Silver Thulir

You may know that Jantar Mantar has an older sister: Thulir. A monthly Tamil science magazine for children, she completed 25 recently; let's wish her a happy silver jubilee !
Thulir is also published by Tamil Nadu Science forum, just like JM.
In celebration of this remarkabe achievement, a conference was held in Chennai on Nov 24, 2012. The Indian Post and Telegraph decided to commemorate the event: a postal cover was released at a function held on November 24 by Postmaster General Gulbir Singh. Justice K Chandru of the Madras High COurt spoke on the occasion and released a CD containing all the issues of Thulir that have been published.
Thulir was born in 1987 when the need for a popular science magazine in Tamil for children was felt. It was first produced from Pondicherry but later the production and administration moved to Chennai. Comprising 32 pages with coloured covers (the same as JM), Thulir sells about 35,000 copies today.
Both Thulir and JM are run mostly by volunteers, which means that its writers and editors do not get paid for their work. This is also a primary reason you will unfortunately not be able to buy either magazine at any news-stand. The efforts of all the people involved are based on the conviction that it is important in our current society to understand science and technology and use it wisely and hence we must reach out to children with the correct scientific facts.
The spirit of Thulir has been to bring to the fore not just developments in science but also to publish articles that generate a healthy debate on social issues. They have handled trouble arising from this too. Says Radha who has been associated with the magazine since early days, "We once published an article about child labour in Sivakasi. This brought a host of lawsuits upon us. But when we showed them that our story was based on evidence, they withdrew the cases. We never publish a story without adequate evidence."
During the Thulir25 conference, five books in Tamil written by Dr. T.V. Venkateswaran, currently with Vigyan Prasar, were also released, including the story of Ramanujan the mathematician and the science of the Higgs Boson.
Earlier, on Nov 23, a seminar was held at Madras University on "Challenges facing Science Publications, especially those for Children".
JM is almost 20 now, should we not celebrate JM also along with Thulir? More, we should celebrate the voluntary spirit of Tamil Nadu Science Forum! Do send in some ideas and feedback about our magazine. We will be happy to publish them in JM and will also value your feed-back.