The Balloons Of National Family Planning Programme

India is a land of quality paper work. We have the largest written Constitution, we construct fantastic buildings, roads and bridges with crores of rupees on paper, sometimes we even produce imaginary population on paper. Papers here can eat grains, kerosene, concrete, cement and what not. We have many development policies and programmes, which look great on paper. The principles and fundamentals which our policy makers use to frame these policies are the ideal, but most of these policies fail or under achieve because of the implementation techniques. If some theory exam is organised on ideal policy making, India will surely top in that. The programmes on Health and Family Welfare, Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, MNREGA, MDM ,Reservation policy and many others have seen inappropriate or sluggish implementaion. Anyways this post is for the National Family Planning Programme.

I am doing a course on Demography this semester. One day while discussing the fertility aspects and birth control our Professor told us about the family planning programme in India and its success and failures. It was a proud feeling to know that India was one of the first countries to implement a nationalised family planning programme. There were advertisements on radio promoting use of condoms, sterilisation and other birth control techniques, big posters of “chhota parivar- sukhi parivar” were put on roads and public places. Policy makers thought that these written banners will motivate the massively uneducated population of India. People were given gifts, monetary benefits and incentives if they agreed to get sterilised. The condoms and other things were distributed for free. And on the results part of this policy there were lakhs of sterilisations- most of those were of people of age above 40(when they already had 3 to 4 children) and many on paper only. Women were forced to get sterilised, even when the operation involved was comparatively very easy for men. Even the people living in villages had the availability of condoms, but no one knew how to use them. On a conclusion note our Prof made a statement- “ In the 70’s and 80’s if you go to some village you can easily find children playing with the condom balloons”. Whole class burst in laughter on this but it was like “WHAT….???” for me, because I remembered something.

This discussion made me reel back my life to 1998-99. During the school vacations we used to go to our village. In the village I used to forget all the adequates and language which the Christian Convent School taught me and become one of them. I played and mixed with all kinds of children there, some wearing dirty clothes, some wearing only pants or underwears, some having nose running out. Everyday I got an ultimatum from my mother- “agar agli bar in gande baccho ke sath khelte dikhe to taange tod dungi”. But I went daily because they had really interesting games. One of the games which was very popular those days was playing with balloons. These balloons were really cheap- you can get around 10 in 1 rupee, some children even got them for free, I used to wonder from where they get it. Inspite of being so cheap their size was very big as compared to the normal balloons. They had a peculiar characteristic- they exploded if they fell on grass or even touched it. I remember I spent a lot of time in trying to discover why only these balloons explode on falling on the grass, while the normal ones don’t. Anyways this led to a discovery of another interesting game for us- balloon volleyball. We played voleyball kind of game with them, the one who missed his shot, his balloon fell on the grass and exploded. We even celebrated one of our friends birthday with those balloons. I used to do all this non-sense far away from the reach of my home so that my family members specially my father doesn’t see me playing with those kids. One day by mistake I reached home with one such balloon in my hand and unfortunately met my father on the gate itself. He scolded me heavily and forbade me not to step out from the house for 2 days as a punishment. At that time I couldn’t figure out why he scolded me so much for just playing with a balloon. I asked this from my mummy and even she showered all her anger on me. I came to know the reason of that punishment after these many years in class that day. But I still don’t know why those balloons exploded on touching the grass. :P 

Anyways if someone asks me now –“Have you ever bought a condom?, I can proudly say- “Condoms, I used to play with them in my childhood man.” :P :P 

Few things I learnt from you

“Everything and everyone in this world is beautiful, just see it the way it deserves to be seen…”-a one line philosophy of my life. I believe that everyone is special and is gifted with some unique qualities. By qualities here I refer to the ones which form a person’s character, nature and behaviour. If you have some observational skills you may find it all around you, amongst your friends. I have seen people following and copying great personalities of the history. However I feel if you observe people around you only, you’ll get many things to learn, and it is always more practical to follow a common man than some great one. So here in this post, I am summarizing some of the things which I learnt from “you”. You may think them to be extremely philosophical or weird, but giving a deep thought will somewhat convince you that these things are valid in today’s world. Some tips to be happy-

Have multiple “BEST FRIENDS”:

The statement “have multiple/many best friends” is grammatically incorrect. The very definition of best means that it can be just one in number. But the days of Jai-Veeru and Heer-Ranjha type friendships are now gone. The world today is so fast, busy and selfish, that when you need your best friend, many a times he isn’t available to you. You would have surely felt one such moment when your best friend has intentionally or unintentionally hurt you. These days’ people have many good friends and enjoy with one when the other is not available. I have even heard statements like-‘I have 3 best friends or 4 best friends’. Here there is one thing to keep in mind- all these friends are best but no one is special.

Talk Much, Share Less: 

In my childhood I was taught that people who talk a lot are good at heart and have pure thoughts, because talkative people share everything whatever they have in their mind. But in today’s world the more you share your life or secrets, the more the problems you’ll face. People will surely backstab you at some point of time in your life for the things which they know about you. This backstabbing can be in the form of a small comment which will shake you from top to toe. Also the more you share with someone, the more emotional attachment you develop. And believe me this “emotional attachment” is the worst disease. In today’s professional world you will have to talk a lot, but do this talking by mind, not by heart.

Enjoy the present, Forget the past:

What to say about this, it’s a well known fact. But I have one point to make here, what things to forget from the past? People say forget the bad memories because keeping them with you will always hurt. But I feel keeping the good memories also hurts. These good memories are very typical things, they may fill your face with laughter or even your eyes with tears. It depends on how and in what conditions you are remembering them. I feel that after a certain period of time even these good memories start hurting because something or the other happens to the person or persons who were a part of that memory( this happening may be as simple as breaking of a relationship).

Never Fall (for anyone):

In very simple words-falling always hurts. Be down to earth in your behaviour but never let anyone conquer you. Don’t develop extreme attachment or feelings for someone. The people are too ignorant to understand you, even if they understand you they are too rude to care and even if they care, they are too busy to carry it on. Once you fall you become like a coin which is kicked from here to there. If you are lucky enough someone may pick you up, but even he won’t kiss you.

These things are not exactly my mind’s creation. I have observed them in real life and just attempted to provide some explanations in the context of today’s world.

Although I have written these points, I haven’t been able to follow them yet nor I am planning to follow because- “khush rahne me bs khushi hai, par gam me zindagi hai..”

Criticisation welcomed... :)

a fairy tale...

When I was a kid, I used to love the fairies and their tales as all other kids do. Usually grandfather or grandmother are the ones who paint the child's mind with such colorful stories but my case was different. My grandparents used to tell us the spiritual stories,Ramayana,Mahabharat, a field in which they were expert.
I used to read the fairy stories from various books and magazines. I still remember joining letters then forming the words and then recollecting all the words with great difficulty to ultimately read one sentence.But I loved it this way only. Reading stories by yourself opens before you the great opportunities to imagine things, specially when your reading speed is slow. The fairies used to help the poor honest kids or the ones who lost their parents and also sometimes the princes to help them find their princesses.

Slowly and slowly as the time passed, science books kept on creeping in our school bags.They taught us to question things and find reasons. I think I rather quickly adapted this scientific temper. My family members keep on telling me stories how I used to irritate them with my questions on all damn things.With such an attitude I easily figured out that nothing like fairy world exists.I remember how my interest shifted from stories to scientific literature or books.

Years passed and these fairies remained out of my life. Then there came a time when I started realizing the real face of this world- the poverty, the starvation, homelessness.I started feeling that its more important to focus on these problems then on scientific ones and I was amazed to know that there are many people in this world doing that, living their life to help others. I saw in them the same angel or fairy which Nandan & Champak used to tell us in stories.People loved them like we loved our fairies. I remember when I was about 5 or 6 years old, one day I was going somewhere with my father. A group of people was coming from the opposite side weeping and crying loudly. My father stopped them and asked what happened? They told Mother Teresa has left the world.My father was also very shocked and I could clearly note the changes in his expressions. I dont know why I still remember this. That day I was'nt able to understand why these people were crying. But later when I grew up and studied about the great lady, everything was clear to me.

People like Mother Teresa are the fairies of this world. They dont have those wings or supernatural beauty but have all the love which they shower on the needy. I consider every single person as a fairy/angel who has a heart for others, who thinks for improving the situation of the poor and the needy.

Fairies exist, not with beautiful wings but with beautiful hearts having tonnes and tonnes of love in it!!

The Magical Sticks!!

Yesterday morning at 5, I saw a group of students working hard with some wooden sticks, trying to arrange and fix them in a manner to challenge the destructive earthquake waves. Seeing them I remembered the Takneek of my first year ie. Takneek’10. In a manner similar to these guys and at the same time of the day ,me and my friends were busy in showing our best of working skills and applying all sorts of physical and mathematical logics to build an earthquake resistant building without having any knowledge of Engineering. We were one of the two teams, who were representing our pool Mauryans in Tremor.

The story started with a highly motivating GBM, instilling in us the wish to learn all the engineering skills in few weeks. We attended all the lectures of Electronics and Robotics as everyone does. We were about to participate in some robotics events but the coordinators conducted a quiz to test our knowledge and we were out. We were really in a sad situation because now we had nothing to participate in our first technical competition. In a depressed mental state and saying all sorts of foul words to the coordinators, we were lazily browsing through the Takneek website. Suddenly one of my friends pointed towards the 30 point event Tremor. The problem statement was to design an earthquake resistant building model using wooden sticks. Initially we were not all interested in a boring civil engineering event but the thought of winning 30 points right away for our Hall lead us into it. We discussed with our wingies and came to know that none from our batch was participating in the event. We were now seeing it as a real golden opportunity to do something cool. We studied the given problem statement and all the literature suggested thoroughly. The deadline to submit the abstract was only three days away. I still remember how we called the coordinators more than 10 times everyday, raising questions, discussing with them and clarifying our doubts. Even one of the coordinators gave us a short tutorial on earthquake engineering. Somehow with the new concepts learned and from the old concepts of centre of mass and stability we prepared our design. We also had to submit the simulation model of the design suggested but having less time we just drew the projections of it on some A3 sheets. When we submitted the abstract to the coordinators, they were stunned by the TA drawing skills of my roomie Sravan. But there only we came to know, that there were 3 more teams participating in it from our hall and they were all 2^nd yearites. Our all dreams just shattered. But the next day turned out really special for us. Two abstracts were selected from our hall and ours was one amongst them. Even the coordinators appraised our work a lot.

We got the material two days before judging. As we had no prior experience in wood work, we contacted some of our seniors. They not only came with us, but remained with us till the end. With two nite-outs and a lot of hard work, we completed our design well before the judging of the event. When we reached with our model in the testing laboratory, one of the assistants there seeing its strength and stability said-“It will not break even if it is kept for 5 mins on the shcok table.” We were overwhelmed. Finally the competition started and we saw the models collapsing, breaking and falling on the ground. When our model was placed on the table, all of us were red with nervousness. But the assistant was correct, nothing happened to our building even when it was tested for 1 minute duration. We were now sure that we have a fair good chance of winning. Finally the results were declared, and guess what we were first. All the happiness showered on us from the skies. And to add to our joy, the other team from our hall was declared second. We were super excited now and even started “Hall 3 ka tempo high hai”, in the lab itself.

We returned to our hall, carrying those unharmed buildings as our trophies and shouting and cheering with our full effort. We came and placed the models in the quard. A large group of students surrounded us, praising our efforts and congratulating us. There was a sudden wave of joy in the Hall because of the 48 points which we won in a single shot. After this whole episode, I developed a huge interest in civil engineering. Earlier I used to think that it is just about putting one brick on top of the other, but now I realised that it is much more than that. It is a complex and wonderful science without which our lives will become helpless.

That one week of Takneek has a very special significance in my life because there only, for the first time I learnt how good and helpful are the seniors of IITK and also about the amazing feeling of respect which you get after doing something for your Hall.