MALDIVES TO MUMBAI

Taapsee Pannu shooting for a web series at a suburban studio on Tuesday; PIC: NILESH WAIRKAR

Rising star

SACHIN Tendulkar, a mentor for Mumbai Indians, may not have travelled to UAE with the team this IPL season, but he has been wellrepresented by his son Arjun. Tendulkar Junior, an aspiring cricketer himself, is not an official Mumbai Indians member but is often seen bowling in the nets. The left-arm pacer is earning a lot of praise from the IPL league players for his work ethics. New Zealand’s Trent Boult and Australia’s James Pattinson, in fact, posted a video chat, in which they admitted that Arjun spends maximum time in the gym.

New man in Bihar

MANOJ

Jha is the man Delhi’s and Patna’s poweratti are watching closely. The Rajya Sabha MP, who is also the RJD’s spokesperson, has become Tejashwi Yadav’s principal political adviser. Before migrating to politics, Jha was into academics. Tejashwi’s moves to jettison father Lalu Prasad’s mug from the posters and the thrust on ‘economic justice’ instead of Lalu’s pet ‘social justice’ catchphrase are attributed to Jha. He thinks even Yadavs, the RJD’s core voters, are fed up with the obsession with caste empowerment and want to move out of the old social matrix. ‘Economic justice’, Jha thinks, has a trendy vibe. In Patna, he’s being called Tejashwi’s Prashant Kishor, who was Nitish’s key strategist in the 2015 elections.

She’s back

WE

have held our breath ever since we heard in August that one of India’s finest chefs, the Mumbai-raised Bangkok-based Garima Arora, had left her destination restaurant Gaa rather abruptly. Garima has just announced her new location. She is soon to open a new “casual modern Indian breakfast canteen by day and wine bar by night” called Here. While we are wondering if our poha mixes with a glass of pinot, there’s more. Soon enough, Garima says, the top floor of Here will house the new space for goodold Gaa. Garima’s announcement was received with cheers from her fellow chefs Vicky Ratnani, Anuradha Joshi Medhora, Marina Balakrishnan and Anahita Dhondy.

Mistaken identi

IT

seems the Goan sun, mixed with a little Sunday sangria of course, has caused your diarist to make a little boo-boo. We erroneously mentioned Harsh Goenka being a part of Kolkata finance heavyweight Utsav Parekh’s brunch at a local restaurant. Harsh is in Mumbai, in fact, and it was his brother Sanjiv Goenka who had accompanied Parekh and former union minister Praful Patel. Praful’s daughter Niyati is married to Utsav’s son Samarth. We regret the error.

Tailpiece

THE pandemic has worked wonderfully for some marriages and disastrously for others. Like the case of this handsome cricketer and his beautiful wife. Otherwise on the road for most of the year playing matches, one would have felt that an extended stay at home would do good. But this star player and his missus are having a lot of trouble. We hear the lady walked out of home and marriage a few months ago, and the cricketer is heartbroken. As soon as this season’s games are through, he hopes to win her back.