its storytelling that you feel like rooting for it still, simply because of the scattered set-pieces full of humour and insights/mannerisms of a small town, north India that you encounter once in a while.

It's almost like spotting diamond among the roughs - whether that be the local uncle breaking into nostalgic songs after a few pegs of whisky, or the street goon, wannabe Vidhayak (legislator) - both being the same - desperate to test his skills as a Hindi film star.

We're referring to Uttar Pradesh in particular, and Allahabad (now Prayagraaj) to be more specific - effectively a land of bakchods (blabber-mouths), with tonnes of tashan (exhibition of bravado) dictating mofussil male lives.

I know this isn't as true anymore, but another aspect that has geographically remained common to Indian towns is the cinema hall (or talkies) as the all-important landmark (there are usually two or three max in a district), where both the rich and the poor, predominantly young, but also the old, merge for their movie entertainment, and other accoutrements that naturally surround it.

Check out the trailer here:

Milan Talkies, that the film is named after, is one such adda/theatre in Allahabad where a young dude spends most of his time in the projection room, aspiring to become a Mumbai filmmaker when he isn't shooting low-budget films with neighbourhood talents himself. One assumed this would be some sort of a version of Giuseppe Tornatore's Italian classic Cinema Paradiso (1988) - ultimate tribute to the movies.

Hell, no. This is a full-on, wannabe-classic romantic story about that boy, and the girl with an authoritarian dad, and the fact that they can't get together - even as the film doesn't care to explain exactly why. And the two are happy to elope - not once, but several times in a row, and oh my god, 'will they, won't they,' just go on, and frickin' on.

The film is directed by Allahabad boy Tigmanshu Dhulia (Paan Singh Tomar, Saheb Biwi Aur Gangster), who whether he likes it or not is probably better known for the dialogue, "Jab tak Hindustan mein saneema hai, log c****iye bante rahenge," that he delivered as an actor in Anurag Kashyap's iconic Gangs Of Wasseypur (2012). Such is how crisp dialogues (like tag-lines in ads) work on us anyway.

Whether this film itself is part-autobiographical or not, Dhulia got noticed as a filmmaker with his debut Haasil (2003) - at the time a rare, robust insider's account of his home-town, and campus politics in a north Indian small-town. Over the years, that script (or the premise, if you may) has been milked so much to death, that it's turned into a tiring genre of its own.

Ali Fazal (similarly seen as a UP ruffian in the Amazon Prime series, Mirzapur) plays the protagonist here - a role that I'm told has been through several replacements (Imran Khan, Shahid Kapoor, etc) in the past. Although at some portions he sounds/behaves a lot like Dhulia himself, Fazal is competent to the core (no doubt). As is the female lead (Shraddha Srinath), making her Hindi film debut.

The film itself though does little to the genre, besides deliberately revisit some old-world Bollywood cliches. Maybe there's some subversion (that I'm unable to see). Maybe a full-blown, big-screen romance hinges much on the scale, for effective suspension of belief, which is sadly missing. Either way, one suspects, much of this movie pretty much remains in the filmmaker's imagination/head. Rest of it, quite honestly, gave me a bit of a headache.

Also Read: Sonu Nigam's soulful voice in Shart from Milan Talkies will tug at your heartstrings

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Notebook
U/A: Romance
Dir: Nitin Kakkar
Cast: Zaheer Iqbal, Pranutan Bahl
Ratings: 

I, for one, am not of the belief that remakes are a bad thing. If made well, they can stand their ground and even shine, in some cases, better than the original. Given that Notebook is directed by Nitin Kakkar (the man behind the luminous gem Filmistaan), I had a fair share of expectations, despite the underwhelming trailer. Kakkar's powerful storytelling in the unassuming Filmistaan played in my mind as I walked in to watch Notebook, an adaptation of the Thai film, The Teacher's Diary that released in 2014.

It's not a good sign when, in a love story, children steal your heart over the lead pair. Individually, both debutants Zaheer Iqbal and Pranutan Bahl sparkle, but they meet only at the fag end of the film. Kakkar draws out adequate performances from both, playing to their strengths, using the naivety of the novices to build on some screen charm. But with so much solo heavy lifting and a wobbly screenplay in tow, Kakkar delivers far short of what he is capable of.

Watch the trailer here:

As a plus, the film uses the picturesque settings of Kashmir, blending it with good music. The story, much like the original, traces the unlikely love life of Firdaus (Bahl) and Kabir (Iqbal). She leaves behind a notebook full of sketches and doodles; he is her replacement in a school where they teach. The notebook becomes a source of hope for Kabir, who connects deeply with her over the pages. She is an unusual teacher in an abusive relationship. As Kabir struggles to bond with the children, the notebook comes handy. The rest of the film paves the way to their final interaction.

Kakkar remains faithful to the original design, transporting his viewers into a world of innocence. It is concerning that the director never delves deep into the problems of the state, bringing forth its elements for a pure cosmetic use. A child with a fundamentalist father is a needless addition to the plot. Kabir's former job as a soldier, and his Kashmiri pandit background, also do little to add to the larger plot. It's a balanced view, but not a bold one; too simplistically handled, which is unlike Kakkar's risque style.

Watch it for the adorable kids, and if you are excited about star children in general, Pranutan is a good deal as a first timer.

Also Read: Notebook celeb review: Bollywood unanimously touts the film as a sweet and genuine

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After the death of three police personnel due to COVID-19, the Mumbai police are telling constables aged above 55 years and those having existing ailments to immediately proceed on leave. The option for the paid leave was made available on Monday and will last till the lockdown.

Accordingly, the police top brass has directed police stations and traffic divisions to give leave to such constables. If a constable still wishes to come to work, he will be allowed to.

Traffic cops are most vulnerable as their work involves highest people-to-people contact

The three deaths in the Mumbai police workforce occurred within 48 hours. Wanting to save the rest of their colleagues who might be especially vulnerable, senior officers have given clear instructions.

"We have given orders to police stations and traffic divisions to give leave to constables aged beyond 55 years. Those having serious health issues have also been advised to take rest," said Param Bir Singh, commissioner of Mumbai police.

A policeman checks a car at Bhendi Bazar. Pic/Ashish Raje

"On Sunday, we asked for information from the headquarters about constables aged between 50 to 52, 52 to 55 and 55 to 58 years and any ailments they might have," said a senior police officer on condition of anonymity.

Health experts have observed that people aged above 50 and having health issues such as diabetes, asthma and heart conditions are more susceptible to the Coronavirus. "Since the beginning of the lockdown, we had asked our senior inspectors and traffic division in-charges to assign desk duties to constables aged above 50 years, with minimal contact with outsiders," said another officer. "Yet we lost three personnel. Hence, we are enforcing the policy further to avoid more fatalities," added the officer.

Deputy Commissioner of Police and spokesperson for Mumbai police, Pranaya Ashok said, "The message is loud and clear — cops aged above 50 should not be posted in hotspots or in containment zones. In fact, they should serve for tasks that involve minimum social contact. Now we are going a step forward by giving constables aged above 55 years the option to go on leave."

"Enforcing law and order is our priority but saving the lives of our men is also our duty. Therefore, we have given such constables the option to stay home April 27 onwards till the end of the lockdown. Traffic cops have the most contact with people, making them the most vulnerable," said a senior officer from the traffic police.

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A senior citizen from Kalina, Anwari Begum, 70, died after three top hospitals in the city refused to give her dialysis without her COVID-19 test results being in, the woman's family has claimed. The test results, which arrived on Monday, returned negative.

Begum had been undergoing dialysis at Guru Nanak Hospital in Bandra East for the past one year. Her last dialysis at the hospital was on April 18, when a COVID-19 positive patient was found in the hospital. The hospital asked her to visit on April 22 — which was also the day of her next dialysis — for a COVID-19 test.

Anwari Begum's two sons (from left) Zakaria Shaikh, Haroon Shaikh and Mohammed Hasan (right ) her son-in-law

"My mother-in-law's COVID-19 test was done on Wednesday, April 22. She was also supposed to get dialysis on the same day but the hospital refused, saying they will do it only after her test results come, which was going to take 48 hours. On Thursday, she had severe pain and needed the dialysis urgently. So we went to the hospital around 4 pm but they refused as her reports were pending. We waited for over two hours at the hospital, but they did not listen," said Mohammed Hasan, Begum's son-in-law.

"After Guru Nanak, we approached Nanavati Hospital. Many other patients like us were stopped at the gate. They took her files and after two hours, enquired about her COVID-19 test report and said that they are not taking outside patients. Some from the family took her to Kokilaben Dhirubhai Ambani Hospital around 8.30 pm and I went to look for a dialysis centre in Kalina and Sakinaka. At Kokilaben, my family was asked to finish formalities, which took two hours, but they too refused to treat her," Hasan said.

Guru Nanak Hospital in Bandra East. File pic

Found help, but too late
Dialysis patients all over the city have been suffering amid the Coronavirus pandemic. Despite guidelines from the State Health Department that do not necessitate a COVID-19 test for patients needing dialysis and only ask hospitals to take universal precautions, hospitals across the city are refusing to treat patients without the test.

Hospitals say that they are overburdened due to the closure of dialysis centres which has increased the volume of patients with kidney ailments and that they cannot accommodate every patient.

Hasan approached Axon Hospital in Sakinaka, which said that the dialysis centre is closed as their staff is unwell. "I requested them explaining the condition of my mother-in-law and pleaded with folded hands to have mercy. I also promised to pay whatever amount is required. After some time, the concerned doctor listened to me and called his dialysis staff. My mother-in-law reached the hospital around 11 pm. At 11.30 pm, the assistant doctor told me that her condition has worsened."
Begum died shortly after that. Her test results, which came on Monday, showed her negative for Coronavirus.

"The funeral was performed the next day at 10 am. Sometime later, I received a call from the person who had referred us to the nephrologist at Guru Nanak Hospital. He was apparently told by someone from the hospital that my mother tested positive. We live in a joint family and everyone panicked but no one from the hospital called us. A few days later, we got her report, which was negative," Hasan said.

According to BMC's Health Department, a COVID-19 test is not mandatory for dialysis patients. "Everyone has to take universal precautions, a COVID-19 test report is not mandatory," said Dr. Daksha Shah, BMC's deputy executive health officer.

"24 hours after sanitising the dialysis centre, the hospital can resume services as per the guidelines. If they suspect a patient to be positive, he/she can be quarantined," Dr Shah added.

'Followed task force rules'
Guru Nanak Hospital defended itself saying it was just following guidelines of the state government's task force committee, as per which, an affected dialysis centre must close for fumigation and surface cleaning. "Our dialysis centre is open 24x7. That day, a COVID-19 case was reported. As per the rules, we had to shut the dialysis centre for 24 hours, sanitise the area and quarantine the staff. Around seven workers from the dialysis centre were quarantined. They have tested negative," said Dr. Narendra Sharma, spokesperson of the hospital, who did not clearly remember on which day the case was reported.

"Dialysis patients travel through Containment Zones. Despite taking all precautions, such incidents are happening, which is the biggest challenge for us," Sharma said.

"As per my knowledge, the case was reported on Saturday. We needed the dialysis on Thursday. That makes five days. Why did Guru Nanak Hospital refuse to treat her when it is supposed to be shut only for 24 hours?" Hasan said.

Dr. Santosh Shetty, executive director and CEO, Kokilaben Dhirubhai Ambani Hospital, said, "We are not testing our existing dialysis patients. We take patients' history and screen them before every dialysis. Currently, we have nearly 200 patients on dialysis. We are following BMC and state task force's guidelines."

While the spokesperson of Nanavati Super Speciality Hospital said, "Nanavati Hospital is one of the very few quaternary care medical facilities in Mumbai to provide dialysis treatment for COVID-19 patients. Thus the high influx of patients ensures dialysis beds reserved for patients as per their COVID-19 status are occupied. However, the unavailability of a bed is immediately communicated to the patient or their family."

Apr 22
Day Anwari Begum was tested for Coronavirus

Apr 27
Day her test returned negative, four days after her death

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A 25-year-old woman allegedly committed suicide by hanging herself from the ceiling fan at her four-bedroom flat at Lokhandwala Township in Kandivli (East) on Tuesday afternoon.

According to police sources, the deceased has been identified as Bhavna Bora. On March 13, she had returned to Mumbai from Ireland, from where she was pursuing her Masters' degree and was staying with her parents and brothers in their four BHK apartment in Green Meadows Apartments in Lokhandwala Township.

Preliminary investigations revealed that she was upset after attending online classes for more than 16 to 18 hours a day.

When her father, a businessman by profession, and her brother entered her room to call her for lunch, they found the door locked from inside. “After Bora did not respond, they used a key to open the door only to find her body hanging from the ceiling fan and informed the police soon after,” the officer said.

“On the basis of primary information, we have registered an accidental death report (ADR) in the case and further investigation is underway,” said Senior Inspector Raju Kasbe from Samta Nagar police station.

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The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has started mobile dispensaries to curb the spread of COVID-19. Currently they will move about in the areas most affected by the disease such as Worli, BDD chawls, Lower Parel, Currey Road etc.

It was decided to start mobile dispensaries to prevent the spread by reaching out to people and detecting patients. While the service began on Wednesday in the severely affected G South ward, the doctors will move to other areas later. More than 600 COVID-19 positive patients have been found in G South Ward.

A doctor, a nurse and an assistant will be available in the mobile dispensary. It will be stocked with medicines for cold, cough and fever, and in case of a suspicious patient of COVID-19, a thermal scanner has also been placed in the vans. The vans will provide the service from 10 am to 7 pm.

After their check-ups, people will be treated with pills for minor fever etc. But if a suspected patient of COVID-19 is found, she or he will be hospitalised. The mobile dispensaries aim to find such patients in red zones to help curb the spread of the disease.

The mobile dispensaries were launched at the NSCI club in the presence of Mayor Kishori Pednekar. In all five mobile dispensaries have been started.

Mayor Pednekar told mid-day, "Medicines for cold, cough and fever are available in these dispensaries. If a suspect patient is found during the check-up, he will be taken to the OPD of a COVID-19 deisgnated hospital and examined immediately."

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Western Railway staff on Tuesday found the batteries of a local train parked near Borivli missing. Local trains have been stationary for over a month now following the lockdown.

WR officials said it was discovered early Tuesday morning by the Western Railway staff on duty who were inspecting and carrying out basic checks as per schedule.

Sources said that a few WR staff, as per routine schedule, went to check the functioning of vital components of trains stabled on the tracks between Borivli and Kandivli stations.

They found that five batteries were removed from the battery box, which was locked. However, WR authorities are unsure whether these batteries have been stolen, or have been removed by their staff for some technical inspection.

RPF officials said they are investigating the matter.

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In a significant development, Maharashtra Governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari has urged the Election Commission to declare polls to the nine vacant seats in the state Legislative Council "at the earliest". These seats have been lying vacant since April 24 and filling up the same would end the current political uncertainty in the state, said an official.

Maharashtra Governor BS Koshiyari requests the Election Commission of India to declare elections to 9 vacant seats of Maharashtra Legislative Council. pic.twitter.com/EmvNHQOawx

— ANI (@ANI) April 30, 2020

In a letter to the EC, Koshyari said that the Centre has announced many relaxation measures regarding the lockdown enforcement in the country, and accordingly, the elections for the MLC seats can be held with certain guidelines.

"Since the Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray is not a member of either house of the state Legislature, he needs to get elected to the Council before May 27," the Governor pointed out. The EC had postponed the election process for these nine seats in view of the Coronavirus crisis and the ongoing lockdown.

Political circles pointed out that with this development, the requests of the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government to nominate Thackeray in one of the two MLC seats from his quota has virtually been rejected by the Governor. 

Since the past nearly a month, leaders of the Shiv Sena, Nationalist Congress Party and Congress have been repeatedly appealing to the Governor to name Thackeray for one of his quota seats to avert a constitutional crisis in the state.

On Monday, Thackeray spoke with Union Home Minister Amit Shah, and on Tuesday he called up Prime Minister Narendra Modi, reportedly on the same issue. After passing two resolutions to the effect, almost the entire state cabinet led by Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar had called on the Governor this week and urged him to do the needful.

Besides, several Sena leaders and ministers have also met the Koshyari with a similar request, and the NCP-Congress have issued statements to the effect.  A Congress leader said that with the Governor now throwing the ball in the EC's court, the political situation would be clear only after May 3, when the national lockdown is slated to end.

Not a member of either house of legislature, Thackeray was sworn-in as CM on November 28, 2019, and now must become a MLC, failing which there could be constitutional deadlock, according to official sources.

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This story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed, agencies. Mid-day accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability, trustworthiness, reliability and data of the text. Mid-day management/mid-day.com reserves the sole right to alter, delete or remove (without notice) the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever

A fire broke out at near Ganesh talkies in Lalbaug on Saturday evening.

Fire fighters rushed to the spot and extinguished the fire using three fire jets. So far no casualties have been reported and the cause of fire is yet to be ascertained

The fire was confined to electric wiring, electric installation, wooden furniture, steel furniture, Ganesh idol making fibre frames, raw material, oil, washing machine, clothes, chairs, Ganesh idols, wooden base, scrap material, mattress, cement sheet and tarpuline sheet etc. 

When speaking of Indian mythology, the focus is on the stories, symbols and rituals of major religions such as Buddhism, Jainism and Hinduism. We ignore the mythologies of the various tribal communities of India, who have lived in the subcontinent long before the arrival of Aryan migrants. Their stories are fascinating.
The Santals found in Bengal, Odisha and Jharkhand speak of how humans emerged from the egg of a goose and a gander, created by the gods, which included the High God, Thakur-Dev, the smaller spirits known as Bongas. In the beginning, they say the whole world was water, until the earthworms collected earth and placed it on the back of a turtle. Did this story inspire the Hindu idea of the earth on a turtle upheld by elephants?

The Korkus, scattered across the states of Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra, tell the story of a deer pursued by their ancestors that disappeared in a mountain cave. While waiting outside the cave, they were met by an ascetic, who gave them some rice to eat. The ascetic then introduced himself as Shiva and asked them to permanently settle down as farmers, not hunters. Another story recounts how Ravana strayed into the scenic but unpopulated forests. When he prayed to Shiva to populate those forests with people, Shiva directed his messenger, the crow, Kageshwar, to collect red soil from the hilly region. Shiva made two statues from the soil, of a man and a woman. However, before Shiva could infuse them with life, an angry Indra got his horses to destroy the statues. This, in turn, angered Shiva, who made two dogs out of the red soil, infused them with life and drove Indra's horses away. Shiva then remade the two human statues and infused life into them. Known as Moola and Moolis, they are the ancestors of the Korku tribe. The Korku worship Shiva, Ravana and the dog. And the driving away of Indra does allude to some rejection of 'civilised' Aryans, though Shiva himself is a Vedic god.

The Baigas are a tribe dispersed across Madhya Pradesh. They say that in the beginning, there was only water all around and no land. Then, Brahma made land in the midst of the water. Immediately, two people emerged from the land—one a brahman and the other a sadhu Naga Baiga. Brahma gave the brahmin some paper to start studying and writing. He gave the Baiga a tangiya, or a sickle. He also gave the Baiga some kodo and kutki grains and ordered him to start farming. From that day on, the Baigas have been farming, while brahmins focussed on getting educated.

Because there are over 500 tribes in India, and each one has a unique mythology, their mythology is often ignored when studying wider trends and patterns. They are often seen as being simpler, etiological (explaining causes), sometimes proto-history, but rarely having deep psychological insight. This could be the prejudice of the researcher or simply the nature of tribes, where the focus is less on introspection and more on ritual rhythms of life. It is easy to see the influence of Hindu lore on tribal mythologies, but the reverse flow is also true.

Stories of boars raising earth from the bottom of the sea found in Vedas could very well have tribal origins.

The author writes and lectures on the relevance of mythology in modern times. Reach him at devdutt.pattanaik@mid-day.com

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With the death of one more employee this weekend, the toll of BEST employees succumbing to COVID-19 is two, while four have recovered and have been discharged.

Sources said that an employee from the transport engineering department of Backbay bus depot died at KEM Hospital.

"The employee had reported to work and has been listed on duty until April 21, after which he fell ill. This clearly shows he laid his life working for the BEST Undertaking. His next of kin should be offered a job in the BEST and his family should be given an amount of R1 crore out of medical insurance," Shashank Sharad Rao, general secretary of the BEST Workers' Union said.

A BEST spokesperson confirmed the development and said the employee was suffering from high blood pressure and had been absent from work since April 22. He tested positive for Coronavirus on May 1 and died on May 3.

The first employee BEST lost to Coronavirus was a foreman working for the electric supply branch. He tested positive for Coronavirus on April 2. Since March 16, he had been admitted to a private hospital and had kidney-related ailments. He resumed work at Wadala depot on March 20 after and worked till March 22, after which he died.

On the other hand, there have been success stories too. A BEST spokesperson said a BEST bus conductor, who was diabetic, was admitted with COVID-19 since April 18. He recovered and was recently discharged. Another employee residing at the Parel staff quarters has also recovered. In addition, BEST has seen no positive cases since May 1.

BEST in numbers

. 30: No. of employees recuperating from COVID-19
. 8,865: No. of employees tested
. 1,500: No. of high-risk employees told to stay home
. 400: No. of employees recommended home-quarantine as a precaution

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Union Minister and BJP leader Smriti Irani is undoubtedly one of the coolest politicians. From sharing throwbacks pictures to family pictures and much more, Smriti always manages to tickle the funny bone and keep her followers entertained.

Although being locked at home like others due to the coronavirus epidemic, Smriti Irani recently took to Instagram new trend, the gibberish challenge. For many who don't know, the gibberish challenge on the gram is a much-in-fad filter where users have to guess the word or a phrase.

A screengarb of Smriti's first gibberish challenge

Upon taking the challenge, a random phrase or a word appears on the screen with a set time limit. Once the timer is over, the right answer pops up on the screen. The 44-year-old minister took part in the gibberish challenge twice and guess what? Smriti absolutely nailed it. Smriti also shared videos of the same as her Instagram stories.

A screengrab of Smriti's second gibberish challenge which lefet her shocked and surprised

While Smriti nailed the first one right, in the second gibberish challenge which came with a twist had its own set of challenges. Though she guessed the right answer 'Hugh Jackman', the answer for some reason appeared as 'Ryan Reynolds', which left the minister quite upset and her expressions said it all.

 

 

 

View this post on Instagram

Weaving new possibilities 🙏#supportweavers #makeinindia #handcraftedinindia

A post shared by Smriti Irani (@smritiiraniofficial) onMay 2, 2020 at 12:11am PDT

Before taking part in the gibberish challenge, Smriti shared two pictures where she was seen donning handcrafted face masks made by weavers. Urging people to supports weavers and products made in India, Smriti captioned the picture: Weaving new possibilities!

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Ola Cabs began operations in 12 cities across Maharashtra, which are in green and orange zones from Monday. "Ola has resumed operations in over 100 cities across the country, adhering to the government guidelines. With the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) easing restrictions in select zones across the country, Ola will ensure safety during all rides," a note from the company said.

Anand Subramanian, Ola spokesperson and head of communications said, "As we reopen our platform to millions of citizens and driver-partners whose livelihoods are dependent on this, the safety of both continues to be the priority. The fight against COVID-19 is a collective effort and will be possible with both our driver-partners and customers doing their bit to ensure that everyone has access to safe and high-quality mobility."

List of 12 cities in Maharashtra
Alibaug, Ahmednagar, Shirdi, Latur, Kolhapur, Nanded, Sangli, Wardha, Amravati, Chandrapur, Gondia, Jalna.

100
Total no. of cities Ola resumed their services across India

Five-step safety

For driver-partners:
1. No travel in red zones: Vehicles will not operate to and from red or containment zones.
2. Selfie-authentication of drivers: All driver-partners are required to wear masks and need to authenticate this before the start of every ride by sharing a selfie through their partner app.
3. Equipped with hygiene kits: Driver-partners will be provided with masks, sanitisers and disinfectants.
4. Cars to be cleaned regularly: Common surfaces like handles, seats to be cleaned before every ride.
5. Flexible cancellations: Drivers and customers may cancel a ride if the other is not wearing a mask.

For riders:
1. Mandatory masks: Customers must wear masks and sanitise before and after the ride.
2. Non-AC rides: To avoid re-circulation of air, the AC will be switched off and windows will be kept open.
3. Two passengers per car: Only two passengers will be allowed in the cab and they will be urged to sit by the windows.
4. Load and unload luggage themselves: To maintain social distancing, customers are urged to load and unload luggage themselves.
5. Cashless payments: Customers are encouraged to make cashless payments to avoid contact.

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Maharashtra government's offices located in Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR), in areas of municipal corporations of Pune, Pimpri-Chinchwad and Malegaon in Nashik district will function with five per cent attendance during the lockdown period till May 17 to contain spread of coronavirus. The MMR and areas under PMC, PCMC and Malegaon Municipal Corporation (MMC) have emerged as the coronavirus hotspots. In a statement on Tuesday, the government also said that in the rest of Maharashtra, the attendance of officials of the rank of deputy secretary and above will be 100 per cent, while that of the other officials and staffers will be 33 per cent as per the requirement.

The government, however, said that offices of departments such as health and family welfare, police, jail, fire brigade and emergency services, disaster management, Food Corporation of India, Nehru Yuva Kendra, municipal services and others will remain functional with complete attendance. The statement also said that the government officials and staffers should download the 'Aarogya Setu' application on their smartphones and work according to the guidelines issued by the Centre.

The statement reiterated that those attending offices should take precautionary measures and maintain proper hygiene during the period to keep the novel coronavirus at bay.

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A video purportedly showing bodies of COVID-19 victims lying unattended near coronavirus patients at a civic-run hospital here has surfaced, following which a BJP MLA hit out at the Shiv Sena-ruled Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation. Latching on to the video, BJP legislator Nitesh Rane said this shows the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) does not pay attention to the safety of patients.

The video purportedly showed some bodies lying near COVID-19 patients undergoing treatment at the Lokmanya Tilak Municipal General Hospital in Sion area of Mumbai. Rane tagged the video in a tweet on the micro-blogging site on Wednesday night. "The Sion hospital has shown utmost negligence by letting COVID-19 patients sleep among the bodies of those who died of the same disease. The BMC boasts of being the richest civic body but pays no attention towards the safety of patients," the BJP leader said on Thursday.

He noted that the hospital in Sion mostly gets patients from Dharavi, the biggest slum area in the country. "Is this how we treat our working class? Such carelessness of the medical staff and the Sion hospital could result in further spread of coronavirus infection," he said. As the video stirred a controversy, the hospital's dean Dr Pramod Ingale said relatives of the those who died of COVID-19 are reluctant to take the bodies. "That is the reason why the bodies were kept there unattended. We have now removed the bodies and are probing the matter," he said.

Asked why the bodies were not shifted to a mortuary, Ingale said, "There are 15 slots in the hospitals mortuary of which 11 are already filled. If we shift all the bodies to the mortuary, it will be a problem for bodies of those who died of causes other than COVID-19." Till Wednesday, Mumbai reported 10,527 COVID-19 cases and 412 deaths.

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