Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav with Ayudh India

Here comes my post after a long break with a mixture of patriotism and fitness.

As part of the 75th anniversary celebrations of Indian Independence, ‘Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav’, the Ministry of Education, GOI, has undertaken a noble goal to perform 75 crores Suryanamaskarams across India. To support this initiative AYUDH India is coordinating 21 days Suryanamaskar practice from 31st Jan – 20th Feb. I am contributing to this effort by signing up to take up this challenge.

Participants from across India participanting in Ayudh 75cr Suryanamaskar

Why I took up the challenge? Well, my generation (correct me if I am wrong) is always glued to screens, especially people with desk jobs. And I found this as a great opportunity to kick in some dopamine and endorphins in the brain which will help me to start off the day feeling happy and energetic. Not to mention the creativity, memory and learning power that gets boosted too. And yeah I am hoping the 21 day habit rule (don’t tell me its a myth, let me live in my dreamland) works out this time and transforms me!

Small effort from my side, ignore the mistakes

Apart from all this, I find this as an opportunity for me to pay tribute to the sacred land that taught yoga and meditation to the world to lead a happy and healthy life. I would like to thank Ayudh India for letting me join this program and be a part of this mission.

Jai Hind!

He taught India how to dream

Should I call him a ‘Missile Man’ or ‘People’s President’? Anything will go with his name, Dr. Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam, the man who worked hard until his last breath. I salute you for everything that you have done in your life, for our country, for our people, for our future. His selfless dedication to work towards the betterment of the country cannot be replaced with anything else. The man who taught an entire nation to dream.

Dream, dream, dream. Dreams transform into thoughts and thoughts result in action.

I got inspired to dream after reading his quotes, after all we share a common interest to become a fighter pilot. I also have the courage to accept what I achieve in my life, because I know he has achieved the greatest position a man could hold in our country even after missing the chance to become a fighter pilot. I must say he was an inspiration to an entire generation.

My wish to meet him in person will now remain as a dream forever. He will be remembered by people for the coming million generations. Finally I would like to mention something,

Don’t declare holiday on my death, instead work an extra day if you love me.

The dream of a person who taught an entire nation to dream endlessly, we should respect his dream. And there is no need to look for a good time to start working, as he had said, as long as the solar system was in place, it’s auspicious all the time.

My heartfelt condolences for the demise of the true patriot.

SSR Second phase – Swasth

In olden days, the number of people falling sick was very less compared to the present rates, Why? The answer is simple, there has been a lot of changes in the lifestyle  and food habits of people. The vegetables that were needed at their homes was cultivated in their own fields, without using any sort of chemical pesticides. But, what is happening now? Men don’t have time to step their foot in their own land and use their hand to get something out of it by gentle taps. But instead, will go behind the vegetables tortured with chemicals, which takes the beneficial part out of it in turn giving it a healthy look. We know how this healthy looking thing takes away our healthy life, but ignores it thinking ignoring can be applied anywhere other than to time. This in turn reduces the time that we can spent effectively in our life. The chemicals and pesticides that destroy the worms in the vegetables in an instant even destroy our lives, slowly.

How can we go back to the previous state? Go for organic farming 🙂  Try to cultivate the vegetables that are needed at your home. Stop running behind the tortured vegetables. By doing this part of the project we aimed to convey this small message to the students.

First, we started off by discussing the consequences of the chemicals and pesticides that is sprayed on the vegetables that we are buying. Then we taught them how to start an organic garden, and explained what is compost, how compost is prepared and what are its uses. The students were very interactive, particularly in this session because they had sound knowledge in organic gardening. Few of them even had organic gardens in their homes. I was very happy when they shared some of their views regarding this topic which we were not aware of. At last we distributed them with organic vegetable saplings and seeds with some vermicompost. Though the saplings and seeds were taken to plant in the school premise, the plans were changed due to the lack of space in the school.

This session went on well, where we shared our knowledge on organic gardening and even we got to learn some new things from them.

SSR First phase – Nirbhaya

The first phase of our SSR project is Nirbhaya, a session to create awareness on woman safety. It was lead by Bri. Nirupama from Amritanandamayi Math trained in Taekwondo, a Korean martial art. In the self defense class she taught some ways to escape from attack on face, neck and hair when done from back or front, in Taekwondo form.

When they try to attack on face, we should slightly bend sideways and strike their stomach with our fist, which makes them slow to react and take that as an advantage to attack on them and save our life.

During an attack from behind by pulling our hair or something, the first step to take is to turn around while bending a little and kick their vital part very hard with our knee which makes them semi-conscious. The next step is to push them down and hit the back of their neck with the elbow, which is very painful.

When someone attack us with a knife, the first thing to do is to move the knife away from us, by catching hold of the attacker’s hand, but should be careful not to touch the knife’s blade. Then hit the down part of their chin with the elbow and act accordingly.

And one more thing. stick is considered to be the best weapon to defend us from an attack. So every time you go out, it would be good if you carry a small but strong stick with you. When you are carrying a stick it should be kept in a easily accessible place.

These were some of the steps that was taught in the class. There were some more steps which was to follow when someone attack us as mentioned above, with slight changes. Knowing how to defend ourselves, only won’t help us in such a situation, it will need courage, faith in ourselves, confidence and concentration.

First of all, we should be aware of our surroundings, we should look whether we are surrounded by any suspicious person mainly if we are alone. We should always be aware of what is happening around us. Then next comes, courage to act accordingly to the situation. If we find anything going wrong, instead of getting scared we have to be courageous to take the right decision. People try to hurt those who are weak, so when someone play pranks on us we should raise our voice and react, this will make them realise that we are the wrong person they are looking for. Next, we should be always confident about our strength, which will make us easier to respond in such situations.

Student Social Responsibility (SSR) Project

In our University, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, Amritapuri, all the Semester 5 students has to do a SSR project to earn 1 credit. My group consisted of 6 active members 😉 Aishwarya², Amrutha, Anjana, Athira and I. As part of our SSR project we thought of helping a government school’s students in overall enrichment. The topic of our project was “Together towards a better future”. The project comprised of three phases:

1) Nirbhaya: A session for the awareness on woman safety. A trainer was arranged for taking self defence class for girls. This was done to increase the confidence, courage and concentration inorder to make them bold.

2) Swasth: To play with the nature, with our hands on soil, worms, seeds and saplings, a classic session on organic gardening. Nature being an important factor in this world, without its involvement everything is incomplete.

3) Aastha: Introducing the students to the computer world, adding a little bit of technical stuff to the social division. The pros and cons of the social networking sites were also discussed with the students.

How we did it? Will write it soon…;)

Swacch Bharat mission

Everyone might have heard about the Swacch Bharat mission that was launched on October 2nd as a tribute to Gandhiji. It’s aim is to attain Gandhiji’s dream of clean India by his 150th birth anniversary in 2019. The PMO officials started off with the clean up drive even earlier to that. On October 2nd clean up drive was organised in various places. Modi ji even came out with a new plan, Swacch Bharat challenge where he challenged 9 celebrities to work towards Clean India. He also asked them to nominate 9 other people to join this mission and continue the chain, inspired by the famous ‘Ice bucket challenge’.

In the area where I stay currently, Mata Amritanandamayi Math took the initiative to clean the nearby places as part of Swacch Bharat campaign. I took part for the same with several college staff members and ashramites. Places covered was from Amrita Sethu to Vallikavu.

As part of the Swacch Bharat mission our Prime Minister, Narendra Modi has quoted some points:

Let every citizen pledge to contribute 100 hours a year towards cleanliness.

Vision of solid waste management and waste water management through the PPP model in 500 towns and cities across India.

Government offices to upto Panchayat level to conduct cleanliness drive from September 25th till Diwali.

Swacch Bharat a mass movement, and linking it to economic activity.

Our prime minister Sri. Narendra Modi has urged all the citizen to pour in their suggestions regarding this mission. We have the commitment to make this mission as perfect as possible and I take the initiative to consolidate few of your comments and send it to our prime minister. Please feel free to give your valuable comments and help to create a clean India 🙂

101 Village program

As part of this program organised by the Amritanandamayi Math, we went to the village ‘Dagara’ which is situated in Kutch,Bhuj District. It is an earthquake prone area. After the earthquake that occurred in 2001, Amma built houses in few of the villages in Bhuj, and Dagara is one of them. The regional language is Gujarati, while most of them are also fluent in speaking Hindi. There women spent their leisure time doing handicrafts, but not for profit. Most of the people earn their living from farming and woodworks.

In Dagara most of the girls are educated only till 8th since the local school is available only till the same. While the boys are educated further by going to the nearby villages or outside the district, and girls are not allowed to do the same because they are concerned about the social issues. But now the school administrators have taken the initiative and have submitted a request to the authorities for upgrading the school to 12th standard.

In the village the girls get married very early. They get engaged at the age of 5. Some are engaged to the boys studying in their class. This is one of the reason for drop-outs in the school. The request for a separate school for boys and girls was submitted for the same reason, but they have not got the permission till now.

We visited the school and took sessions for the classes from 3rd to 8th. We taught them Water cycle and plant growth cycle in a yoga manner that was given to us during the training. We also told them stories, made them to work in groups, practiced certain kinds of yoga. During the second last day in the school we selected few students and made them to practise the things that we taught, to show during assembly the next day. We gave them books as a participation prize, and some books were given to the principal for the library.

Everyday for three hours we took classes like a bridge course for the girls who were interested to give the 10th standard examination this year. We took English, Maths and Science. But since the students educational level was low we had to start from the basics. A tution teacher has been arranged to take classes for them. She is ready to take all the subjects. The students whom I taught were very attentive, patient, confident and was eager to study new things. Kusum didi took stitching classes for the women in the village during our tution time.

We were also provided with four tablets and it contained all the necessary things for the learning purpose, mainly concentrating on english grammar and writing. Small kids were very active after seeing the tablets, they learned how to operate it very fast.

There is a stitching and Mehandi class being taken in the hall built by Amma. The salary for the teacher is provided by Amritanandamayi Math.

During our stay in the village, we went to meet the forest officer in that area to discuss about the plants that will be appropriate to plant in that place, its uses, its impact on the soil and other necessary details. And they approved to give 500 saplings for the village. And successfully all the saplings were planted and they made a plan that all the elders in the village can be given the work to water the saplings since it would be a time pass for them and a good exercise. The idea of kitchen garden was introduced to the village people.

There is a person in the village who is doing organic farming. So, a meeting was conducted to make the people aware of the importance of organic farming, its impacts, uses, advantage. And a date was arranged to show his farm to the others and show the techniques and materials used for the same. This was done to promote organic farming.

And the tasks assigned to us as part of this project was successfully completed.