Category Personalities

Who is the author of book “Friends Behind Walls”?

During the recent coronavirus lockdown, friendships, were tested. Locked up in our homes, we couldn’t meet our friends for months. Daily chats, gossip sessions, and even birthdays moved online. Video calls and phone calls continued to strengthen the bonds. Friendship overcame the walls put up by the pandemic, and that’s exactly what author Harshikaa Udasi’s new book. “Friends Behind Walls” is all about.

Set in the sleepy town of Deolali, close to Nashik in Maharashtra, it is a story of two children, Inu and Putti who form an unlikely friendship despite the animosity between their families.

Putti, a city-bred boy, is excited to spend his summer vacation in Deolali. But he soon finds out that the town doesn’t have any kids of his age to play with, except Inu. But his parents forbid him from even talking to Inu because of a long-standing feud between their families.

Not wanting to give up on their newly formed friendship, the duo decide to solve the mystery behind their family feud. On their quest, they are helped by Mr. Om Namaha and Dr. Solanki. But Inu and Putti have to visit the fearsome Tekdichi Mhatari, who lives up the hill to find answers!

What inspired the book

When Udasi visited Deolali for the first time 15 years ago, she was struck by how deserted the place looked – there were no children to be seen anywhere. “There are many sanitariums in Deolali, so a lot of elderly people stay here because it is beautiful and green, but there were hardly any children,” says Udasi, who now has a second home in Deolali.

One day, she observed that a couple of children in her neighbourhood had actually made a hole in the wall between their houses so that they could talk to each other. “These two would use the hole to sneak into each other’s houses. And so I imagined what it would be like if the kids were doing this because the families were at loggerheads with each other,” says Udasi.

In fact, she had a similar experience when she was growing up. “There was a family which never got along with my family so I never got a chance to be friends with their kids,” she adds. “So I put the two concepts together and come up with the book.”

The message of bonhomie

“Friends Behind Walls” explores why its important to preserve the bond of friendship and not fight over trivial things. “Friendships born in childhood are really the biggest bond one can have,” says Udasi.

The book begins with a striking sentence, “There should be a big giant eraser for all our past wrongs.” Udasi credits her 10-year-old son Krishang for coming up with this line when they were having a discussion on the Citizenship Amendment Act. “I was talking to my son about the conflicts between different religions and ethnicities when he said that this is all so complicated, I wish there was a giant eraser for our past,” says Udasi.

Know the author

Harshikaa Udasi is a journalist and author from Mumbai. She forayed into children’s writing after spending 19 years in journalism. Her first children’s book “Kittu’s Very Mad Day”, published in July 2017, is the story of a 10-year-old physically challenged boy who is accidentally left behind by his family in Madhya Pradesh. He comes across a skate park and learns to skate and face his fears. It won the prestigious 2018 FICCI Publishing Award for Best English Children’s Book and was shortlisted for the MAMI Word to Screen 2017.

She also runs a reading club, “The Book Trotters” to encourage children to think creatively and independently. During the lockdown, the club meets online.

Popular works

“I Absolutely Totally Instantly Have to Have A Dog” and “Kittu’s Very Mad Day”. She has contributed short stories to “On Your Marks: The Book of Crazy Exam Stories” and “Flipped: Adventure Stories Gost Stories.”

 

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Who is the creator of Winnie-the-Pooh?

Alan Alexander (A.A.) Milne’s collection of children’s stories about a little boy named Christopher Robin and his beloved little bear made him a household name.

Generations of children all over the world grew up loving the tales of Winnie-the-Pooh and the friendly animals of the Hundred Acre Wood.

But while the poems and stories continue to enthrall readers even today, their creator Milne himself was never able to enjoy his success. The honey-eating bear overshadowed all his other work and was the cause of a bitter feud with his son, the real-life Christopher Robin who had inspired Milne to create the fictional characters.

Who was A.A. Milne?

Born in London on January 18, 1882, Milne was the son of John Vine, a headmaster of a small boys’ school in England. Milne had an extraordinary flair for writing from a young age. Despite a graduate degree in mathematics from Trinity College, Cambridge, Milne chose to pursue a career in literature. His first big break was working for the leading British humour magazine Punch.

War experiences

Milne served in the British Army during World War I. Fighting in the Battle of Somme, he witnessed the harsh realities of war. His best friend was “blown to pieces just as he was settling down for tea,” while another friend was killed by a German sniper. Disturbed by his war experiences, Milne took refuge in writing. He became a successful playwright and a screenwriter.

Milne and Robin

Christopher Robin, born on August 21, 1920, was Milne’s son. On his first birthday, Robin received a stuffed bear as a present and named it Edward. The child soon accumulated a collection of similar animals, which inspired Milne to spin whimsical stories around the toys. He created the world of Pooh and the Hundred Acre Wood, along with illustrator Ernest Shepherd who brought the tales to life through his expressive drawings. The first book, a collection of children’s poems titled “When We Were Very Young”, came out in 1924, shortly after Robin’s fourth birthday. It sold more than 50,000 copies in eight weeks. Three more short stories followed.

Rift with Robin

But as the popularity of the series grew, it made life incredibly difficult for Milne’s young son., Robin. He was bullied in school for resembling the eponymous fictional character. His classmates taunted him by reciting lines from Milne’s books and poems.

The 2017 biopic, “Goodbye Christopher Robin” an iconic scene between the father and son, shows his agony – “You asked me to write a book for you” says the father. The son replies: “Yes, for me not about me!”

Robin has elaborated on his feelings towards his father and character in his memoir “The Enchanted Places.” “At home I still liked him (his father), indeed felt at times quite proud that I shared his name and was able to bask in some of his glory. At school, however, I began to dislike him, and I found myself disliking him more and more the older I got,” it reads. The father-son relationship strained as a result.

Bear in mind

Even Milne eventually came to resent the honey-eating bear as it eclipsed all that he had accomplished as a poet, playwright, peace campaigner and novelist. As he put it in 1952, he created Winnie-the-Pooh, “little thinking/ All my years of pen-and-inking/ Would be almost lost among/ Those four trifles for the young”.

Did you know?

  • The first volume of Milne’s “Winnie-the-Pooh” series published in 1926, consisted of 10 short stories, which were later adapted by Disney into a cartoon series. It was followed by the second volume “House at Pooh Corner” in 1928.
  • Milne also wrote for different audiences spanning different genres such as war and politics. In 1922, he wrote a mystery novel called “Red House Mystery.”
  • Milne and Arthur Conan Doyle played on the same cricket team Allahakberries.
  • A talented mathematician, Milne won a scholarship to study at one of the world’s most restricted institutions, Trinity College, Cambridge.
  • The original map of Winnie-the-Pooh’s Hundred Acre Wood by Ernest Shepherd sold at an auction in Sotheby’s in London for 430,000 pounds, a record price for a book illustration.
  • The name Winnie came from a brown bear that young Robin visited in the London Zoo. The bear was rescued by a veterinarian doctor from Canada, Harry Colebourn in 1914, who named it Winnipeg, after his hometown.
  • The character has always been referred to as a ‘he’ in the literary works and films.

 

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In his work “A Christmas Carol”, who used the phrase “as good as gold”?

The phrase is used several times in literature in the following years. The change from the use of ‘good’, as meaning ‘genuine’ to ‘good’, as meaning ‘well-behaved’ didn’t take long. Charles Dickens used it in the latter sense in A Christmas Carol, 1843:

“And how did little Tim behave?” asked Mrs. Cratchit…
“As good as gold,” said Bob, “and better.

The idiom as good as gold has changed a lot from its original meaning because it initially referred to something that was real and genuine. In the past, many people conducted business using credit notes, a document that promised payment within a certain amount of time. Some customers paid on time but others delayed payment or used forged or counterfeited credit notes to avoid paying altogether. Being distrustful, many business owners much preferred being paid in gold and silver, as this form of currency was real, tangible and more importantly, the payment was immediate.

 

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Which is the actor who bagged the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress category for the 1969-film “Cactus Flower”?

The founder of the Hawn Foundation, which works for the underprivileged children, is Goldie Jeanne Hawn, an American actress who is also a producer and a singer. Goldie Hawn had been one of the reliable stars of the latter part of the twentieth century.

Goldie’s first major film role in ‘Cactus Flower’ in 1969 brought her the Golden Globe as well as the Academy Award for the Best Supporting Actress. Her Academy Award catapulted her into the club of successful actors with comedies like There’s a Girl in My Soup and Butterflies are Free.

Goldie proved herself to be a versatile actor excelling not only in comedy but also in drama. Pictures such as The Girl from Petrovka, The Sugarland Express (which incidentally, was Steven Spielberg’s directorial debut) and Shampoo are proof enough.

She also received the Hasty Pudding Woman of the Year Award in 1999. This is an award given by the Hasty Pudding Theatricals Society at Harvard University.

Goldie, with author Wendy Holden, wrote her autobiography A Lotus Grows in the Mud in 2005.

 

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At the 1972 Olympics, how many gold medals did Mark Spitz win in swimming, each with a world record?

U.S. swimmer Mark Spitz wins his seventh gold medal at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich. Spitz swam the fly leg of the 400-meter medley relay, and his team set a new world-record time of 3 minutes, 48.16 seconds. Remarkably, Spitz also established new world records in the six other events in which he won the gold. At the time, no other athlete had won so many gold medals at a single Olympiad. The record would stand until Michael Phelps took home eight gold medals at the Beijing Games in 2008.

Having set 10 world records by the time of the 1968 Summer Olympics, the 18-year-old Spitz brazenly predicted that he would take home six gold medals from the Mexico City Olympic Games. Actually, he won just two gold medals, both in team relay events, and took home a silver in the 100-meter butterfly and a bronze in the 100-meter freestyle.

 He lost his amateur status and rarely swam in competition after 1972. In 1992, at age 42, he launched a comeback bid but failed to qualify for the Barcelona Olympics. He was inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame in 1977 and was a member of the first class of inductees into the United States Olympic Hall of Fame in 1983.

 

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Why is India’s golden girl Hima Das often referred to as Dhing Express?

Hima Das nicknamed the Dhing Express, is an Indian sprinter from the state of Assam. Dhing is a town in Nagaon district in the state of Assam; that is the reason she is called “Dhing Express”. She became the first Indian woman — indeed the first ever Indian athlete — to win a gold medal in any format of a global track event at IAAF World U20 Championships when she clocked a speed of 51.46 seconds. Born on January 9, 2000, to rice farmers in Dhing village of Assam’s Nagaon district, Das won five back-to-back gold medals in about a month in Czech Republic in July 2019.  

Das mainly takes part in women’s 400-metre, 200-metre and 4×400-metre relays. At Asian Games in 2018, she won a silver medal in the 4×400-metre mixed relay. She also set an Indian U20 record of 51.32 seconds to finish sixth in the Commonwealth Games 400m final in Gold Coast in April 2018. In September 2018, Adidas signed an endorsement deal with Hima Das. She was also conferred with Arjuna Award by the President of India on September 25, 2018.

Das mainly takes part in women’s 400-metre, 200-metre and 4×400-metre relays. At Asian Games in 2018, she won a silver medal in the 4×400-metre mixed relay. She also set an Indian U20 record of 51.32 seconds to finish sixth in the Commonwealth Games 400m final in Gold Coast in April 2018. In September 2018, Adidas signed an endorsement deal with Hima Das. She was also conferred with Arjuna Award by the President of India on September 25, 2018.

 

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