HC verdict

Hearing about the verdict in favor of the homosexuals in Times Of India, i happened to read most of the readers comments. Many people against the verdict made statements like -- 'Its against nature', 'Against god's will', 'We r leading the youths in wrong direction', 'Immoral' etc etc

On reading these i would like to ask people who did ever decide what - 'The will of nature is?', 'God's will?', 'Immorality is?' It is 'we people' who years ago decided to give things and phenomena around us names and take decisions. 'We people' gave names like plants,trees,bushes,clouds,house, etc etc. Someone in the past observed trees grow 'up' the ground and roots 'below'. We are conditioned to think 'up' and 'below' are as we have learnt and seen. But what if in history the words were the other way round? We did probably say that trees grow below and the roots up. Similarly we decided what the will of nature is, what is god's will and not the other way around. I firmly believe every individual has the right to live life the way they want to and no one has the right to question them because nothing has ever been defined by nature. Rather people should concentrate on other matters like rape, pedophiles, domestic violence, human abuse, poverty etc which causes distress to humans .If people are so worried about going against nature or god what about the issues i just mentioned? Aren't rape, domestic violence, killing people against nature/god's will? If people think the world is going in the wrong direction is it not their duty to make it a better place by doing their bit in eliminating poverty or providing education or doing something about our degrading environment.

So people before you make harsh statements, look around you, think, there is a lot more to be done than simply commenting and deciding for others.

'I need no warrant for being, and no word of sanction upon my being. I am the warrant and the sanction.' -- By Ayn Rand

One hour

One hour a week is all it takes to make some difference to the lives of a few children who unlike us cannot afford to buy even a pencil and notebook for their education. Recently my friend and i decided to start teaching in a government school on behalf of an NGO - Aashayein- which aims at providing basic English communication skills to such children. With the support of the NGO students are provided with pencils,notebooks,uniforms and other necessities as and when required. Volunteers were/are scarce but still a few like minded people came forward and the teaching sessions started. We all reached by 8 am on Saturday and were greeted 'GOOD MORNING MISS/SIR' by many enthusiastic and smiling faces. It was a great experience for all of us as most of us don't know the regional language (Kannada) and yet managed to keep the children engaged. The children were also excited and most of them made efforts to learn and respond to what we were teaching them.

After teaching i left the place with mixed emotions. I was happy that a few people had come forward to help and the children were also learning. But it saddened me to see that at such a tender age many children had lost their innocence. There was an incident when a boy had snatched a rupee from someone and there was a big fight for it. In some other class a boy had lost Rs 10 and was so worried about being beaten up by his father. Some children had just a scrap paper and a small bit of a pencil for writing. The school starts at 8 am but many children come by only 9 am or so but they make sure they reach school before 10 am. The reason being free lunch scheme provided by the government. The parents also send small kids along with the older ones who attended school so that those kids could be looked after while they were at work and plus all their children would get lunch too. Too many things happening in a small building with no playground or even benches for students to sit.

I hope we are able to achieve our goals set of which one of them includes increasing the number of students attending school.

Volunteers: Aprajitha, Manish, Yasoda, Deepika, Shilpa, Harish, Nadeem, Dutta, Megha, Reeba, Sucheta

Dance pe chance (30th june 2009)

Yeah i have finally taken a plunge into something i was putting off for quite some time cause its really not my comfort zone . Learning Jazz and the regular bollywood fusion. Have completed only one class so far and i was left panting and gasping for breath within 10 minutes with all the workouts and steps. Fantastic instructors who kept telling me - Don't bang your legs like an elephant :) Hoping to learn something at the end of it and also not to ruin the stage performance with the group..