Wednesday 7 May 2014

This Great Indian Tale of Alimentation will make you #Vote4Children

Picture Source: ibnlive.in.com

The last time I was home, I fought a battle every morning – a battle between those few extra minutes of sleep and the loud, shrill noises of hammers, drills and other cacophonous machines early in the morning. Some renovation work barely 20m away from my place had been stealing that precious morning peace. Irritated, I would get up, turn to the window, curse the unnamed and then go back to bed. This had become kind of a routine. But then some days, I would actually LOOK.

Through the cloud of thick brick dust you could see two girls playing in the heaps of sand until they were shouted upon by a lady-worker. For some reason unknown, they caught my eye.

So walking past the site, I observed them closely one fine morning. Covered in an old donated over-sized frock, the younger one was hanging playfully on the “Karya Pragati pe hai” (Construction in Progress) sign while the other was making sure she doesn’t fall.

Biscuit khaaoge?” I asked with an involuntary smile.

The little one looked at her exhausted counterpart as if seeking her approval. She was short, petite with an observable pot-belly beneath her clothes. The hay-like growth on her head was haphazardly combed. She came over to me hesitantly, grabbed both packets and ran to hide behind the elder one.

Ye tumhari behen hai?”     
                                                                             
Itching her dry, dull brown flaky skin, the latter nodded and turned her sunken eyes to the biscuits. She had hair that was sparse, dirty brown and bones prominent enough to study Anatomy on. She looked ill, weak and tired.

The poor health among children like these requires no expert diagnosis. For a country boasting of possessing limitless potential owing to its 40% population being children, the present scenario is a disgrace.

It is estimated that 1.83 million Indian children die every year before the age of 5, most of them related to malnutrition. Some of the following unfortunate figures released by the National Family Health Survey (2005-06) reflect the sad set-up of our Health-care:
  • ·         Out of children under the age of 5, 42.5% are underweight and 48% stunted due to chronic under-nutrition
  • ·         79% are Anemic
  • ·         5.7% suffer from eye signs of Vitamin A Deficiency – the most common cause of preventable blindness.

The statistics themselves tell the tale of the disaster we are heading to.

Despite the various development programs and schemes launched by the Government, we still have a long way to go before we reach the targets under the first United Nations Millennium Development Goals. Malnourishment jeopardizes children’s health, development and survival slowing down the overall national progress. It is an ominous threat to our present and future which needs to be taken care of with optimal attention.
The need of the hour is to build a system that'll fortify our little angels for they hold the vision to a prosperous India that we have been dreaming of since August 15th, 1947.

This post is a part of the #Vote4Children Blog-a-thon on Youth Ki Awaaz. Find out more at: http://www.youthkiawaaz.com/vote4children

Tuesday 6 May 2014

Who's up for some Blame-Game?


I could bet the universe that at some point in your life you have experienced this. You can’t deny, for there is ABSOLUTELY NO WAY that a normal functional human being living this circus of life has escaped such feelings. Of course may be not in a way as deep, or even shallow for some, as described but we all have had our share of negativities. There must have been those ineluctable moments when the hopes and dreams you held very tightly and certainly most dearly to your heart crashed right in front of your eyes. And the worst of all was to do nothing but look at those shattered pieces that lie on the ground mocking you.

Let’s see, ever thought of how tormenting it is for a writer who had a mind-blowing, career-changing idea in his imagination to sit down but not come across one freaking palatable sentence; or to a musician when his guitar would just refuse to strike the perfect note even after months of practice leaving his composition incomplete for god-knows-how-long. Can you imagine the level of ineptitude a successful soccer player has to live with carrying the burden of being the reason for his team’s defeat in a crucial game; or the sorrow of a 50-year-old virgin having lived a long, unloved life?
Well, I can’t say much about these people but I, being an ex +2 student of science, sure can, without A PENNY OF DOUBT, assure you that it is highly agonising to give endless competitive exams and not attain desired results!! *sigh*

Anyways so my point is that, naturally, we have all had our fair share of loss, failure, desperation, desolation, hopelessness and unfulfilled desires...

Dark times, they say.

Don’t they make you feel absolutely worthless? Those gloomy days which seem no good, followed by those empty nights of loneliness and despair?  The agonising hours spent whining over the past and those unbearable moments of frustration and low-self esteem? Did you ever have that unexplainable stubborn void in your life which no matter what you do, refuses to get filled; the times when the failure is just too much to handle or the violent feeling of underachievement which grips your conscience to a point intolerable and doesn’t let go? Don’t you frequently lose confidence in yourself?
                                                                                       
If you can even slightly empathize with these feelings, welcome to the club of people with absolutely normal psychiatric health!

But that's inexcusable, right? Who is to unmask the culprit of the emotional inconvenience we face?

Maybe we can pin point those child prodigies that our world has witnessed over the years – pure geniuses who have contributed to various fields and made a difference at an age when ordinary mortals like you and I were still playing in the sandbox getting our clothes dirty. The list of such astonishing kids is as long as the Nile – Beethoven who composed his first symphony at 5 despite being slightly deaf; Akrit Jaswal who performed his first surgery at the age of 7; Gregory Smith who was nominated for a Nobel Prize at the age of 12. Hell, ourSachin Tendulkar made his sensational Cricket debut at the age of 16! I mean, it literally compels an average being to wonder what he is even living for. So it’s probably them who make you to feel like a useless nomad searching for an aim.

And of course, how can the high expectations from our families and the society skip the accusations. (“.. Aur 5 bajke 16 minte pe abba ne kaha - Mera Beta Engineer banega. Farhaan Qureshi, B.Tech engineer!”)

Even though all this might be true I’m still pretty convinced that, especially for us girls, it is also a result of those ridiculously romantic movies which convey the message that your lifetime is an absolute nuisance without that one tall, handsome, perfect, glittering guy who’ll always sweep you off your feet, solve each and every hurdle you face and be by your side forever and EVER AND EVERRRRR *sarcastic-Awwww* (Yes Twilight, I’m talking to you).

Aargh, damn them all right? Why can’t they just let you live in peace?

But hey, don’t you think that somewhere voluntary over-activity of the entity sitting comfortably inside your head, occupying all of the 1300cc of your cranial capacity is responsible for your emotional tides? Aren’t you too harsh on yourself; because you KEEP THINKING, thinking that you are not good enough and will never be? Well then, let me have the honor to pour some light over a well-known but not very well understood and accepted fact - all of the hurt we experience in life is the result of our own mind. 
This little rascal has the tendency to oscillate between our Fantasies and the Truth creating turmoil of unwanted thoughts and emotions within us. Nothing but merely the illusions created by our own self cause all the sufferings.It is okay to feel dejected and trapped at times when our expectations don’t hi-five realities. But that doesn’t justify sitting down with these issues and analysing them over and over again. Just know that the world has been through much worse than what you may face in your entire life time. One unfavourable incident or decision never has and never will mean that your life is over. Negativity doesn’t kill people, Wars and diseases do.

So whatever may be the reason, no one can help you cope with your misery but yourself. If a person doesn't know how to keep himself happy, then nobody else can. Neither Beethoven, nor Rancho and definitely not Edward Cullen! If you are searching for that one person who is going to change your life, just take a look in the mirror. For better or worse, is your choice.

Remember forever that you are as precious and unique as a beautiful shining star in the night sky; never 
think any less of yourself.

Everything may be done in one's strength and beyond to climb their very own Stairway to Heaven, it is still difficult to escape those disappointing vibes until we get what we want, after all how can a person be satisfied unless he has reached his ultimate destination? Satisfaction limits our potential. It is a devil for the ambitious, but contentment isn’t. The latter is about finding happiness in what all we already have while constantly working towards achieving more and more!
The key is to simply keeping watering the magic beans of your dreams with your blood and sweat without paying heed to the outcomes, and in no time will you be the Jack of your very own beanstalk.

I recently came across a lovely article which gave the mathematical explanation of why our birth itself is a wonderful occurrence – Going way back in history if we calculate the probability of the first couple of your family meeting each other, getting married and having the exact ovum and sperm to fertilise which would give rise to your subsequent ancestor – that too GENERATION AFTER GENERATION ACCURATELY, right down to your parents – the odds of you existing at all are merely 1 in 10 2,685,000 (which is basically zero!)

Mathematically speaking, it is a miracle that you are actually reading this blog.

So the next time you dare feel low don’t ever hesitate to go out, treat yourself with an ice-cream, celebrate and act like the miracle that you are, after all it has been numerically proven. Come on now, give me that 1 in 10 2,685,000 smile! :D