Author: Ketan Tanna (ketan.tanna@timesgroup.com)
Publication: The Times of India
Dated: August 27, 2007
Five-year-old Sunita and her three friends
who have come back home from school a while ago, land up at a huge godown
near Jain Mandir, Mazgaon, on a late Thursday afternoon. "Uncle, give
us something to play with," demands Sunita, her eyes lighting up in excitement.
"Come on Sunday," says the uncle, Manilal Dungershi Dand, a retired
businessman.
Every Sunday, 64-year-old Manilal is there
for the children, waiting with a treasure of toys and books, which are stacked
in about 70 cupboards that occupy only a little portion of his huge godown.
Every Sunday, 30 to 40 children visit his godown and the party goes on from
morning till noon. Most of the kids belong to poor and lower middle-class
Muslim and Marathi families of Mazgaon.
The walls are colourfully done up with pictures
and messages like, "Handling children is not a child's play and I am
so glad that you are here". Besides toys and books, there are crayons,
puzzles, carom boards, education video material, broken benches and every
conceivable thing that could make a child's day. But it's not only about having
a good time for the children, they also learn to grow responsible. The kids,
when entering their playzone, have to deposit Rs 10 with their uncle. The
amount is reimbursed when they leave, even if they break some of the toys.
He also teaches origami (Japanese art of paper sculpting) to the children.
A few years ago, Dand lost half the collection
of the toys to a fire that broke out in the godown. "Now I have only
1,000 toys left," he says.
Children have always heroworshipped Dand who
first started helping a toy library called Chacha Nehru Library, which was
run by Kumud Patkar. That was in the midsixties. The library was later shifted
to the Patkar bungalow in Bandra and then to a municipal school. The local
Lions Club, for a long time, ran the toy library where Dand volunteered his
time every Sunday. In fact, Dand's wife would complain sometimes that her
husband did not have much time for her, even on Sundays. Eventually, the library
at the Bandra municipal school wound up and that is when Dand decided to turn
a portion of his godown, from where he ran a spice business, into a toy library.
His dream was realised in 2001.
He would scrounge chor bazaar and other second-hand
goods markets where he bought toys at a cheaper rate. Often, he would get
toys that were almost new and had been discarded by affluent children. "In
India, unfortunately, those who really need toys do not get it and some get
too many of them,'' he says, citing an example of a friend whose son got 11
clocks on his birthday He cannot forget a nine-yearold girl from a village
on the outskirts of Mumbai who had tears in her eyes when Dand went against
his rules and let her take two toys home.
His library has been inspiring for his family,
relatives and friends, who add on to the toys to his collection.
Dand retired six months ago and since then,
he has been touring various places in the state and organising small lectures
and demonstrations for children. Some of his days are spent at the pediatric
department of J J Hospital where the children get to play with toys while
recuperating.
