Everything is relative. You don’t need to be Einstein to understand that. A human is as big to an ant, as a building may be to a human. The world is vast and large – it’s size is dominated by massive oceans and continents.
But ever since we’ve developed the ability to look beyond our atmosphere, it became more and more apparent that the earth is in fact small. Too tiny to even comprehend, when compared to other planets, stars, galaxies and the universe itself. So just to give you an idea of how tiny we really are, here are some visual aids.
With diligent efforts success can be achieved. Even an ant can cover miles by moving continuously. However even Garuda (the celestial eagle) cannot soar two feet if it has no will to fly. Likewise without good thoughts and good deeds based on them, one cannot accomplish anything good. The child Dhruva achieved what he desired despite many difficult obstacles, because of his firm determination and spiritual austerities. By his sublime thoughts, he achieved the status of a star in the sky. Likewise any person, irrespective of age or abilities, with faith and determination, can accomplish what they want. In every field steadfast performance (sadhana) is essential. In addition, you must control your temper. Sage Durvasa, despite his penance had no peace because he could not control his temper. Together with peace, the quality of (Kshama) is essential. Forgiveness is truth, it is Dharma, it is the essence of the Veda, it is non-violence and the best penance(Yajna).
None can escape from the reaction, reflection, and resound of their actions. Everyone will have to experience the consequences of their own actions. People who indulge in evil practices become distant from God. People who earn a bad reputation through their evil deeds will have no place in divine proximity. Therefore have a check on yourself when you laugh or scorn at others. Not just this, your speech and vision also must be in check. Some people sing inappropriate songs and eve tease women walking on the road. Has God given you a tongue to sing such vulgar songs? How sacred is the tongue, and what an evil use you put it to? By acting in an inappropriate manner, you ruin your reputation and subject yourself to ridicule by others. Therefore exercise control over your speech, vision, and laughter. If you want to earn a good name in the society and be respected by it, conduct yourself in a befitting manner.
There is no penance (tapas) higher than fortitude, no happiness greater than contentment, no good deed (punya) holier than mercy, no weapon more effective than patience. Consider your body as the field and good deeds as seeds and cultivate the name of the Lord, with the help of the heart as farmer, to reap the harvest of the Lord Himself. Like cream in milk and fire in fuel, the Lord is in everything. Have full faith in this. As the milk, so the cream; as the fuel, so the fire; so also, as the spiritual discipline, so is the direct divine experience (sakshatkara)! Even if you don’t attain liberation (mukthi) as a consequence of taking up the Lord’s name, one of these four gates will be open to you: Company of the virtuous, truth, contentment and control of the senses. Anyone who enters through any one of these gates will certainly attain the Lord without fail.
Image copyrightAnushree Fadnavis/Indus ImagesUma Tembulkar began performing in ad films at the age of 70
In the youthful world of Indian advertising, Uma Tembulkar, 78, is an unlikely celebrity model.
Ms Tembulkar is the lead in the advertisement, British Airways: Fuelled by Love, that has gone viral on YouTube and has Twitter tearing up over her.
The six-minute film, uploaded a week ago on YouTube, has had more than one million visitors and made Ms Tembulkar a welcoming face that’s beaming from a billboard at the Mumbai airport.
“Ms Tembulkar brings on a heavy dose of emotion to the ad; meaningful not melodramatic,” says advertising expert Vidhya Sankarnarayan.
“It resonates with Indians like the granny who feels dislocated on flights and connects at a human level,” she says.
An emotional flight
Ms Tembulkar said the British Airways ad was easy to enact because it had “two strangers who show kindness and compassion to each other, breaking cultural and generational barriers”.
A look at the ad would explain why she’s spot on.
The film shows a septuagenarian returning home from visiting her son in London.
She struggles while fastening the seat belt and bending over her arthritic knees to pull on her socks. A young stewardess, Helena Flynn, on her maiden flight to India, comes to her help.
The lady wells up, missing her son. The stewardess comforts her and is invited home by the elder woman.
A visit to the south Indian home is full of effusive Indian hospitality, good food and a slice of culture and a high dose of warmth.
Image copyrightAnushree Fadnavis/Indus Images….Uma Tembulkar lives with husband Mahesh Tembulkar in Mumbai
Image copyrightAnushree Fadnavis/Indus ImagesImage captionUma Tembulkar lives with husband Mahesh Tembulkar in Mumbai
“I wanted the ad to debunk the stereotype of the uptight British person and rude Indian traveller and Ms Tembulkar touched the right chords,” says director Neeraj Ghaywan, feted recently at the Cannes film festival.
This was the indie filmmaker’s first venture into ad filmmaking and he found Ms Tembulkar “just the perfect face of dignity and affection”.
And the social media response has been effusive praise for the ad.
Today, Ms Tembulkar gets grabbed for selfies on her morning market run to buy vegetables and milk.
Global granny
“It was an honour to act in the British Airways ad and I thoroughly enjoyed travelling to London,” she says.
Ms Tembulkar has been married for 60 years and led life as a homemaker with an enduring passion in Indian classical music that helped her “overcome fear of performing before an audience or the camera”.
She now watches over a brood of grandchildren, who are students in Harvard and Carnegie Mellon, travelling frequently to holiday with her scattered family across the globe. “My passport is the fattest,” she chuckles with quiet pride.
“My life as a model began at 70,” she speaks carefully in English, though she is also fluent in her native tongue Marathi, and Hindi, Bengali and a smattering of Gujarati too.
The actress in her was discovered by young friends at a family gathering and in the last eight years, she has acted in more than 60 advertisements for products as varied as insurance companies, furniture, cooking oils, biscuits and more.
“Look at her: she’s the quintessential Indian granny and her predicament while travelling alone is real. That has made the ad work,” says Mr Ghaywan.
He praises her as a “super granny” who travels alone frequently to visit her children and grandchildren, and understands the “emotional palette with her restrained, yet powerful performance”.
Image copyrightAnushree Fadnavis/Indus ….Ms Tembulkar is the archetypical Indian granny who lives in a busy suburb in Mumbai
Ageism
Experts say ageism has never been a problem in India and has always helped in selling products.
“Like the grandpas from India and Pakistan for the Google ad, age never goes out of style in Indian advertisements,” says Ms Sankarnarayan.
Unlike an earlier generation, the granny in the British Airways ad travels business class in comfort, though not schooled in global travel; she represents the old setting off alone to connect with scattered families across the world and makes a human connection that makes the ad tick.
Many say the ad helps to debunk the stereotype of the rude Indian in-flight traveller.
“Ms Tembulkar does a fantastic job of giving the contemporary Indian traveller a face,” explains Ms Sankarnarayan.
Given the soaring success of the advertisement, the sky is the limit for this granny.
These high school students are introducing technology to senior citizens in an effort to help them overcome loneliness and social isolation – all because of respect and love for their grandparents, who they consider their superheroes.
The 2001 census of India showed that the population of senior citizens in India has crossed 100 million. Today, India is home to one out of every 10 senior citizens in the world. Yet, very few in the country are looking into the problems faced by this ageing section of our society.
An emotional and psychological problem tormenting elders in our country is loneliness.
A student helps a senior citizen learn how to use a computer.
This is due to the growing ‘empty nest syndrome.’ Children go away to far-off countries in search of economic betterment. Even if they live within the country, due to the spread of western ideas such as ‘space, privacy, individualism and non-interference,’ nuclear families are becoming the norm even in villages.
Poor social interaction with family and friends, poor social networks, and lack of family support are some of the difficulties faced by senior citizens. At the other extreme is the young generation today, highly dependent on social networking to stay connected with family and friends and build connections. Two high school students from Delhi are helping bridge the gap between the two generations.
Vibhor Rohatgi and Suyesha Dutta were in their 11th grade in Shri Ram School Mouslari, Gurgaon, which follows the International Baccalaureate (IB) board.
Suyesha (on extreme left) and Vibhor (second from right) with their teacher
Creativity, activity, service (CAS) are the three essential elements of a CAS project that every student must complete as part of the Diploma Programme (DP) in the IB board internationally. For many students, these projects provide experiences that are profound and fulfilling.
Vibhor and Suyesha decided to take up a CAS project that would prove to be not only life changing for them but also for a much ignored segment of our society –senior citizens.
“When CAS is discussed in school, most students think of helping the underprivileged, the needy or the slum kids. We have this belief that only those who are deprived of money need help. But there are people who have it all but still feel emotionally empty. We wanted to help them – our grandparents,” says Suyesha.
Bridging the generation gap – senior citizens with students.
Suyesha, who had spent a lot of time with her grandparents till she was in her teens, lost her grandfather three years ago. She saw her grandmother spending most of her days alone after that. So she decided to connect her to technology to help her overcome her loneliness. Once she saw how successful that experiment was, she wanted to gift technology not just to her own grandmother but to as many other grandparents as she could as a tribute to her grandfather.
Suyesha and her friend Vibhor are great fans of the comic superhero Silver Surfer, a humanoid with metallic skin who can travel space with the aid of his surfboard-like craft. Since this superman is an icon of technology himself, they decided to name their initiative the Silver Surfer Programme.
“The Silver Surfer Programme (SSP), a social initiative started by us, is the epitome of the maxim ‘age is just a number.’ Age is a measure of experience, inefficiently gauged by how many candles one blows out every year. To this plenitude of experiences, we, looking to bring about a social change in society, decided to add one more…the experience known as technology,” says Vibhor
“We called it the Silver Surfer Programme because Silver Surfer is a superhero and we consider our grandparents to be superheroes. His senses enable him to detect objects and energies light years away. Similarly, grandparents have strong intuition and can detect any problem or trouble in their children’s and grandchildren’s lives. He has even proven capable of time travel on occasions, just like our grandparents take us back to their times by narrating stories from their childhood,” adds Suyesha
The Silver Surfer Programme is an effort to better acquaint grandparents with the delights of modern day technology.
SSP aims to make the lives of grandparents simpler, faster and efficient. The programme includes two hour modules on three Saturdays every month for the grandparents. The programme, which began in May 2015, includes the following learning sessions:
Introduction to the programme and its aim.
Introduction to email – how to write an email.
Introduction to Facebook and Twitter – how to open and set up an account, send requests, etc.
Familiarization with smart phones and tablets and an introduction to WhatsApp – how to set up an account, send and receive messages, etc.
Introduction and use of specialist apps, such as, Grofers, Flipkart, BookMyShow, News InShorts/ Times of India, Ola and Meru Cabs, etc.
Net banking through HDFC, SBI, etc.
Paying utility bills such as electricity, phone bills, etc.
The programme, which started with the help of a few volunteers and their teacher Amrita Sai Marla, became so close to their hearts that they decided to continue it even after the CAS project was over.
The classes were conducted in the computer hall of their school, so they took special permission to continue with the classes. Now, as they have graduated from school, they plan to hand it over to their juniors.
Suyesha and Vibhor do not want to stop getting the blessings of grandparents even after they bid farewell to school. They are now planning to take the initiative forward by going to old age homes and teaching the grandparents who are staying there.
“We raise concerns over environmental degradation or the lack of education of the underprivileged, but seldom have we ever touched upon the most experienced in our society, the grandparents. As we feel that grandparents are the cornerstones of our lives, this is how we’ve decided to do something for them, show them our love and support. We work really hard towards our modules, undertake new challenges and come up with some interesting and essential things for the grandparents to learn, while constantly keeping them engaged. The blessings that the grandparents shower upon us make us feel accomplished and we don’t want to miss a single chance to keep those jubilant smiles on their faces,” says Suyesha
One of the defining moments of the Silver Surfer Programme came when a grandmother from a foreign country came to learn about Facebook from them.
Grandparents are overjoyed at connecting with old friends through Facebook.
Now in her 70s, this grandmother had not seen her friends ever since she was in her 20s and had to leave her country due to political instability. The prospect of even getting a glimpse of her school friends made her so eager to learn that within minutes Vibhor and Suyesha helped her set up her very own Facebook account. After intensive searching for an hour, they finally found her old friends.
“Never did a click ever make someone this happy. Overflowing with emotion she was as she got to speak to her friends, her smile radiating light on a cloudy, rainy day. It is for moments such as this that we had started this initiative,” says Vibhor.
“The journey of the Silver Surfer Programme has instilled in me vital life lessons that have helped me develop and grow as a person. For instance, I have learned that learning, in its candid, most humble form, is not bound by time but that it is in fact imperishable. Learning is a well-oiled machine that never stops, a beating heart that gives life. I have learned that there is no ‘right’ age and it is never ‘too late’ to learn,” adds Vibhor.
Suyesha narrates another happy moment when one of the grandmothers came to her after the class and requested that she teach her how to download songs. Initially, Suyesha was reluctant to do so. She explained to her how it would be an act of piracy. However, the grandmother insisted by saying that it was her favorite song and no one was helping her download it, even though she saw her grandchildren doing it all the time.
“It was an Atif Aslam song, Jiya re Jiya re! I can’t describe the glow in her eyes after it downloaded. She left me with numerous blessings that day,” says Suyesha
The Silver Surfer Programme has now evolved to also start providing the benefits of technology to workers and guards of their school. Their next series of modules is aimed at computer literacy, wherein they will teach the guards and workers everything about the basics of using computers – using the mouse, keyboard, internet, etc.
……About the author: A mechanical engineer, Manabi Katoch has been brought up listening to Tagore’s poems and stories, so she is kind of an emotional person within. She loves writing poems and stories on social and political issues. Few of her poems can be viewed on http://www.poemocean.com and satires on http://www.mindthenews.com. She has worked with Wipro, Frankfinn and Educomp in the past.
Two friends in Kanpur were shocked by the amount of flowers that are dumped into the Ganges every single day, choking the river with pesticides and chemical fertilisers. They started collecting the flowers from temples and mosques in the city, and turned them into some brilliant eco-friendly products.
Enter a temple, mosque, gurudwara or church in India and the first thing you’ll probably notice is the abundance of flowers at the place of worship. There are flower sellers at the entrance, flowers strewn all over the shrine’s floor, devotees receiving flowers in the form of blessings – there seems to be no limit. Ever wonder what happens to those sacred flowers once we are done with our prayers?
According to many religious beliefs, flowers that are offered during prayers are sacrosanct and cannot be dumped into the garbage once they’ve wilted. This is one of the reasons why people prefer to discard them in rivers, lakes and other water bodies. But not many of us think about the fertilizers and pesticides that might have been used to grow these flowers, which then mix with the water and pollute it.
Ankit Agrawal and Karan Rastogi, two friends from Kanpur, had often thought of this issue. While growing up, the river Ganges had been an important part of their lives and it pained them to see it become increasingly polluted as the years went by.
Karan and Ankit
“Karan and I have been friends since childhood and some of our friends live abroad as well. Whenever all of us meet in Kanpur, there isn’t much to show them in the city. And when our friends see the river, their first reaction always has to do with how polluted it is. That was the starting point for our idea. Karan used to go to the temple every day and he would see the waste flowers being collected to be dumped in the river. So we thought of doing something to treat these flowers,” says 27-year-old Ankit.
According to him, every year, approximately 80, 00,000 tons of waste flowers are dumped into Indian rivers.
So, Ankit and Karan started thinking of a way to convert these flowers into an eco-friendly business venture. They started research in 2012 and a brilliant idea had taken shape by 2014 after several experiments. In May 2015, they founded Helpusgreen with the aim of utilizing the disposed flowers and turning them into bio-fertilisers and lifestyle products.
The duo picks up flowers from different places of worship every day – approximately 500 kg of them. Since they don’t have a factory, they divide the amount equally between themselves and take the flowers to their respective homes.
The flowers are then mixed with organic cow dung and treated with about 17 natural components like coffee residue, corn cobs, etc. These help increase the nitrogen content in the end-product. After a few days, earthworms are added to the mix. These worms consume the mixture and lead to the formation of vermicompost after 60 days. In this process, earthworms ingest the organic waste and then excrete it in a digested form. The excreta, called worm cast, is a dark, odourless and nutrient rich material that works as a great soil conditioner. Worm casts or vermicompost is a ready-to-use fertilizer.
Karan and Ankit have named this product Mitti and it helps improve soil texture for the better growth of plants.\
Helpusgreen product range
While 80% of the flowers are used to make vermicompost, the rest are crushed and made into incense sticks andyajna/havan items.
For manufacturing these items, the duo has employed 85 women from different self-help groups in villages around Kanpur, thus providing them with a source of income.
Women from self-help groups
“The women take the flower dough home and work for about four hours a day. We don’t use any chemical fragrances to make these products. Everything is natural,” says Ankit.
Most temples and mosques in Kanpur have management committees that collect the flowers inside the shrines and put them in bins. From here they are sent to be thrown into the river. Helpusgreen collects the flowers directly from the places of worship. According to Ankit, 2400 kg flowers are discarded in Kanpur on a daily basis. But Helpusgreen is only in a position to treat about 500 kg flowers a day, collected from 13 temples and three mosques.
Another great feature of Helpusgreen products is that they use recycled packaging, made from discarded cartons from a liquor factory in Kanpur.
Additionally, because they know people usually don’t throw away packets that have pictures of gods and goddesses on them, Ankit and Karan pack the havan/yajna items in seed paper that is embedded with tulsi seeds.
The discarded packets will grow into beautiful plants when they come into contact with soil.
Currently, they are exporting most of their products to Switzerland and Germany. And they are also making them available on e-commerce websites like Amazon, Flipkart, etc.
“We have produced 1.5 lakh kg flower compost till now. My mom was the target customer for us in the beginning. We had decided to keep working on the products till she approved of them. And the best feedback came from her. She loves it,” says Ankit laughing.
While most of us leave it to the gods to take care of the flowers we offer up in places of worship, kudos to Ankit and Karan for turning at least a part of the offerings into such amazing and environment-friendly products.
Visit here to know more about Helpusgreen. You can purchase these products here and here. Contact the founders at hola@helpusgreen.com.
Source……..Tanaya Singh in http://www.the betterindia.com
Good and bad, wealth and poverty, praise and blame go together in this world. You cannot derive happiness out of happiness (Na sukhat labhate sukham). Happiness comes only out of sorrow. A wealthy man today may become a pauper tomorrow. Similarly, a pauper may become a rich man some day or other. Today you are being praised, but tomorrow you may be criticised. To consider praise and blame, happiness and sorrow, prosperity and adversity with equal-mindedness is the hallmark of a true human being. The Gita declares, “Remain equal-minded in happiness and sorrow, gain and loss, victory and defeat (Sukha Dukhe same kritva labhalabhau jayajayau). You can truly enjoy your life as a human being only when you consider both sorrow and happiness, profit and loss with equanimity. There is no value for happiness without sorrow. Therefore, welcome sorrow if you want to experience real happiness.
An orange seller in Mangaluru built a school for the poor children in his village. Society has repaid the favour by giving him the most beautiful gift.
In the dusty village of New Papdu in Harekala, around 25 km from Mangaluru, lives a saint. For his almost miraculous contribution to society, the people of the land have bestowed the title of ‘Akshara Santa’ or Saint of Letters on Harekala Hajabba.
Growing up as a boy in a very poor family, Hajabba always nurtured the dream of rolling beedis in the city.
However, life took another turn and forced him to sell oranges instead.
“I have never been to school. At a young age, poverty pushed me into taking up a job selling oranges. One day, I encountered two foreigners who wanted to buy a few oranges from me. They started speaking to me in English and asked about the price of the oranges. But I was unable to converse with them and they left. I felt humiliated after this incident and was ashamed that the language barrier made them walk away,” he says.
Not wanting anyone else to go through what he had experienced, his life’s mission suddenly became clear to him. From that day onwards, Hajabba worked towards setting up a school so that the poor children in his village had access to education.
His wife Maimoona would often complain, saying he was giving away money meant for their own three children. Later, she too realised the importance of his cause.
Hajabba’s dream slowly took shape in 1999, in the form of a school attached to a madrasa in his village. When it started, there were only 28 students. However, as the number of students grew, Hajabba knew he would have to shift the school to a bigger facility. So he continued to accumulate every rupee he earned towards building a proper school and ensuring the education of future generations.
In 2004, Hajabba bought 50 cents of land. However, he realised that his savings would not be enough to build a school. So Hajabba started approaching people for money. From politicians to organisations to rich individuals, he went knocking on every door.
“I once went to a very rich person’s house to seek funds for the school. But what happened was that instead of giving me money he set his dogs on me,” Hajabba says.
The unwillingness of some people to support him didn’t come in the way of his dream.
Slowly, Hajabba gathered enough money and constructed a small primary school on the land.
Around this time, the media began to take notice of him too. Hosa Digantha, a Kannada newspaper, was the first to run a story on Hajabba. Soon after that, CNN IBN nominated him for its ‘Real Heroes’ award. Hajabba used his cash prize of Rs. 5 lakh towards building the school.
This was just the beginning.
Soon, recognition began pouring in from every corner. And with the recognition came the donations. Today, the school stands proudly on 1.5 acres of land in the village and has as many as 150 children studying there. From being a primary school, it has now become a secondary school.
“My duty was to only construct the school. I gave it to the government and now the government runs it. It is not only a school for Muslims. Poor children from every religion study in the school,” he says.
Hajabba has truly earned the respect of the people in his village and around the country. Many say they look up to him because the recognition and awards haven’t gone to his head. Nor have they deterred him from his real purpose — he remains humble to date. When the school was constructed, there was a proposal to name it after him. But Hajabba declined, saying he didn’t want to be in the limelight.
Hajabba is often invited to speak at various events. Universities in the region encourage him to share his story in an attempt to inspire students. In 2014, the United Christian Association decided to invite Hajabba to speak at a Christmas programme. To invite Hajabba for the event, Alban Menezes, the founder of the organisation, tried calling him multiple times.
“Finally, his son picked the phone and told me that he was admitted to Yenepoya Hospital in the city and was in critical condition. I rushed to the hospital and this is when the doctors told me there was something troubling Hajabba that was making his health worse,” says Alban.
After a lot of coaxing, Hajabba broke down in front of Alban. He told him that he was worried about not having a proper roof over his head. Hajabba, who had spent all his money for the cause of education, didn’t have any left to repair his dilapidated house.
Alban was deeply saddened by this and decided to construct a house for the man who had done so much for society.
In September 2015, Alban started constructing a house for Hajabba and it was completed in a record four months at a cost of Rs. 15 lakh.
Photo Credit: H.S. Manjunath
While his organisation was able to raise Rs. 1.5 lakh, Alban chipped in the rest of the money from his own resources.
“I am truly overwhelmed. I am an ordinary man you see. I’m not even worth 15 rupees and these people have actually built a house for me. I have no words to express my gratitude,” says Hajabba.
This 760 sq. ft. house has two bedrooms, a kitchen, and a special enclosure for all of Hajabba’s awards and trophies.
The housewarming ceremony was a special one. This communally-sensitive region witnessed a Hindu priest, a Muslim mullah and a Catholic priest conducting prayers at the ceremony. MP Nalin Kumar Kateel and Karnataka’s Minister for Health and Family Welfare, U.T. Khader, also attended the event.
“The district authorities have been very helpful. I’ve never had a gas stove in my house. The District Commissioner ensured I got a gas connection and a stove. This was sanctioned from some special fund. I feel I’ve been truly blessed,” says Hajabba.
This, however, is not the end of Hajabba’s story. He now plans to construct a Government Pre-University College in his village and has already started working towards the goal. And if his past is any indication, Hajabba will not rest till this dream is fulfilled too.
Take off with Natarajan 