The unknown story

THE UNKNOWN STORY

These are the lines that guide me throughout. I personally think that I need these lines not during defeat or failure but particularly during a success. These are my guiding words, neither a spirit nor an angel, this is what guides me all the way.

 If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same:
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss:
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

What maketh a man? A question still unanswered! If there was a single solid formula to success then CHATUR would have been the most successful person but alas! With the DNA the formulas for success also change from person to person.

In today’s times I think its more difficult to hold your head during a success than during a downfall because in these times of expectations the more you do the less it is and the more you are expected of! Alexander Graham Bell quotes- “a man, as a general rule, owes very little to what he is born with-a man is what he makes himself”

My class 12 started as normal as anyone of us but I had no idea where it was aimed at. Never did I think of ranks and competition but a day changed my perspective. One of my respected teachers had challenged me that I could never get more marks than a particular student. That was the day my eyes gleamed with a dream, a dream to do what I could but had not till now, maybe it was my personal *pop* of the popcorn theory. I knew I would not aim at topping a mere unit test but something bigger than expected by anyone.

 I really don’t know how I did it but at the end that mattered was that I could do it and I believe it was never a one man show. Everyone had a role in it and by that I do not mean only the ones in my support, my well wishers, my friends, my parents…. I think, quite differently, that every that person who has even once thought ill of me without any flaw of mine and every that person who has, voluntarily or involuntarily, been jealous of me has accelerated me much more towards my aim. Yes, they are those people, for e.g. who have liked my writing but felt it against their ego to like it… this is just one of a kind.

There has been no SECRET SUCCESS MANTRA for me and if there has been I have no idea about it! Because many people are quoting their self made talks as my words but personally I don’t think there is any mantra. There’s just 1 thing I kept in mind always. I have loads to prove to many people, all those people who never trusted me, never gave me a chance, or rather thought I have been given too many chances already and din’t deserve more- to all of them I had to say “abhi toh bas udaan bhari hai saara akaash abhi baaki hai”

Interestingly, very less people know this, but there is a big big disadvantage to all this glory, all these achievements. People know you even before you have spoken to them or even known their names. Yes, it is a drawback because then they formulate a fixed idea about you that yeh toh aisi hee hai. Living example Srishti Roy. I love you babes but I think you should have fixed your idea about me after speaking to me. There are still many whose ideas I cannot go and change individually by personal interaction,to all those- I am not as people tell you, experience for yourself think for yourself. Another drawback is I am ear marked and tagged that she keeps studying. Who the hell will trust me if I tell them that a night before mathematics prelims I was at the DJ till 1am at my sister’s wedding. Yes, but I am a purely no-nonsense type.

So…. Leaving all that behind to all I would say is I am not what people told you, I am what I am. Know me and test me by your senses.

If anybody has ever noticed, if a 60 percenter says that look I will top this year hes marked as an OPTIMIST and sadly if a 90 percenter says the same thing he is marked as PROUD and ARROGANT. If a normal student chooses to keep quiet due to some reasons he is named as introvert and at the same time if a topper chooses to stay quiet ufff its his misbehavior. Cool na? na… not so cool. Many people no more think of you as living human beings, you are either made expectation fulfilling machines or emotionless competitors. And most of the times words are mumbled in self-respect, not in arrogance and then I am responsible for what I say, not for what people understand.

             As I step out of school into a new college life, I just wanted to clear the stuff with all of you. And if you all still refuse to believe in this so, respectfully, it doesn’t matter. All I can do is hope… hope that we could bond better, hope you could know me better. You will truly regret it one day! J

And to my near and dear ones-thanks for staying by me through thick and thin I really love you all…. And I bet you will never get a friend like me.

        Truly yours

Palak Marwah

SENSE AND SENSIBILITY

To protest the central government's decision to import milk powder and other dairy products, some activists spilled thousands of liters of milk on the Satara-Pune highway.
The activists stopped a milk tanker on the highway and spilled the milk all over the road. The import of dairy products will hurt the interests of the local dairy farmers, they claimed. 
In a similar protest a week ago, other activists had stopped five tankers and wasted over 50,000 liters of milk in Satara claiming that the organization had decided to take the step as milk prices would reduce by Rs 5 per liter following the Centre's decision to import 30,000 tonnes of milk powder.

                        This is the scenario in India where 47% of the children exhibit a degree of malnutrition. 2.1 million Indian children die before reaching the age of 5 every year – four every minute – mostly from preventable illnesses like malnutrition, diarrhea, fever etc. If a protest had to be staged it could have been done in a more sensible manner. The protest could have been carried out by hijacking milk tankers and redistributing milk free of cost among poor people in that area. Surprisingly in a country whit revolution had to be launched in order to raise milk production to meet the demands of the growing population, there itself a whooping 50,000 litres of milk was drained out on the streets! Shocking but true! Its all the matter of sense and sensibility.

                        Was there really no way to sort out the differences with the government peacefully? I guess probably we Indians, belonging to a country of Gandhi have taken the Gandhian ideal of  Satyagraha far too seriously yet misinterpreted the process way too much. The activists projected the aim of their protest as guarding the interests of local dairy farmers who would be financially crippled due to import of milk powder but in the way they forgot that those 50,000 liters of milk must also have been the output of some other farmers’ hardwork which they ruthlessly wasted which could have filled the empty growling stomachs of many rather than washing the streets!

                            This is not a single instance of (non)sense. Rich farmers in Delhi and western U.P. poured milk in a drain in New Delhi on 21^st April 2012 in a protest against the decision of milk products producing companies to reduce the purchase price of milk by 37%. No words!

                                    The wastage story doesn’t end here. There’s more to it. In India about % of the population that is about million people sleep empty stomach every day. At the same time the other side of the coin is this- As on August 1, 2010, the total food stocks with the FCI were 55 million tonnes (mt) as compared to the buffer requirements of 27 mt. Of this, 15 mt of wheat was lying in the open in Punjab and Haryana alone. As per estimates, 50,000 tonnes of food stocks have already deteriorated beyond human consumption as a result of long, improper storage. Reason? Black marketing, illegal stocking and hoarding of grains and then reselling the hoarded grains, obtained at a low price from the government under the PDS, in the open market when the price increases due to low availability of grains. No doubt the government has implemented many schemes for the welfare of the poor but there is no proper implementation at any level. From the grass root level of villages to big cities the poor barely obtain any advantage out of it and die of malnutrition and hunger. have farmers toiled so hard to feed their grains to rodents and rats? Apart from loss of grains how can we neglect the loss of resources gone into producing that amount of grain? The people in the BPL have been there for years and years and still there seems to be no scope of their upliftment. On both sides we Indians are at loss. People in Orissa  and other poor states die of hunger and at the same time rich farmers in Punjab and Haryana face losses due to over production.

Hence at this point, with no dearth of facilities, the only thing India needs is implementation of policies and schemes because we can surely not ignore the current situation.