Like many ‘90s kids, Munavar Zama grew up on films like Kal Ho Naa Ho, Hum Tum, Jerry Maguire, Four Weddings and a Funeral, Love Actually and When Harry Met Sally. “They had all those tropes of a good rom-com: boy meets girl, maybe a bit of reluctance and misunderstanding, then they fall in love. I am a big fan of this particular genre,” he laughs, during an interview in Bengaluru. This brand of cinema especially appeals to him because it involves “an equal relationship between the boy and the girl, with the latter having as much agency as the former.”

Not surprisingly, Munavar’s debut film Chasing Rahul, a 60-minute romp through modern-day Bengaluru, starring Sunaina Ruth, Saketh Janardhana, Naimunnisa Khan, and Nevin Reuben, follows this template.

The charming love story between an old-school romantic, Sama, and the effervescent, if flaky, Rahul highlights the complexities of modern dating. “Love in the time of algorithms, as we say,” says Munavar, who believes that while dating may be easier on paper, dating fatigue is real.

“Access is easier in modern dating, as everything is just one swipe away. So the efforts, the grand gestures, the traditional wooing, the little things associated with old-school dating sometimes go away,” he says. “Additionally, there is also the temptation that a more compatible person is there in the next swipe,” says Munavar, who believes that relationships that work depend on how you work through things together. “You cherish the good parts, accept certain differences and come to common ground on others.”

Chasing Rahul is also very much a film of place, with Bengaluru being as vivid a character as the two protagonists, who romance each other in some of the city’s most familiar spots, including the KR Puram flower market, VV Puram food street, Kanteerava Stadium, Sankey Tank, Ulsoor Lake, Vidyarthi Bhavan, Vidhana Soudha, Cubbon Park, Church Street, and Indiranagar’s 100 Feet Road. “I moved to Bengaluru in 2022, and in a way the city helped me reinvent myself,” Munavar explains. Not only did he find great friends, relationships, and communities, but it also “nurtured the artist in me.”

Like Munavar, the film’s protagonist, Rahul, is also a new migrant to the city, one which has both protected its old-school charm and evolved into the country’s technology capital, as Munavar points out. “Rahul is in love with the city, and wants to share the magic with others.” This includes Sama, a localite, who ends up falling in love with her city again over the course of the film.

“I wanted to make the film a one-hour trip through Bengaluru, where hopefully even the people who grew up here will find something that to cherish and celebrate the city.”

About Munavar

Munavar, who grew up in Coimbatore, calls himself “a connoisseur of stories.” He recalls being enthralled by everything that came on cable TV back in the day. “I started with Bollywood movies, both the good ones and the cringe films. As I grew older, the range expanded to include world cinema and Hollywood and I also became active in film societies.”

Though Munavar had always been a fan of the medium and dreamt of becoming a filmmaker, life soon took over. So, he went on to complete a degree in mechanical engineering and moved to Saudi Arabia to work. “I was a guy who would take all my friends to the movie theatre on the first day. Then I moved to Saudi Arabia, which didn’t even have movie theatres back then.”

He spent years there working in construction, thinking filmmaking was merely a pipe dream. “I lied to myself, telling myself that I wasn’t a filmmaker but a film viewer,” says Munavar, who later returned to India and pursued an MBA at IIM Ahmedabad. “I thought of getting a job with some OTT platform, in a corporate role and working my way into movies. I applied to every platform you can think of a hundred times, but did not get an interview call,” he says.

Instead, Munavar moved to the FMCG sector, and during his last job as National Manager, Digital Marketing at Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages, he decided to rekindle his film dream. “I realised I needed to invest in myself. After all, if you don’t believe in your dreams, who will?”

Taking a chance

The film idea emerged from a play Munavar began writing in 2023. “The play was about an idealistic girl, Sama, navigating adulthood and romance,” he says, adding that Sama, an idealist like Munavar himself, often felt shortchanged by adult life and modern dating.

Around the same time, Munavar also thought of making a series of meet-cute shorts for social media platforms. As he began writing for this second project, Sama ended up getting intertwined in these stories, so “I took her from my play and put her there. That is how the movie started.”

A series of choices made during filming expanded the scope of the project, starting with shooting it in landscape mode instead of vertically. “Each professional addition made the project bigger. The music, the camera, the edit, the performance. From the first day of the shoot to the last day, we didn’t realise it would come on the big screen,” says Munavar, who used his savings to make the film, which he describes as “imperfectly perfect. I’ve made every mistake that you are not supposed to, while making a debut film,” he smiles.

Take, for instance, the choice to make a film in English. “Traditionally, people would say to make a movie in a regional language since English-language films don’t work in India.” Or his choice of actors. “When you choose your leads, people nowadays check Instagram following or choose someone well-established.”

He has also chosen to eschew the grammar of independent filmmaking, which strives to make a film more festival-friendly. “I did not follow the algorithm…what an OTT or cinema theatre wants because we didn’t really know what we were making,” admits Munavar, who believes it is simply the manifestation and prayers of the entire team that brought them to a theatre in the first place. “I am grateful we have reached the theatre, but the battle is not won. We also have to make sure that the people of the city get to know about the movie.”

Despite his current trepidations, the journey so far has given him the confidence to make more films. “I’ve already written my next screenplay, and again this city is a very important part of that story. Hopefully, once the film is out and things settle down, I can go back to polishing my script.”

Chasing Rahul will release in select theatres in the city on September 18

What started as a picnic for craft aficionados at Bengaluru’s Cubbon Park two years ago has now blossomed into a group with over 1,400 members across age groups. Next week, this group — Crafty — will celebrate its 100th meetup with a one-day fest in the city. 

Reminiscing about how it all started, founder Rahul Jadhav says he used to crochet bookmarks and coasters and gift them to friends. When his peers reached out to him to learn the craft, he started teaching them at his residence. “Eventually, we thought, why not do the same thing, but as a picnic at Cubbon Park? I shared a reel about it on my Instagram account, and more friends were interested in attending. That’s how the Crafty meetups started as a crochet community, but it has grown over the last two years into a community that welcomes all arts and crafts,” shares Rahul, who is an independent news publisher and runs the entertainment news site, Wiki of Thrones, that has over four million followers on social media.

Today, their WhatsApp group has 1,400 members, and 19,000 on Instagram. These members pursue various art forms: crochet, knitting, embroidery, punch needling, painting, sculpting, and more.

“Some members are interested in jewellery making, paper crafts, upcycling, art journaling, and resin art. One of our group members, Meetali, has a portable charkha, and she spins cotton into yarn on the charkha. The list is endless!” says Rahul, 38, who hosts meet-ups every Sunday at Cubbon Park.

To be held next weekend, Crafty Bazaar will have close to 50 stalls set up by members from the group. “We have received submissions for a lot of different arts and crafts, some of which include crochet, embroidery, wood work, hand-made jewellery, eco-printed clothes, paintings, punch needle, quilling, paper weaving art, and crystal beaded bags,” says Rahul, adding that these stalls will be smaller than usual exhibition tables “because we wanted to provide an opportunity to more group members to showcase their products”.

In addition to purchasing handcrafted products, visitors can participate in a range of workshops. These include eco printing (₹3,000), a hands-on tie-dye and bandhej session (₹799), beginner’s Tunisian crochet (₹1,000), DIY finger knitting (₹999), coffee affirmation art(₹1,000), notebook embroidery (₹499), and more. 

Muneef Khan, a learning and development specialist by profession, who is also passionate about knitting, crochet, punch needling, and loom knitting, has been a regular at the Crafty meet-ups. “I started with crochet because one of my friend’s sisters was expecting a baby, and I wanted to create something handmade so I used my grandmother’s materials to make a cardigan,” he says, adding that all his learning has been through YouTube.

Soon, one thing led to another, and Muneef reached out to Rahul via a friend. “The group started with just seven or eight of us, and now it has grown massively. This group is about socialising, meeting like-minded people, and Rahul gives us the space to be who we are. We have also received opportunities to participate in events like A Hundred Hands.”

Commemorating the 100th meet-up with an event was important for Rahul. “I wanted to provide a platform for our community and ensure that they get to keep 100% of the revenue. In addition, we are ticketing the event, and I am also looking for sponsors.”

Neha Lal, an embroidery artist and affirmation artist, joined the group courtesy of her eight-year-old daughter, who knits. “She was given a kit for her birthday two years ago, and we were struggling to get it right for months. One day, I was out with a friend for coffee, discussing how hard it was to get knitting right. At the next table, I spotted Muneef knitting and approached him to teach my daughter. This meeting led me to Crafty, where I rekindled my joy for art that I had put on the back burner for years,” she says.    

Over the last two years, Rahul has met many people at the meet-ups, and says he has realised one thing: that many have full-time jobs and make these products in their spare time. “They also try to sell these products, but they usually struggle to find buyers. I wanted to figure out a solution to help crafters reach customers and make money from selling their art.” Soon, a Crafty website will launch, and Rahul aims for this to be a “discovery platform where people can find talented artists”.

On July 18, Saturday, from 11 am to 8 pm. At Sabha, Kamaraj Road. Entry and workshop tickets at offlyn.life/e/rrmfWRK

For details, visit @craftymeets on Instagram

Published – July 09, 2026 08:33 am IST

For Suresh Jayaram, Cubbon Park is a people’s place, one that represents the democratic fabric of our society. “It is a very eclectic, secular space that has been, for a long time, an axis of the city,” says the Bengaluru-based writer, visual artist, art historian and curator, the founder of the 1Shanthiroad Studio/Gallery.

His new book, Cubbon Park: Citizens’ Perspectives and Many Visions for the Future, engages with the city’s central green lung, which he feels, “belongs to everyone” and has “a kind of palimpsest of history from pre-colonial, colonial, post-colonial times…and within these layers of history, there is also a certain environment and ecology that is part of the park.”

Also read: Cubbon park is central to Bengaluru’s existence

He uses an interesting format to tell the story of Cubbon Park, comprising a series of interviews conducted with 26 fellow Bengaleans, and interspersed with factoids and evocative photographs. It, of course, delves into the park’s history and its built and natural environments. But it is so much more than that, presenting the park as a space that has fostered community, harboured memories, developed artistic inclinations, nurtured desire and love, or simply allowed people to be.

“I wanted to collect different voices, almost like a conductor or a sutradhar, string them together and make it a citizens’ perspective,” says Suresh, who thinks of this book as a contemporary, ethnographic document and archival material, reflecting the Bengaluru-specific identity of the various citizens and stakeholders it features. It is, he says, “a book speaking about the city’s green spaces and community as well as questioning the role of the government. It gives them the idea that parks need not be regimented like this.”

The idea for Cubbon Park: Citizens’ Perspectives and Many Visions for the Future emerged soon after his book on Lalbagh, Bangalore’s Lalbagh: A Chronicle of the Garden and the City, was published back in 2021. “My research about Bengaluru has been happening intensely for the past 25 years,” says Suresh, who is also behind a project called Bangalore Mapping, which he started with a few artist friends. “I collected a lot of information, and the result was the Lalbagh book.”

Also read: ‘Bengaluru’s bookstores bring people a little closer to calling this city their own’

When he began looking more closely at Cubbon Park, “I realised it is very different from Lalbagh,” he says. Unlike Lalbagh, which was primarily conceptualised as a botanical garden, Cubbon Park is essentially a public park, standing between Bengaluru’s Cantonment and Pete areas, and is deeply connected to the judiciary, government, culture and people.

“I believe there was a toll gate that restricted people from going into the Cantonment, and you had to return at a certain time. But, in post-Independent India, it became a bridge between these two areas,” says Suresh, who refers to it as a space that is “quite porous with many entries and exits. This makes a park a crucible of people from different social ranks.”

When people visit the city, they almost always go to Cubbon Park to get a slice of Bengaluru that they don’t get anywhere else, he says, adding that it is an extremely walkable part of town, allowing a visitor to “get a sense of the colonial past, rest and see some art (at the nearby museums), look at nature or even attend a concert at bandstand. We don’t have a beach in Bengaluru, so the place to go to is a garden, where you can eat roasted corn or peanuts, snacks associated with leisure and sharing.”

Having said that, he also agrees that the park’s nature is changing as surveillance within it mounts and freedoms are continually being curtailed. “Gentrification is the new colonisation. We need to be sensitive to people’s needs,” he says. He feels that if someone wants to come and sleep in the park because they are tired, or come from a village for a court case and need to use the park’s facilities, it should be allowed. Cubbon Park is, after all, a people’s park and is eventually for them. “If there are no people, why should there be a park?”

Also read: Avatihalli railway station outside Bengaluru to house a new silk museum

He insists that the commons, cultural and natural resources that should be accessible to all members of a society, like Cubbon Park, “need to be proactive, welcoming, and non-judgmental…a place where people can meet others, and not only engage with conversation, but also believe in a city which can be taken care of,” says Suresh, who hopes that more people will pick up the book and engage with the park.

Suresh also talks about how a green space like Cubbon Park is essential for another reason, one that is often undervalued: its role in promoting mental well-being. “Sitting in the park and engaging with nature is a fundamental human thing,” he says, pointing out that the citizens of Bengaluru get to engage more with nature because of the city’s numerous parks and its weather, which allows plants to grow in abundance.

“These are gifts that the makers of Bengaluru have given to us; they believed that public health is also dependent on people enjoying a fountain or sitting on a garden seat or looking at a blossoming tree.”

Cubbon Park: Citizens’ Perspectives and Many Visions for the Future is available against a donation of ₹1,199.00 at all major city bookstores.

Published – June 26, 2026 09:18 am IST