Surving at own strength

Sunita is the 4th child in a large family comprising of parents, grandparents & 6 siblings. She had to drop out of school after class12 as the family could not support her education. But she always wanted to be self reliant & contribute to her family resources. With this in view she enrolled for Child survival India's stitching course.
Sunita took 6 months training in tailoring & cutting. Since she had the aptitude in stitching, her hand was very neat & all her neighbors were really impressed by her work. They started coaxing her to stitch clothes for them. Due to her family conditions her father could not buy her a sewing machine. Child survival social workers are helping her in this need.
Sunita is now stitching clothes for her neighbors. Infact, she is good in her designing that most of the would be young brides in her area want her to stitch their clothes for trousseau. Sunita is able to earn about 1000 p.m out which she keeps 250 for her pocket money and gives the rest to her mother to manage the family needs.

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Chill Pill

We have drugs available virtually off the shelf to enhance physical ability, expand memory and increase cognitive performance. So, why not a drug that would make us more compassionate, caring and kind as well? Moral steroids, if you will. It's not a joke. In a recent issue of the 'British Journal of Psychiatry', psychiatrist Sean Spence argues that in the future people might want to choose to be more moral and that the rapidly advancing field of pharmacology could help them get there faster. For instance, why should a responsible person who takes serious account of his behaviour and its likely impact upon others not choose to influence that by popping a couple of pills? Actually, drugs are already doing that whenever humans knowingly use them as a means to improve their conduct. We may prefer not to see it quite that way, but if a man with a sociopathic personality disorder - someone we would normally call a jerk - takes antipsychotic medication to control impulsive behaviour and aggressive tendencies on a date, he's only doing it to lessen the chances of harming someone else. After all, it's the decent thing to do. But is it wrong to have drugs specifically designed to target and increase a pro-social feeling and behaviour such as kindness or altruism? In other words, should pharmacology be used to improve ethical standards? Some argue that such mental manipulation would be unnatural and only render us "artificially" moral since the drugs would make us lose our ability to choose an honourable quality on our own. Is it really better if people lose this choice for the good of the collective? At the same time, it can be argued that if some chemicals outside our body can be made to control our level of social responsibility, then it would be fairly safe to assume that comparable chemicals inside the body are already a source of similar control. And, if so, then perhaps we never had a choice to begin with. Also, can people really have any objection if it was suddenly easier to become a better person? Isn't that what some psychological and semi-religious techniques like anger management, meditation and mindfulness which have proven benefits in reducing the impact of negative and destructive emotions try to inculcate in us anyway?

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Understand

As we lead our different lives

There are days when all is wrong

When nothing seems right

When you feel like

The deep blue sky will fall on you

Yet you don't seem to mind

When the unexpected happens

When you worst fears become reality

When your dreams are shattered to pieces

When you realize

That you can't have all you want

When they tell you"I told you so"

For believing in what they call foolish dreams

When they tell you to grow up

When they tell you to deal with it

When they say give it up and move on

You look at the stars and you softly cry

Saying that life isn't for those who give up

You wipe your tears and take a deep breath

As you say to yourself "You can't have all you want

But you can never give upon trying to have as much as you can......"

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The Glory Of It All

Many times life's challenges are greater

than we acknowledge them to be.

Through your dreams lies destination.

A future which you control.

Possibilities of achievement lingers about.

Your dreams a mere grasp away.

Strive with all your might

Don't loose faith within yourself and

sweet life shall be rewarded.

With a gentle kiss of glorified pleasures

From...life its self.

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You Can Take Charge Of Your Life

Whenever things don’t happen the way you want them to, there is a temptation to name it destiny. This is how you deal with failure; you are consoling yourself. Whatever situations you are living in, to be human means that you can mould situations the way you want them. But today, most people in the world are moulded by the situations in which they exist. That is simply because they exist in reaction to the situations they are placed in. So their question will be, “Why was i placed in such a situation? Is it my bad luck, is it my destiny?” Everything that you know now as “myself” is just an accumulation. Your body is just an accumulation of food. What you call “my mind” is an accumulation of impressions that you have gathered through the five senses. What you accumulate can be yours; it can never be you. What is you is yet to come into your experience; it is in an unconscious state. You are not even 100 per cent conscious of what you have accumulated. You are trying to live your life through what you have gathered, not through who you are. You have acquired certain tendencies depending upon the type of impressions you have gathered. This can be changed. Irrespective of your current tendencies, your past experience of life, your genetics, irrespective of who your parents were, where you were born, where you grew up, if you do certain things with yourself, you can change this. You can completely rewire yourself in 24 hours’ time. A century ago, many things that people believed to be destiny or God’s will, like diseases, infections and death are today in our hands because we have taken charge of certain things. What we call technology today is just this: Within the laws of nature, everything on the outside that can be taken charge of, we will take charge of someday. As there is an outer technology, there is an inner technology or inner engineering. Everything that this life is, is naturally happening to a certain law. If you know what the nature of life within you is, you can completely take charge of the way it happens. Then would you let any unpleasantness happen to you? Unpleasantness is happening to you in the form of anger, fear, anxiety and stress because your basic faculties — your body, mind, emotions and your life energies — are doing their own thing as if they don’t belong to you. It doesn’t matter who you are. Life doesn’t work for you unless you do the right things. Existence is not judgmental. Good, bad, all these judgments are essentially human and socially conditioned. Every society has its own idea of what is good and bad, but existence is treating all of us the same way. Whoever is receptive right now gets the bounty of life. The whole aspect of yoga is to make you receptive. If your experience of life transcends the limitations of the physical, you become available to Grace. Suddenly you function like magic. Other people may think you are magic but you know you are just beginning to become receptive to a different dimension of life. And for everybody, this possibility is wide open. When it comes to outside realities, all of us are differently capable. What you can do, somebody else cannot do; what someone else can do, you cannot do. But when it comes to inner possibilities, every human being is equally capable. You are not any less capable than a Buddha or a Jesus or anybody for that matter. All of us have the same inner capabilities, unfortunately never explored, never accessed.

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Secrets now tumble out

Not only was he a whiz of sorts when it came to computer technology, slain terrorist and alleged Indian Mujahideen mastermind Atif Ameen alias Bashir was also highly motivated when it came to executing his terror plans in coordination with SIMI’s Abdus Subhan and LeT in different cities across the country. He personally knew and kept in touch with operatives at various levels in different terror organisations, and also possesed leadership qualities which helped him manage his so-called jihadis. A bright student, Atif had completed his B Sc (IT) from IACM Institute in Ghaziabad. So meticulous was he while planning his operations that he not only directed the movements of his associates, but would also decide how they should look. He would tell them whether to shave or not, keep their hair long or short and what to wear while going out for a recee. Police are also not ruling out the possibility that he had links with the Taliban or al-Qaida. “Atif seems to have really trained his module well as they religiously listened to his directions. He never allowed them to question him and when they asked him whether they should leave Delhi after the blasts, Atif convinced them to stay put. Those arrested also told police that Atif used to work out minute details of the attack, right from the timing of the blasts to the sites. His boys were only gievn information on a need-to-know basis. Police looking through seized material from the house including a laptop and pen drives have learnt that Atif was in touch with several people, including a few “highly-educated” ones, who used to write the emails for the group and send them out through hacked wifi connections in Mumbai. Some of them were from the terror hub of Azamgarh. Police added that the name of a cyber expert from Mumbai had cropped up during investigations.

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Threat of Flood

Heavy rain in the northern regions of Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab and Uttaranchal saw the neighbouring state of Haryana release the highest quantity of water to Delhi in 10 years. With this, officials predicted the Yamuna would cross the danger mark by Monday morning and touch its highest level since October 1998, by evening. According to sources, 4.09 lakh cusec water was released at Tajewala on Saturday evening, the highest since October, 1998. On Sunday evening, Yamuna’s level had gone up to 204.54 m and was expected to breach the danger mark of 204.83 m by Monday morning.

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The Meaning Of Life

One day I met a wise old man

Who was sitting in the park

And there upon the bench with him

We talked ‘till early dark

He told me of his travels

To a far off distant land

Where the secret meaning of our lives

Was taught to him first hand

I listened to his story

Amazed by what he said

The simple truth of which he spoke

Was knowledge not widespread

In great detail he did explain

What life was all about

And how the answer we do seek

We don’t have to be without

There was something in his message

That I could not reject

A wisdom that I understood

So simple and direct

My life forever has been changed

By the words I heard that day

A concept old as life itself

And by far the one true way

An answer to the question why

And the reason we exist

Solutions I would not now know

If my walk that day was missed

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