On Taboos: A Letter To Indian Parents

Hey guys!

This is the latest article addressing all the issues kids in India either feel embarrassed, ashamed or scared to address their parents about. And negligence of these important issues is prevalent to some extent, in nearly every place in the world.

My 2nd for Women's web-->

Tell me what you think!

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There are a number of issues that Indian parents don’t address their children about and even more realities that they simply can’t digest. You can’t believe that your teens talk of crushes, alcohol, drugs, and other more unbelievable topics, but wake up, it is happening.

1. The most prevalent problem is, parents want marks. They want marks in exams, an all-rounder kid, which is of course with a good intention of securing their children a good position in life, but often, the pressure becomes excessive. Children are of varying capacities, you can’t expect your child to get full marks in all subjects and still get gold medals in sports just because your neighbor’s kid does so. Your neighbor’s kid is a different individual from yours.

If a children is dim or average in studies everyone says that it’s only because she didn’t study well enough, this is always cited as the reason. Study harder, I don’t know what you’ll do, I need the marks. Still no improvement? Go for tuitions. Still no marks? Something’s wrong with you, is the standard mantra.

The sad truth is that if your child isn’t naturally gifted enough in studies, no amount of hard work will be able to achieve the results you expect. This doesn’t spell that your kid is a total zero and has no future though, like many assume.

Aren’t there other professions, other talents? Every child is naturally gifted in something. May not be in studies, but may in art, music, sports or something else. All these can be pursued as professions too; parents mostly don’t seem to understand that there are other careers than your standard doctor, teacher and engineer.

I am in grade ten. When people want to know about my future plans, first of all, they don’t speak to me. They ask my parents, like it’s them who’s going to live my life. And their question will usually go, “So, what is your daughter going to become- a doctor, or CA?” When my parents say neither, they’ll go knowingly, “Oh, so she’s going be an engineer. Wonderful!”

Huh?

There are so many friends in India that I know of, who want to pursue their own interests. Sadly these are repressed merely because they are not conventional. Parents need to broaden their perspectives and accept their child’s passion, not force something they don’t like upon them.

2. Then are those who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender. Most of the adult public is aware of at least one of these groups. But they surely don’t show it. Put your nose up and it’ll go away, is it? People with different sexual inclinations do exist, they live normally, they breathe the same way as we do. There are quite some children who grow up falling into one of these categories. After facing insecurity, unacceptability, and fear, when they finally do pick up the courage to let their parents know of their inclinations, things only get worse. They are disowned, their parents look on them as if they were untouchable, and try to suppress their personality and coax them into ‘normality’- none of which is a solution.

Another terrified question would be posed, “how would the society react?” Yeah, that’s one worth pondering on, because I’ve only seen adults themselves, mocking at transgender/bisexual groups, and movies ridiculing them. It is a shame that in India, these classes, to which any one of us might have by chance belonged to, are made fun of like a public circus show. Anyone or anyone’s child could easily belong to this category; it’s not an outlandish possibility. So we Indians face an inevitable question, “Would you accept your kid or any other co-member of your society if they were a LGB or T?”

Stop neglecting this topic. Try to answer it.

3. Next comes the ‘love’ versus the religiously right ‘arranged’ marriage. What is arranged marriage? A system in which parents fall in love with each other’s money, or with each other’s sarees, properties, behavior, or caste, and so expect that their children should fall in love too? Absurd.

While I don’t say this system of marriage is completely flawed, because it often does become a success, and it’s a ‘fun’ activity for the parents and relatives to undertake, logging on....see the entire article on women's web itself! here's the link:http://www.womensweb.in/2013/04/a-letter-to-indian-parents/

A deceitful hero

Heya ma dearies :D This poem got me the second place at Taaleem poetry award in The emirates airline festival of literature!
Check it out, and let me know what you think!

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I decide you are my hero,
As I indulge in your flawlessly luscious stuff.
Your Shades crawl as the tingling flavors unite,
With, a fizzling burst of chocolate, like an angry volcano.
Effervescence as CO2 is released from your
Thick soft brunette mass- an exothermic reaction!
And then you dissolve into my mouth when I
Stuff you in, hungrily. Ah, your succulence!
Even as you flow down, your flavor lingers
In my smacking tongue, my salivating mouth. My hero!

But then- you cruelly invade my tummy,
Corroding its walls, with your treacherous treacle,
Betrayer! You nourish the evil parasites in me.
Appearances are only a facade, and so seems that
Fleeting flavor too, for now, only jiffies later, I can
Feel- not your saccharinity, but an excruciating ache
In my teeth; calling for an appointment at the dentist’s.
Now your definition evolves for, you’ve cost my time, diet
And sparkly teeth. Yet I always remain unsuspecting fly,
Repeatedly caught in your alluring, sticky web. Villain!

size zero not equals to 'perfection'!

Take a look at the cover of any girls', sports, luxury, lifestyle or women's magazine, with a female on the cover. Most likely, that the girl would be size zero, if not size insert-a-negative-number-here. The entire world seems to be obsessed with this skinny look, which fashion magazines and media celebrates, wrongly, as 'the ideal' size. This includes teen girls' magazines, like teen vogue, girl's life, and most other magazines, that claim that it's their motto to 'boost' the teens 'self-esteem', while in real life they are actually pressurizing young girls by setting an ideal, a must-reach goal of an emaciated figure that is very hard, and even unhealthy, to attain. Most cliques in schools, following media's ravings, also define this skinniness as 'perfection'. The readership of these teen magazines mostly consists of ordinary, differently shaped teens, not real, haute bikini-bodied models, and yet this superficial image is what is worshipped like a religion.

Promotion of skinny culture indirectly encourages eating disorders, boosting anxiety, and prematurely placing too much emphasis on little nine and ten year olds already making them beauty conscious, and so, robbing them of a carefree childhood.

Following this crazy trend, many desperately try to shed off pounds the quick way-say, by starving themselves (then bingeing later), having reconstructive, weight loss drugs and pound shedding surgeries or by other means, which usually don't work out. Either that or they sink into a trench of depression, stressing and sulking about their flabbiness, and about not being underweight. Sudden, self-made skimpy diet plans, are adopted as a result, to put off all weight abruptly. But, acute diet plans to cut down skin, can severely damage our bones, putting us in danger of getting osteoporosis (a chronic condition where the bones become weak and brittle).

Try entering 'size' in Google search. Before you know it, you will already by debilitated by a whole load of stuff relating to size zero- diet, food, designers, models, clothes, cheats, and what not.

The real question is, is size zero actually 'perfect'? Not really. While it's one thing to be a naturally petite size zero while still eating all you want, is one thing, forcing this alien size into your body may well have the opposite effect. Moreover, the beauty of the body isn't necessarily defined by having no mass. No, curves beautify, muscles, and the right sort of fitness build strength and shape, and so do each person's natural physique. We all look, and are sized differently, to suit our natural persona well. The world would become too monotonous if everyone started puking out their food to make their bones protrude. It is ironical that while really poor children in the third world countries are dying of malnutrition, their much wealthier counterparts in developed regions are also starving of the same, just because they want to look undernourished.

Take a look at the aftermath of eating disorders. In early 2006, Brazilian model Ana Carolina Reston, 21, died of anorexia and bulimia on the eve of a Paris photoshoot after living on a diet of apples and tomatoes. The death of Uruguayan model Luisel Ramos at the Uruguay Fashion Week in 2006 led to the ban on size zero girls parading at the Madrid fashion shows. Her father claimed that she had been fasting for days. The already skinny 22-year-old had been informed by her model agency that she could "make it big" if she lost a significant amount of weight. She collapsed died despite the efforts of an emergency team trying to resuscitate her.

We are ourselves to blame for this size zero mania. Why would the top designers and magazines so actively continue featuring and supplementing diets and tips for this trend if no person cared to follow it? It is because we are so avidly following and falling prey to this glossy trap, and are consciously or otherwise promoting it ourselves, that it is being heralded. If every one of us learns to love our own body the way it is, instead of yearning something that we don't have, the skinny frame would lose all its rage, and that in turn, could lead to hundreds of lives being saved. For even today, young girls are dying, of eating disorders and starvation to achieve what is foolishly branded desirable. It is up to each one of us to fight back this degrading culture. Size zero, is way too praised, and glittery, but it definitely is not gold

Why India's workforce has such great potential

My first article as an NRI contributor at The Times of India :D
Let me know what you think.
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http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/nri/contributors/contributions/keertana/Why-Indias-workforce-has-such-great-
potential/articleshow/18553909.cms?

A company involved in any activity primary, secondary, or based on human resource, will in most cases have some number of Indians working in it, may it be in any corner of the world. That India constitutes 15%of the world populace is a boon in disguise. Most companies now bank on India, Bangladesh and china for their labor intensive activities like construction, assembly, repairs etc. mainly due to the inexpensive pay, and the abundant supply of labor available in these locales. So, in producing massive numbers for manual activities, India stands with the rest of its subcontinent, and a few other developing countries from Africa, and South America.

But as far as the tertiary sector, involving IT, engineering and technology goes, India stands alone. No other country in the subcontinent, or in the Far East (Philippines, Indonesia), Africa, or America, produces such abundant, skilled, English speaking, educated workforce, at relatively cheap rates. There is no other country in the world that meets nearly all these requirements as efficiently.

It is a fact that the cost of employing, running, and completing a project in a developing country will definitely be more economic, and cut down the costs largely. A study in the duke university recently found that while roughly 70,000 engineers graduated in the US, 6, 00,000 graduated in China and 3, 50,000 in India. In the UK some 23,000 engineers are graduating every year. But India is producing eight times as many. Apart from such a huge jobseeker base, Companies from abroad, who complete their projects basing them in India, are, on an average, able to cut down on about 40-50% of their operation costs. This is probably why India is serving as a magnet to thousands of companies who are moving their bases here.

Not that these benefits are unidirectional, or only for the companies. Indian jobseekers benefit abundantly, too. There are lakhs of new engineering graduates every year, and most of them struggling to secure employment. Apart from just generating employment, these MNCs and IT giants bring along with them, numerous benefits, like assured health insurance, education costs, better technology, and decent or great salaries. They provide windows for communication with the tech world outside the country, with new practices and methods. And after all, it's only the people who strongly desire to, that join a company, so naturally, it much, at least in the slightest, benefit them.

Our government benefits too. Though the stipulated SEZs (special economic zones, to attract foreign investment) exempt companies from certain taxes, they are not completely freed from contributing economically. Eventually they do underwrite by generating foreign monetary exchange, and contributing to most exports. Som Mittal, president of the National Association of Software and Services Companies was quoted saying, "Nearly 35 per cent of our export revenues come from MNCs and captives and, therefore, we need to encourage them to set up their development centers in India rather than move to the Philippines or China"

Because of their investments in infrastructure, MNCs also steer economic and structural development, accelerating modernization.

Some companies even complain that this has led to an 'Indian mafia' or excessive domination of Indian workforce in their companies all over the world that are based elsewhere. Some even attempted vainly, to search for workforce from other countries, in hope of reducing some number of Indians from their company and replacing them with people from other nationalities.

On an urgent project to find economical workforce, an IT company that travelled first to far east, and middle east, found about a hundred jobseekers, out of which only a few were fit to hire. Then, finally, on stumbling into India, it found a two thousand jobseekers, most accepting far more feasible wages that their former counterparts.

Hence it is nowadays, fast becoming a sensible option, more than anything else, to choose India, or china, before any other place in the world- they offer such an attractive package, and a great growth potential, after all.

crush

Crush
Comes without a warning and
Pushes you hard, down the ground,
Defenceless.
Crush
Increases your blood pressure
And colors your face hurriedly like
A nursery kid in a painting contest.
Crush
Paralyzes your strong athletic feet
And tickles you inside till
You wobble like a klutzy jelly.
Crush
Looks so hypnotically hot
That your head will be in the Sahara
When you’re only still in Serbia.
Crush
May crush your fragile little
Fist sized heart, ruthlessly
By not returning your unsolicited favor.
Crush
Will speak honeyed words like an
Angel from paradise, but when you would
Be too frozen and,
Busy looking at its beautiful lips,
It will lose interest and move away.

carefree childhood

Light dance,

Innocent smile,

Stepping right inside,

Every third tile.

Bobbing that Puffy

Hair style, and laughing

With those missing teeth.

Evanescently flippant moods,

But an everlasting curiosity

About the little things in life.

 Filled inside with

Tender youth, this little

Seedling, is squinting at the

Bright, glaring, raw rays

Of the severe sun,

For the first time.

what ails India's education system?

hey everyone!
Here's my article dated 26/dec/12 as published in The new Indian express, though that's bit edited, here's the original.
P.S: Hope you have an extraordinary new year with new endeavors, and a lot of happiness!
so, the world didn't end after all! :)
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India's is quite known for it's education system all over the world but the problem is only that most of this 'good' quality education is provided in private schools, mostly in urban cities, and even these schools can do with some reforms. again education is not only at school but actually begins at home. So everywhere, in homes and schools there are some things that, if kept in mind, can secure a brighter future for India's youth, your children:

1.Break the tradition of rote learning. Practical experiments cannot be learnt through lab manuals, a language cannot be learnt through mugging it's rules, and moral science cannot be learnt by scoring full marks in it's exam. We have to break the traditional way of theoretical, textual learning and replace it with a more practical, manner of getting educated. To make students relate better to their subjects, do more activities, inculcate more projects and real life applications, most importantly in government schools.

2.people associate quality of education with the amount of things students learn before the graduate from school. what people fail to understand is that, it is not the amount the students learn that matters, but how well the student understands every topic. even if only a few, but important, topics are covered, the schools have to make sure that the message of the topic clearly gets through. real literacy can only be brought about with more realistic ways of teaching.

3. marks are given too much priority by parents. students these days, are seen learning, not for what they will gain from it to prepare for life, but to score more marks to keep in pace with their parents' expectations. parents should start encouraging the child, in not just the field related to marks and exams but in more important fields like social relationships, leadership, practical and communication skills.

4. many want their children to study well so that they can secure a wealthy future. but health is wealth. India has increasing obesity rates mainly because of the children spending too much time in front of the T.V or the textbook, which is not good for the overall development of the child. parents and teachers must realize the importance of an active healthy life, and start inculcating exercise and healthy eating habits in their children right from a young age. remember parents, this will also ensure your child's future happiness, because he will be happy, both with his money and with his body.

5. inculcate leadership. every person has an innate leader in them and that leader is capable of achieving great things. Encourage the child not only in what you want him to progress at. Instead, support the child's natural talents and help launch what he already has a knack for. also help every child realize his unique potential. don't demotivate.

6. don't expect too much. branding a child a guaranteed IITian the moment he is born just because you want him to be one won’t help. every child has his own inclinations and abilities, and every child cannot be the top ranker. besides, there are other fields that exist in the world apart from studies, like music, dance, writing, designing, sports etc. accept your child for who he is.

7. the government schools must improve their administration. We usually find that, in private schools, the teaching is more efficient. this is not because the teachers here get more salary. on the contrary, these teachers are most effective because they are constantly scrutinized by the private administration. however, in government schools, salary, regular work, holidays every other day, good pensions and everything is guaranteed. also, corruption is eating up about half the resources which were meant to benefit the kids.