Around Town: From classical concerts to book releases and textile exhibitions, what’s keeping the cultural calendar buzzy and busy this week

In Tune

S Aishwarya and S Saundarya, among the most popular musicians in the Carnatic music genre today, are great-granddaughters of Bharat Ratna awardee late MS Subbulakshmi and granddaughters of Dr Radha Viswanathan. In 2017, the sisters were invited by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to sing at his residence wherein they sang their composition of Maithreem Bhajatha of Mahaperiaval of Kanchi, which earlier performed by MS Subbulakshmi & Radha Viswanathan in 1996 at the United Nations. A virtual Carnatic vocal recital featuring S Aishwarya & S Saundarya, presented by HCL Concerts, will take place on April 16, 2021, from 7 pm onwards. It will be live-streamed on www.facebook.com/HCLConcerts

Making Art with Mangroves

Making Art with Mangroves

The Ministry of Mumbai’s Magic, an environmental literacy collective, has launched an art campaign to protect Mumbai’s mangroves. People are invited to participate by creating or sharing their artworks on social media handles under the hashtag #MakeArtForMumbaisMangroves to draw attention to the need to protect the city’s biodiversity and wetlands. Artworks are encouraged across all mediums—illustration, mixed media, handicraft, poetry, video, music and more. All artworks united under this hashtag will be catalogued and presented to the Environment Ministry in June 2021 showing the community support for Mumbai’s wetlands. Submissions are open till May 22. More details at https://ministryofmumbaismagic.com

A kantha artwork

Tied with Tales

For centuries, women across the world have been making textiles in their homes, often out of need, or simply to recycle old material. They use it to keep their children warm, to cover a table, to hold their precious belongings or even to decorate the floors and walls of their homes. Kantha quilts, in particular, have been born out of a scarcity of material, and are still made by repurposing old clothes, such as used sarees and dhotis, which reveal so much about the people who wore them. The question forms the essence of the Museum of Art & Photography’s (MAP) latest online exhibition, Painted Stitches, Woven Stories on kantha quilting practices in India. The first exhibition on the museum’s vast and rare textile collection launched April 8, 2021, and has been co-curated by Arnika Ahldag and Vaishnavi Kambadur. The exhibition unfolds into a dialogue between interpretations of 19th and 20th-century quilting techniques of kantha and works by Indian modern and contemporary artists, who continue to provide visibility to the weaving practices of kantha textiles.

Cover of Prisoner’s Dilemma by Vish Dhamija

A Page Turner

Frequently referred to in the Indian press as the ‘master of crime and courtroom drama’, bestselling author Vish Dhamija of ten works of crime fiction, including Unlawful Justice, Bhendi Bazaar, The Mogul, The Heist Artist and Doosra, is back with another book. In Prisoner’s Dilemma, two best friends Bipin Desai and Anuj Shastri lead equally pointless lives. But that doesn’t stop them from dreaming big and getting rich fast. Soon they rob a van full of cash and manage to get away with a loot of over one crore rupees. But the van belongs to one of the wealthiest families in Delhi. The two are arrested within days, but the cash is still nowhere to be found. Senior Inspector Arfy Khan has forty-eight hours to make Bipin and Anuj confess to their crime by convincing one of them to go against the other. The crime thriller releases on April 22.