Don’t miss the latest developments in business and finance.

A different role model

People Like Them

Image
Geetanjali Krishna New Delhi
Last Updated : Feb 15 2013 | 8:54 AM IST
 
Suddenly, I realised that the scraps of paper and thread in his hand had taken the form of a little mouse, and he expertly inserted a marble in its stomach to give it life. The mouse rolled off on its marble towards an enraptured child and he turned back to me.

 
"Are you a magician?" I asked laughingly. "Not at all," Sanjay Kapoor replied, "I just like to make toys and through them, teach children science." He showed me matchstick models of various other, equally unpronounceable geometric figures, and then proceeded to shock me by saying that far from being the engineer I thought he was, he was a school dropout.

 
"Bookish knowledge has never interested me," said he, adding, "Instead, I always liked to see how things worked." He grew up with the machinery from his father's fabrication business, and spent much of his childhood making things out of paper folds and matchsticks.

 
His family, realising where his interests lay, wisely let him be even when he wanted to drop out after class ten. "Later, when I was older, a friend with a junkyard allowed to pick up whatever waste materials I could use. That was when I made a car out of an old moped engine, discarded tyres and pipes," said he, adding, "four children could ride in it, all they had to do was top it up with petrol."

 
These early experiences led him to believe that science was not meant to be learnt, it had to be practiced. With this aim in mind, he and other like-minded people founded Diksha, and organisation through which they conduct toy-making workshops and also manufacture low cost scientific toys.

 
"We teach poor children for free, and in fact, if they have no money to buy our toys, we gladly teach them how to make their own," said he. "I don't think of this as social work," he said, "it's a commercial enterprise." But as of now, whatever Diksha earns through workshops, goes into R&D of new toys.

 
The workshops are instructive, but more importantly, fun. Kapoor only uses materials that are cheap, or waste like tetra pack paper, film boxes, thread, ball pen refills, glue and coloured paper.

 
Using these, he deftly creates butterflies that climb the wall on two threads, water sprays, pumps and other innovative toys. "During a recent toy making workshop in a Delhi school, the children got so interested that they decided to forego their lunch break to extend the two-hour workshop even further!" he smiled proudly.

 
Many toys are for young children, like the popular marble mouse. "Younger children also enjoy the colour mixer," said he, showing me two rounds, one atop the other, made of tetrapack paper.

 
Both had windows of clear paper in all the primary colours, and when they rotated, children could see how different secondary colours were formed when primary colours were mixed. Other, more advanced models are for older children.

 
"This model demonstrates the geometrical principle that when there's a cone and a cylinder of equal height and diameter, the cylinder has three times the volume of the cone," he rattled off. I was clueless till he showed me the cylinder (made from a film roll box) and cone and poured water three times from the cone to fill the cylinder.

 
Incidentally, a dodecahedron has twelve pentagonal faces. I counted them on Kapoor's magical matchstick model, and don't think I'll forget it in a hurry.

 
 

Also Read

First Published: Dec 06 2003 | 12:00 AM IST

Next Story