30 March,2025 07:30 AM IST | Mumbai | Team SMD
Pic/Ashish Raje
Rudra paces past his reflection in the pool at the tiger enclosure of the Veermata Jijabai Bhosale Udyan (Byculla Zoo)
Hindi 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 didn't name out of respect.
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Harbhajan Singh. Pic/Getty Images
He felt that today's Hindi commentary didn't 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 felt.
India's spin great Harbhajan Singh, a Hindi commentator himself, read the post and replied: "Thank you for the input. We will work on it." Harbhajan's response was appreciated by X users. "Wow, someone taking it on the chin and promising to improve. Never even seen it in politics or cricket," said one. Let's 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 lovers.
The Chevrolet and Fiat advertised in an age of innocence
AT 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 sepia-toned 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 death!
An exhibit that draws children in to find out more about seeds
Children 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 "Why does the water come from the tap?" which uses audio-visuals 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. "This is our first edition of the festival, and we are covering STEM subjects. All the exhibits are based on the kids' school curricula to make it more relevant for them," explains a manager at MuSo. The Make Lab and Discover Lab feature the most exhibits related to the festival. But other floors, like MuSo's 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. There's 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 âwhy' some seeds travel and others don't or âwhy' water droplets bead up on lotus leaves.
Priya Sarukkai Chabria. Pic/Rafeeq Ellias (right) Mrinalini HarchandRai. Pic/Manmeet Bhatti
What HAT is a dragon doing in a book of poetry? That's what we wondered when we heard of The Dragon's Heart: World Poetry in Translation (Jadavpur University Press, Rs 1250), an anthology released earlier this month. An introduction to the book by co-editor Priya Sarukkai Chabria, a Mumbaikar now residing in Pune, dwells on the Norse mythological tale of Fafnir the dragon. "Like the dragon's 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 understanding," says co-editor 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 "Translator's Reflections" on the approach they chose - literal, interpretive or intuitive. "The Dragon's Heart is not just a collection of translations but a masterclass on the craft of translation," says Harchandrai.
The arachnid, discovered by Rishikesh Tripathi (right)
ON 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. "The spiders we found are mygalomorphs, a category that haven't evolved much, so we can study them to understand how they developed into other species of spiders," says Tripathi.
