Sure it’s only Tuesday, but Saturday will be here before you know it. We were going to ask you to join us for a fun activity, but we know you already have plans - meet friends and drink yourself silly. Live(r) from the Console?

While Saturday and copious amounts of alcohol were always meant to be together, here’s a fun change in weekend scene. Travel company Travel Master Gogo is organising a Mumbai by Moonlight bicycle tour. The ride will tour city landmarks, starting at Churchgate, looping around Afghan Church in Colaba and finally ending at the Bandra Fort. The leisure 20 km route will be covered entirely on bicycles, spanning five hours, with pit stops for bhurji pav- brun maska and piping hot chai.

Only way to drink and drive on Saturday.

Moonlighting in Mumbai

In case you're fretting about the 20 km ride, don't. Organisers Bertram and Raksha did a test ride last weekend, planned pit stops and even cut down part of the ride, just to make it couch potato (that’s you!) friendly.

Not only do you not require stellar fitness levels for this bicycle ride, but you also don’t need to own a bicycle. Tell the organisers in advance and they will arrange one for you. The ride will begin at 11:30 pm on Saturday night, and participants will have to carry their own water for the night, along with ID and an emergency contact number.

And you thought you wouldn’t be living dangerously this weekend.

Getting there: Mumbai By Moonlight on May 25, 2013, 11:30 pm onwards. To register call 8655569555 or view their Facebook page here for details.

What's great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coca-Cola, Liz Taylor drinks Coca-Cola, and just think, you can drink Coca-Cola, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it.

Spend Wednesday thinking about Cola and consumerism as Goodearth and CMYK Bookstore come together to screen Andy Warhol, a film that chronicles the pop artist through interviews, conversations and movie clips.

This will be followed by a three course meal at The Tasting room featuring an abridged a la carte menu that will be offered to all participants, who can place orders before or during the film screening. One can of Campbell soup, please!

The registration fee for the dinner and movie event is Rs 1,000. And while you wait for the film to begin, you can also browse CMYK’s collection of books on design, film, art and culture and avail a 15% discount as part of their anniversary offer.

Some pop with your corn?

Getting There: On Wednesday, May 22 at 6,30 pm at CMYK @ Goodearth, Raghuvanshi Mansion, Lower Parel. Registration required, limited spots available.  Call 65285284, email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

What: The Antarctic Youth Ambassador Program 2014, view the website here, apply here.

Why: Jump aboard the polar express with this program that selects applicants from around the globe to be leaders of climate change. If you are picked you get to go into the wild to explore the Antarctic Peninsula with experts; learn about its ecosystem; break the ice with people from all over the world; and create a project that you will implement for one year following the expedition.

When: Participants will be announced on July 1, 2013, so apply ASAP.

What: Kick - futsal (indoor football) arena, Supreme Business Park, behind Lake Castle, Hiranandani Gardens, Powai, call 32276565, Rs 2,000 for an hour long session.

Why: A garage doubles up as a basketball court, a parking lot turns into a football field and a strip of street is also a cricket pitch. The lack of space in the city has always been an issue for sport enthusiasts, which is why you’ll like Kick. This fun futsal arena in Powai – supposedly Mumbai’s first – isn’t in your friend’s garage and features a FIFA-rated astroturf field that can be booked for practice sessions by the hour and also organises coaching facilities and tournaments.

When: You want to Foster the People with Pumped Up Kicks.

“Pale green? Boyish? Well, yes, kind of. Newson, 45, who has always been fascinated with pale green, read how a couple of scientists had determined (incorrectly, it turns out) that this was the real shade of the universe. He had his vintage Aston Martin DB4 painted in that hue.”

William Shaw writes this and other lovely design stories about space age bars and people who build their own homes for New York Times’ T Magazine. Shaw – he’s also written extensively for The Sunday Telegraph and the Observer - is coming to India (Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore) with The British Council, to teach you to care about pale green.

In a workshop for writing about design, Shaw and other international writers will teach and mentor participants. Titled Create Change, the design writing workshop aims to capture inspirational stories and help develop skills to document how design has had an impact on Indian society. This will be done through discussions, exercises and assignments. The bonus is that participants of the workshop will be given a chance to contribute entries to an independent publication produced by Kyoorius, which will be released at the Kyoorius Designyatra conference from August 29-31 2013 in Goa.

The best part: it’s just Rs 1,000! So if you’ve been complaining about how there are no good creative writing courses in India, go and write this wrong.

Getting there: To participate, send in your details with a sample of your writing on design to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it with KDY Design Writing as the subject.

Mumbai: May 17, 2013 from 10 am – 5 pm, British Council , 901, Tower 1 , One Indiabulls Centre ,Elphinstone Road (West).

Delhi: May 19, 2013 from 10 am – 5 pm, British Council , 17 Kasturba Gandhi Marg

Going through the list of Dolch words, we realize Norah Jones could have been singing to someone with a learning disability. “Come away with me in the night.” All on the list. A writing challenge after our own hearts, the Dolch Project is collecting stories for children (aged 6 to 14) with learning disabilities, but the trick is you have to stick to the 220 words on the list.

Dolch & Gabbana

Maybe you’re a bit confused. Dolch words are essentially another name for ‘sight words’. Learning disabled kids don’t learn phonetically like other children because they have a tough time with vocabulary and need words that can be understood on sight, or instantly. Like ‘school’ or ‘play’ or ‘yellow’. They learn to recognize these words in sentences, and when put into a context—like a story—they’d be able to have “more control” over the language, as an image on the Dolch Project Facebook page says.

That’s where you come in. Submit a story using the sight words we’ve linked to above (you can also use a few other words if you like, but it’s recommended to keep them short and easy to understand) and your story could be part of a collection used by schools to promote reading among learning disabled children. Word!

The idea for the Facebook page and project comes from 29-year-old Bodhisatwa Dasgupta, who lives up to his name by being a rather enlightened copywriter at an ad agency. A year ago, a friend approached him, asking if he could do something for some kids he knew with learning disabilities. Bodhisatwa says it took him a year to get back to his friend, because he was trying to figure out a way to make it work. Which is when it hit him—curating literature from other people using only the sight words, so that kids would have more reading options.

Up to now, the biggest user of Dolch words in kids literature is Dr Suess, but there’s only so much Cat In The Hat that one child can take. Bodhisatwa plans to use as many stories as he can—maybe even spread them out into volumes. Working title: Dolch Book Of Fantastic Tales.

No Kidding

It began with just the idea and the Facebook page, but now, just over three weeks later, the likes are pouring in, and Bodhisatwa has had some interest from publishers. New plans include selling book in stores, not just schools and developing a website with an app you can type directly into, which will highlight all the non-Dolch words in red.

Submissions should be between 600 to 1000 words long and submitted through Facebook or email. One day, yours could be the first story some lucky kid gets to read in its entirety, so make it good.

Getting there: Email submissions to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or submit via Facebook message here, use words on the list from here.

We've all been there. The silence of the conference room. The pointless power point. The endless brainstorming session. The loud rumble of the tummy.

It's way past lunch time and through the all-glass conference room, a shiny steel dabba on your desk wears a gleaming smile, mocking almost. But duty calls and lunch might have to be skipped. Suddenly that pie chart seems edible.

While this writer can't count the number of times her dabba has been ignored at her previous TV channel job, she's always felt a strong pang of guilt about letting her food go to waste. Which is why Share My Dabba seems like such a super concept. An organic campaign by the Happy Life Welfare Society and the Dabbawala foundation, Share My Dabba aims to kill two birds with one dabba – food wastage and the hunger crisis in Mumbai.

Read more to find out how you can be a part of the process:

So what is Share My Dabba?
Share My Dabba is an initiative to get uneaten food left behind in dabbas to hungry children on the street.

Why should I Share My Dabba?

Everyday, two hundred thousand children in Mumbai go hungry, with two starving to death. In the dabbawala system, of the 120 tons of food transported, approximately 16 tons goes to waste. Need another reason?

How Does It Work?

If you have any food left in in your dabba, all you need to do is put a Share sticker on it. The sticker allows the dabbawalas to identify these from the empty ones. These are in turn passed on to volunteers that distribute the food amongst the children.

Intrigued by the concept, we asked some of Mumbai's coolest chefs and dabba put-togethers what they would make, if they had to share their dabbas.

Chef Gresham Fernandes, Executive Chef at Impresario and Co-Founder of Gypsy Kitchen
If I had to share my dabba with street children, I would concentrate on making it healthy, wholesome and nutritious. A meal packed with starch, fibre and protein, while still being comfort food. I would recommend a potato cauliflower bhaji, dal khichdi with mutton or chicken stock and salad.

Shilarna Vaze, Le Cordon Bleu Chef and Founder at Gaia Home Chef

I would pack Mexican chicken, mango jalapeno salsa, refried beans and soft tortillas as these are easy to eat as much as you want and share the rest. Plus, it’s a treat!

Sai Gundewar, CEO, Foodizm

If you’re looking for something healthy and economical, I would suggest a tossed fig salad made with fresh iceberg lettuce and figs, nuts of your choice, cottage cheese or feta cheese, olive oil, fresh lemon juice and pepper. Chop up the ingredients and mix together for a wholesome meal.

Shonali Sabherwal , Macrobiotic counselor and Chef

I would recommend a moong salad and here’s a quick recipe: cook the moong and set aside. Once cooled add carrot, apple, bell pepper, lemon juice and ginger. Heat oil and add mustard seeds, green chili to the green moong mixture. Add in coriander leaves and salt.

Getting there: Share My Dabba, email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it with the subject Share My Dabba for more details, view the Facebook page here, view the video here.

In this weekly column, filmmaker Danish Aslam will be your purveyor of the finest quality random facts, useless trivia and other esoterica from the world wide web. He lives mostly behind a keyboard and may or may not be a wizened old green man who speaks in grammatically incorrect aphorisms. You can find more on his home page http://pictually.me/dontpanic

First off, apologues in advance as there will be no column next week. But I'll be back the week after. So, see you on the other side....

A Boy And His Atom

Stop-motion movies seem to be the rage these days. So when IBM decides to venture into the field for an ad, you know it's going to be special. And 'A Boy & His Atom' can definitely be called that. It's been certified by the Guinness Book Of World Records as the smallest movie ever made. And the reason for that is that the entire movie has been made by moving actual atoms, frame by frame. Yup, you heard me: atoms. Created using technology developed by scientists at IBM's Almaden Research Lab, this ad shows atoms magnified to about 100 million times their original size and manipulated using needles that would draw within one nanometer of individual atoms to move them into place for the next frame. Apparently, this is IBM's way of predicting a future where an individual bit of data can be stored on no more than 12 atoms (compared to a million now). Which means that every movie in the world can be carried around on your iPhone. Show me where to sign up!

Spock vs Spock

And since we are on the topic of great ads and all things science, here's my nerdgasm pick of the week. The new ad for the 2013 Audi S7 is every Star Trek fan’s dream come true. All I want to tell you is this: 2 Spocks in a brutal race to the finish, 3D chess and Vulcan Neck Pinches. Live long….and prosper!

City Of Anarchy

The Kowloon Walled City - probably one of the most famous slums in the world. And not to take anything away from the 'slumdogs' and guided tours of Dharavi, but this Chinese oddity wins simply on the strength of its architecture alone. Surrounded by a stone wall (duh!), the alleys in this 6.5 acre plot were around 6 feet wide on average and the dense network of interconnected staircases and passageways meant that you could apparently go from the north end to the south without ever touching the ground. Think Hogwarts without the magic. Or space. Or big-budget movie adaptations. With very poor lighting. It was finally demolished in 1993 and a park now occupies the spot. But on the 20th anniversary of this event, the South China Morning Post has created an interesting infographic that shows you a cross-section of life inside the Walled City.

What: UEA International Non-Fiction Writing Course, ICCR, Kolkota, mail  This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or send sample to School of Literature, Drama & Creative Writing, University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ, United Kingdom, Rs 25,000 per person for 8 days, accommodation not included.

Why: The University of East Anglia—which has one of the top writing programmes in the world—has just announced its second international creative writing workshop in non-fiction led by Amit Chaudhuri and Patrick French. To participate, you need to send in a 2,000 word sample with your CV and reference.  This is a good course for people interested in “biography, essay, travel writing, popular history writing, psychogeography and the urban experience.” Plus you get to meet and hang out with talented aspiring writers from around the world, and receive a certificate of completion at the end. Shake(speare) and bake!

When: Last date for applications is 7 June, 2013. Course starts on July 16.

“And you? When will you begin that long journey into yourself?”

While you might be too busy today to take the journey Rumi suggests, we’re sure you have time for a thirty second break. We certainly did, and returned with a bucketful of nostalgia and a thin coating of dust.

Higher Ground

Back in South Mumbai after a long hiatus, the newest addition to the bpb office decided to swing by her alma mater in Fort on her way to work. Chalk it up to beginner’s luck, but while there, she spotted a pretty building with a little plaque that claimed that The Navsari Building is not just the only one with a red façade on the street, but it also has one of the oldest elevators in India.

How could she resist?

Rooming Essentials

A foray inside revealed that the Navsari Building, like many neo-classical structures in the Fort area, was built in the early 1900s and houses bank offices and other financial institutions.  The Navsari has been conserved by the MMR Heritage Conservation Society and The Heritage Mile Association-an organization of local stakeholders like shop keepers, tenants and owners.

And the elevator? Manned by a disappointingly young and dour plainclothes watchman, it is about the size of a small house in Mumbai and even boasts a bench for you to sit on while you travel all the way up to the fourth floor, which takes exactly 32 seconds. Yes, of course we timed it.

Our little ride got us thinking about how best to use those thirty seconds, and so we asked our panel of experts:

Amogh Ranadive, stand-up comedian: Pick up a girl in the elevator in under 30 seconds with this line: “Hey baby do you know what else goes up as slowly as this lift….”. bpb tip: carry a helmet, in case you get your head bashed in.

Narayanan Nambudripad, vocalist, Caesar’s Palace: Listen to Feels Just Like It Should by Jamiroquai for a 30 second pick-up on your way up to a party. Never fails!

Amit Kumar, Owner, Love and Cheesecake: You can whip up this recipe in half a minute: Fill candy cups to the brim with chocolate and let them sit until the chocolate starts to set around the edges. Then invert them and let the excess drip out. You'll be left with a thin, even coating on the sides and bottom of your candy cup. You can now fill them with cream, topping them with fresh chopped mangoes.