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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.

Why Was Srijit's Film Excluded from Indian Panorama at IFFI?

Updated: Nov 12, 2024

Srijit

Mukherjee is among the top-ranking directors in contemporary Bengali cinema. He shoots different films almost simultaneously so that there are several releases under his directorial baton released within the same calendar year. He is also an extremely versatile director whose spans many genres ranging from historical fiction, re-interpreted and re-written remakes, thrillers, romances and so on.


He began his directorial journey in 2010 with Autograph, a reinterpreted version of Satyajit Ray’s Nayak still remembered not only for the masterful performance of Prosenjit but more importantly, for the magical songs and mood music the film was enriched with.


Though he has individually won five National Awards for his different contributions to Bengali cinema, Padatik till today, will be considered his best filmover his directorial career spanning 14 years. For the unitiated, Padatik is the name of a classic feature film made by Mrinal Sen himself in 1974. Srijit’s film has no link whatsoever with Mrinal Sen’s film though their titles are identical.


Srijit’s film traces the life of Mrinal Sen from boyhood till his death. The film opens with a partly fictionalised, Black-and-White clipping reiterating the huge processions following the passing away of Rabindranath Tagore when among the thronging crowds, a young man carrying the dead body of his infant baby, loses the baby in the stampede.


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Tagore has no link with the film but it focusses on how the life of an ordinary man can get destroyed in a stampede gathered to pay their last respects to a great man.


Padatik means “foot soldier” a metaphorical title that suggests the unstable life of the runaway political rebel in Mrinal Sen’s original film forced to hide to escape police arrest. What kind of “foot soldier is he? Is he forced to keep running? Or has he chosen to keep running?


The answer to this is suggested towards the end of the film which leaves the question open for the audience to draw conclusions from. Srijit’s Padatik is a tribute to this great man who, in terms of his work as a filmmaker, had been a foot soldier all his life, never ever compromising to commercial demands even when there was no rice in the kitchen, with his wife, Gita, offering a strong pillar of support. Says Srijit of this film, “Actually interweaving the various aspects of Mrinal Sen’s life — his personal life, his upheavals, his work, his politics, Mrinal Sen as a father, as a husband, his relationship with his peers, his filmmaking style — all of it has been cooked together in the perfect proportion in Padatik. People are calling it my best film ever. It is very overwhelming.”


The latest news is that Srijit Mukherjee’s Padatik has been selected for special screening as Indian Panorama Feature Jury Recommends at the 55th International Film Festival of India, which will be held in Goa from Nov 20 to 28. The selection resolves the controversy regarding the film’s initial exclusion allegedly due to its Mrinal Sen association.


What “association”?

The firm belief that Mrinal Sen was a believer in Leftist ideology which goes against the Hindu Right evident from Goa IFFI’s choice of the film on Veer Savarkar as the inaugural film. But no one has ever expressed this in so many words.


Whilst discussing the exclusion of ‘Padatik’ from the Indian Panorama and its subsequent inclusion for special screening, Mukherji referenced Prasun Chatterjee’s ‘Dostojee’. The film initially wasn’t included but was subsequently added upon jury recommendation. I’m delighted this occurred with ‘Padatik’ as well,” Mukherji said.


Director Chandraprakash Dwivedi, jury chairperson, said, “Mrinal Sen was and remains an icon of Bharat and an inspiration for countless cinema enthusiasts worldwide who cherished his storytelling and admired his approach to social issues through films. I’m exceedingly pleased to see Padatik at the 55th IFFI through the jury’s collective wisdom and endeavour.”


(The author is a veteran film writer based in Kolkata. Views personal.)

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