Mumbai Diary: Sunday Dossier

I see youRudra paces past his reflection in the pool at the tiger enclosure of the Veermata Jijabai Bhosale Udyan Byculla ZooWell bowled Bhajji on Hindi commentary criticismHindi commentary during the ongoing Indian Premier League is not being lapped up by a section of the Indian audience The commentators are unpleasantly loud some cricket lovers told this diarist but one enthusiast recently posted a video on X to express his anguish over the current Hindi commentators whom he didnrsquot name out of respectHarbhajan Singh PicGetty ImagesHe felt that todayrsquos Hindi commentary didnrsquot improve the cricket knowledge of its listeners like the way Sushil Doshi Maninder Singh Arun Lal and Ashok Malhotra did Poor Hindi commentary was evident in the Champions Trophy too he feltIndiarsquos spin great Harbhajan Singh a Hindi commentator himself read the post and replied ldquoThank you for the input We will work on itrdquo Harbhajanrsquos response was appreciated by X users ldquoWow someone taking it on the chin and promising to improve Never even seen it in politics or cricketrdquo said one Letrsquos hope all those listening to Hindi commentary enjoy better days and while we say so we cannot lose sight of the fact that Hindi commentary is a big boon to cricket loversLife in reverseThe Chevrolet and Fiat advertised in an age of innocenceAT A time when automobile tariffs are roiling the world with global leaders denouncing United States President Donald Trump for tariff measures it is best to start your day in reverse gear A dash of nostalgia it is about when cars were priced in the low thousands These sepiatoned pictures doing the rounds on WhatsApp will make you chuckle and long for the days of yore There is one advertisement for a Chevrolet at R2700 today this will get you approximately 27 litres of petrol The Fiat is priced at R9750 exclusive of taxes cautions the small print These were the days when one was born free and certainly not taxed to deathWhen kids ask lsquoWhyrsquoAn exhibit that draws children in to find out more about seedsChildren are curious about the world and have tough questions So the Museum of Solutions MuSo is leading them to those answers with The Big Why Fest The idea of the festival is to take kids through the workings of the world Exhibits include ldquoWhy does the water come from the taprdquo which uses audiovisuals to explain the process At another floor kids create 3D prototypes and on weekends they can interact with a robot and understand the workings of AI ldquoThis is our first edition of the festival and we are covering STEM subjects All the exhibits are based on the kidsrsquo school curricula to make it more relevant for themrdquo explains a manager at MuSo The Make Lab and Discover Lab feature the most exhibits related to the festival But other floors like MuSorsquos most recent opening the Grow Lab also encourage questions The lush terrace garden with trees and a pond also offers kids a chance to feel and understand textures of the soil Therersquos also an observatory complete with magnifying glasses for kids to find species of ants spiders and roaches buried in the soil in their tanks Here kids can ask lsquowhyrsquo some seeds travel and others donrsquot or lsquowhyrsquo water droplets bead up on lotus leavesThe art of transelationPriya Sarukkai Chabria PicRafeeq Ellias right Mrinalini HarchandRai PicManmeet BhattiWhat HAT is a dragon doing in a book of poetry Thatrsquos what we wondered when we heard of The Dragonrsquos Heart World Poetry in Translation Jadavpur University Press Rs 1250 an anthology released earlier this month An introduction to the book by coeditor Priya Sarukkai Chabria a Mumbaikar now residing in Pune dwells on the Norse mythological tale of Fafnir the dragon ldquoLike the dragonrsquos blood that dragon slayer Sigurd tasted by accident upon which he could understand the language of the birds this book of translation is like tasting the blood of understandingrdquo says coeditor Mrinalini Harchandrai poet and novelist based in south Mumbai The book honours plurality featuring poetry translated into English from 33 languages with contributions by almost 150 poets and more than 80 translators including Booker winner Daisy Rockwell Adil Jussawalla and Ranjit Hoskote The book enshrines the act of translation as an art in itself Each entry is accompanied by the ldquoTranslatorrsquos Reflectionsrdquo on the approach they chosemdashliteral interpretive or intuitive ldquoThe Dragonrsquos Heart is not just a collection of translations but a masterclass on the craft of translationrdquo says HarchandraiSpidey senses are tinglingThe arachnid discovered by Rishikesh Tripathi rightON A trek around Silent Valley National Park in Kerala Mumbaikar Rishikesh Tripathi came across a spider Nothing great for a layman but for the arachnologist it was a discovery Tripathi encountered the new kind of spider again via a friend in Amboli Maharashtra The two serendipitous encounters and further research revealed that they are two new spiders of the genus Indothele found in India and Sri Lanka which are ground spiders that stay in burrows These two have been named Indothele Silent Valley and Indothele Amboli ldquoThe spiders we found are mygalomorphs a category that havenrsquot evolved much so we can study them to understand how they developed into other species of spidersrdquo says Tripathi