top of page

By:

Quaid Najmi

4 January 2025 at 3:26:24 pm

Maulana’s 'gullak' initiative touches 60K students

Read & Lead Foundation President Maulana Abdul Qayyum Mirza with daughter Mariyam Mirza. Mumbai/Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar: In the new age controlled by smart-gadgets and social media, an academic from Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar has sparked a small, head-turning and successful - ‘savings and reading’ revolution among middle-school children. Launched in 2006, by Maulana Abdul Qayyum Mirza, the humble initiative turns 20 this year and witnessed over 60,000 free savings boxes (gullaks)...

Maulana’s 'gullak' initiative touches 60K students

Read & Lead Foundation President Maulana Abdul Qayyum Mirza with daughter Mariyam Mirza. Mumbai/Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar: In the new age controlled by smart-gadgets and social media, an academic from Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar has sparked a small, head-turning and successful - ‘savings and reading’ revolution among middle-school children. Launched in 2006, by Maulana Abdul Qayyum Mirza, the humble initiative turns 20 this year and witnessed over 60,000 free savings boxes (gullaks) distributed to Class V-VIII students in 52 government and private schools. “The aim was to inculcate a love for ‘saving and reading’ among young children. We started by presenting small plastic ‘gullaks’ (savings boxes) at the Iqra Boys & Girls High School, and later to many other schools,” Mirza said with a tinge of satisfaction. Scoffed by sceptics, it soon caught the eyes of the schools and parents who loved the idea that kept the kids off mischief, but gave them the joy of quietly slipping Re. 1 or even Rs. 5 save from their daily pocket money into the ‘gullak’. “That tiny ‘gullak’ costing barely Rs 3-Rs 5, becomes almost like their personal tiny bank which they guard fiercely and nobody dares touch it. At the right time they spend the accumulated savings to buy books of their choice – with no questions asked. Isn’t it better than wasting it on toys or sweets or amusement,” chuckled Mirza. A childhood bookworm himself, Mirza, now 50, remembers how he dipped into his school’s ‘Book Box’ to avail books of his choice and read them along with the regular syllabus. “Reading became my passion, not shared by many then or even now… Sadly, in the current era, reading and saving are dying habits. I am trying to revive them for the good of the people and country,” Maulana Mirza told The Perfect Voice. After graduation, Mirza was jobless for sometime, and decided to make his passion as a profession – he took books in a barter deal from the renowned Nagpur philanthropist, Padma Bhushan Maulana Abdul Karim Parekh, lugged them on a bicycle to hawk outside mosques and dargahs. He not only sold the entire stock worth Rs 3000 quickly, but asked astonished Parekh for more – and that set the ball rolling in a big way, ultimately emboldening him to launch the NGO, ‘Read & Lead Foundation’ (2018). “However, despite severe resources and manpower crunch, we try to cater to the maximum number of students, even outside the district,” smiled Mirza. The RLF is also supported by his daughter Mariyam Mirza’s Covid-19 pandemic scheme, ‘Mohalla Library Movement’ that catapulted to global fame, and yesterday (Oct. 20), the BBC telecast a program featuring her. The father-daughter duo urged children to shun mobiles, video-games, television or social media and make ‘books as their best friends’, which would always help in life, as they aim to gift 1-lakh students with ‘gullaks’ in the next couple of years. At varied intervals Mirza organizes small school book fairs where the excited kids troop in, their pockets bulging with their own savings, and they proudly purchase books of their choice in Marathi, English, Hindi or Urdu to satiate their intellectual hunger. Fortunately, the teachers and parents support the kids’ ‘responsible spending’, for they no longer waste hours before screens but attentively flip pages of their favourite books, as Mirza and others solicit support for the cause from UNICEF, UNESCO, and global NGOs/Foundations. RLF’s real-life savers: Readers UNICEF’s Jharkhand District Coordinator and ex-TISS alumnus Abul Hasan Ali is full of gratitude for the ‘gullak’ habit he inculcated years ago, while Naregaon Municipal High School students Lakhan Devdas (Class 6) and Sania Youssef (Class 8) say they happily saved most of their pocket or festival money to splurge on their favourite books...! Zilla Parishad Girls Primary School (Aurangpura) teacher Jyoti Pawar said the RLF has proved to be a “simple, heartwarming yet effective way” to habituate kids to both reading and savings at a tender age, while a parent Krishna Shinde said it has “changed the whole attitude of children”. “We encourage books of general interest only, including inspiring stories of youth icons like Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai (28) and environmentalist Greta Thunberg (23) which fascinates our students, and other popular children’s literature,” smiled Mirza. The Maulana’s RLF, which has opened three dozen libraries in 7 years, acknowledges that every coin dropped into the small savings boxes begins a new chapter – and turns into an investment in knowledge that keeps growing.

Silence! This Court is not in Session

The 71st National Film Awards will be remembered for the silence that buried a four-decade prize for cinema’s writers.


ree

“Silence is Golden” goes the famous saying. But silence cuts both ways. “Silence is the unbearable repartee,” said G. K. Chesterton.  But in case of the 71st National Film Awards announced in August this year, silence has come like deadly arrows shooting out of a massive quill to attack 27 innocent authors who had entered their books on cinema for the Best Book on Cinema Award.

 

These authors, dedicated and committed in writing significant books shedding light on different aspects of Indian cinema, had entered their books for the coveted award. The wait stretched on to eleven months as entries closed in September 2024. But the three-member jury for the Best Critic Award and the Best Book on Cinema award was conspicuous by its absence at the PIB’s August 2 briefing while the press conference organized by the PIB blithely skipped over why the award had been dropped.

 

This award for the Best Book on Cinema was instituted 40 years ago but was never met with such complete silence. No one said that none of the books was deserving of the award. Or, that the jury had been disbanded and the Chairman had fallen very sick. This came from an insider.

 

Every author not only spent hours, research and dedication in the writing of the book, leaving aside (a) the struggle to get a publisher ready to publish a book on cinema which has a narrow market in terms of sales, (b) read the proofs and okay them, (c) organize the documents to go with the entry, (d) pay an entrance fee of Rs.5000+ besides (d) parcelling five copies of the book entered for the award which will never be returned. What happens to these entrants now? Will the five copies of their book entered along with the entrance fee be refunded by the National Awards organizers? Ethically, it is the entrants’ right to get back the books and the money because the award has been withheld without forwarding any reason for the same.

 

Among past winners of the same award have been graced by celebrity names like Vijaya Mulay, B.D. Garga, S. Jayachandran Nayar, Madhu Eravankara and many others including late actor Gopi. Books could be entered in any Indian language recognized by the Indian constitution. For regional languages a jury member did not know, he/she was asked to find out a master in the said language with a love for cinema in the city where he/she lived, and then vest on him the responsibility of going through the book with a tooth-comb and then decide on the quality of the book. This writer was once a jury member for this award so she knows.

 

What happened remains a mystery. Unless the committee deigns to reply to her emails, silence will have to stand in for explanation. If the award was to be scrapped, why invite entries? And if none of 27 books was deemed worthy, why not say so? (a claim hard to credit given the range and quality submitted)

 

Two entries, I can attest, were more than worthy: one a meticulous study of Sridevi’s work across four southern languages that doubled as a history of cinema in those states; the other a sweeping volume of 75 reviews charting Indian film over 75 years of independence.

 

Isn’t it really strange that Shahrukh Khan with his 32-year-long track record in Hindi cinema should have to share the Best Actor Award with a rank newcomer like Vikrant Massey never mind the latter’s excellent performance in Twelfth Fail? Equally strange that Shahrukh bagged the award for ‘Jawan’ - a film that raises strong questions not only about its qualitative elements but also about Khan’s performance as compared to his superb turns in ‘Swadesh’ or ‘Chak De India.’ I genuinely think Shahrukh Khan was more surprised for bagging Best Actor for a film whose sole aim was to rake in several crores within the first week of its release. Or did (as the yellow press would have it) Ashutosh Gowarikar, the main jury chairperson, try to compensate for his Swadesh actor not having won the award for his film? Think about this. As the late Ghatak kept on saying, “Learn to think. Practice thinking.”

 

(The author is a noted film scholar and a double-winner for the National Award for Best Writing on Cinema. Views personal)

 

 

Comments

bottom of page