Mumbai Diary: Saturday Dossier

A dholrsquos houseWorkers at a dholak shop in Lalbaug market are hard at work to meet the demand for GaneshotsavMadhav Mantrirsquos birth centenary on webTaking Covid19 restrictions in their stride the family of late Test cricketer Madhav Mantri came up with a fine way to mark his September 1 birth centenaryThey developed a website madhavkmantricentenarycom which among other material has video tributes to Mantri 19212014 from some of the best names in Indian and Mumbai cricket starting from his nephew Sunil Gavaskar Therersquos also a message from fellow batting great Gundappa Viswanath who is married to Gavaskarrsquos sister Kavita Dilip Vengsarkar and Sachin Tendulkar too wax eloquent on their 1990 England tour managerThe effort to get a galaxy of big names to talk about Mantri was made by his niece Arati A good amount of motivation came from the fact that her uncle told her about his wish to live a 100 years He fell seven short passing away a few days after that May 2014 conversationGently flicking away plaudits for doing what she did Arati chooses to praise the cricketers who responded to her request for messages immediately Some of them requested for a longish video to express their thoughts and with good reason because Mantri contributed to cricket on several fronts mdash player captain selector treasurer Mumbai Cricket Association president mdash and much more By the way Nari Contractor speaks for 21 minutesArati stresses that the tributesrsquo website was made possible by her energetic and talented family the last message received was uploaded a few minutes before 12 am on September 1 The Mantri family has done well to pay tribute to a man who truly embodied what giving back to the game means Click that linkShell yeahDr Shailendra Singh with a female redcrowned roofed turtleIn a boost for Indiarsquos wildlife conservation platforms Lucknowbased aquatic wildlife biologist Dr Shailendra Singh was recently awarded the 16th Annual Behler Turtle Conservation Award considered the Nobel Prize of the turtle conservation field Dr Singh who leads the Turtle Survival Alliance TSA India programme is credited with starting the Chambal River turtle conservation programme which focused on restoring the dwindling population of redcrowned roofed turtles He shared that this is the first time that an Indian has received the award ldquoI didnrsquot expect this at all All the leading turtle conservation forces of the world collaborate on this award My focus has been on a severely threatened group of turtles called Batagur of which three species exist in India apart from another species the black softshell turtle which we recently recategorised as critically endangeredrdquo he addedWheels of kindness set in motionSometimes it takes children to show adults the way Recently kids from a citybased initiative called Me 2 Kids Club which comprises over 100 families from Mumbai collectively pooled in 20 damaged bicycles that they repaired and transported to Chinchwadi village near Neral ldquoWe have opened a sports and games library there and we gave the bicycles to a group of boys on the condition that they would take care of repairing the cycles when needed and let the members of the library ride them for free every Thursday Otherwise they can rent the bikes out to people for a nominal cost of 10 per hour in order to make some moneyrdquo shared Dilip Jain who started Me 2 Kids Club Thatrsquos a great gesture we feelFor our farmersA new book Ramrao The Story of Indiarsquos Farm Crisis HarperCollins India reminds us of the pitiable conditions that many of our farmers live in Nagpurbased veteran journalist Jaideep Hardikar in pic has penned it and the title follows the story of Ramrao Panchleniwar a cottongrower in Maharashtrarsquos Vidarbha region who unsuccessfully tried dying by suicide after consuming pesticide ldquoHe strives to make his life better but almost invariably ends up with economic lossesrdquo Hardikar shared about his protagonistTech turn for Indian kidlitThe Funky Rainbow bookshopIn the past eightandahalf years Bengalurubased independent childrenrsquos bookshop and book consultancy Funky Rainbow has singlemindedly focused on introducing kids to contemporary Indian literature Since 2020 theyrsquove been running an online book bazaar building a community of readers parents researchers and educators ldquoA lot of them ask us more about the creators of the books Often we lead them to the writerrsquos or the illustratorrsquos website But of the 2500 creators on our platform not even 10 per cent have their own siterdquo its founderpartner Vidya Mani told us This has prompted them to start a new offering for creators ldquoWersquoll make personalised mini websites for childrenrsquos writers and illustrators which will provide their bibliography trailers reviews and the option to buy books too mdash something most creators wonrsquot know how to do or itrsquos too expensive to dordquo she added Interested folks can drop them a line at funkyrainbowmailgmailcom