Day: August 13, 2021

FINDING OUR PEACE!

We have transitioned well into the third decade of the 21st century now, with various changes happening around us everyday. With the inception of technology, internet, phones and numerous gadgets which have made our lives very easy, we have developed a lot as compared to the earlier few decades, and have also learnt to grasp and get accustomed to all the advanced machines we are introduced to. Life has become faster and easier for sure due to all of this, but we have reached a new high level of competition in life owing to all these changes. This has led to a lot of stress in our daily routine and the constant need to become all the smarter has seeped into our minds to such a level that we’ve started to miss the joy and satisfaction of the cute and lovely little things that happen with and around us each day. The happy space that we used to spend our childhood in with that chill-pill attitude has all withered away, and all that is left is the stress and hunger to be better each day and walk in sync with a thorough knowledge of what’s buzzing in the world. We have indeed become smarter, as the bar of gaining as much knowledge as possible goes higher and higher, but this is somehow leading to giving the quaint, happy time that we desperately need and deserve a miss.
As we progress into a more advanced future, it is equally important to enjoy and savour all the cherishable moments in life, all because we have been gifted with only one! We need to destress, detoxify and rejuvenate ourselves once in a while to find ourselves, our interests, calmness and happiness, a state of mind with contentment and lasting inner peace. We need to take a break from the tiring routine, give all the tensions and work a break, and take a fun ride in the quest to get freshened up completely – a deep cleaning ritual if we may call it so! The real outside world is mesmerising, and we ought to experience its beauty with all our senses and live each moment in a stress-free environment. We can probably keep those electronics away for a few days and embrace the charm and charisma of the nature beheld before our eyes. It is necessary to detox and keep our calm in the chaos of the world in order to function efficiently, as it improves our productivity. To achieve this, we need to dive deeper into our mind, find what disturbs its peace and balance, rectify the problem, and voila! But this is quite easier said than done. The process of introspection is complicated, and we need to take out special time for concentrating on it. But just like the body needs its set of nutrients in order to function smoothly, the mind too, needs its own feedback mechanism and reboot protocol in order to set itself to a composed state. So, we need to figure out various ways of restoring this balance, explore what we like to do to freshen up our mind, how we can cope up to stress, how we can stay peaceful amidst all the ruckus and how we can maintain the level our productivity. And lo, with some patience and a strong determination, we are just there!

Public Distribution System

What is Public Distribution System?

Public distribution system is an Indian Food Security System program established by Government of India under the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution. This system has been entrusted with the responsibility of distribution of food and non – food items to the poor population of India at subsidised rates. Major commodities like staple food items such as wheat, rice, sugar and essential fuels like kerosene are distributed through a network of fair price shops. These shops have been established in several states across the country. This system is maintained by Food Corporation of India (FCI).

Under this scheme each family which is below the poverty line is entitled to 35 kg of rice or wheat every month. On the other hand, families which are above the poverty line are entitled to 15 kg of food grains. As of 2018, there are around 5.27 lakhs fair price shops in India. Public Distribution System is operated under the joint responsibility of center and state governments.

How did it come to existence?

This scheme was first started in 1945, during the time of second world war. But it attained its current form in 1947. Rationing of food had already started in India during the Bengal famines in early 1940s. This rationing system was revived to meet the acute shortage of food in the early 1960s.

There has been two types of this system i.e. Revamped Public Distribution System (RPDS) and Targeted Public Distribution System (TDPS). In 1992, PDS became RPDS which focused on poor people living in hilly, inaccessible and remote areas. In 1997 RDPS became Targeted PDS (TDPS), and under this fair price shops were established for the distribution of food grains at subsidised prices.

Responsibility of the center and state governments

PDS is the joint responsibility of both center and state governments. The center government has the responsibility of transporting, storing and procuring the food grains. On the other hand, the state governments are responsible for the distribution of the same through the network of fair price shops. The state governments also have other responsibilities like identification of families below poverty line, issuing ration cards etc.

Fair Price Shops

Fair price shops, also known as public distribution shops, are established by the Government of India which distributes food grains to poor people at subsidised prices. These shops mainly sell rice, wheat and sugar along with other essential commodities at much lower price than the market price. To buy from these shops one must have a ration card. Today, these shops are present in almost every village, town and city in India.

Shortcomings

  • Some fair price shops owners swap the grains provided by the government with inferior quality grains and sell the original stock in the market for higher price.
  • Many FPS dealers indulge into malpractices like black marketing and hoarding.
  • As these dealers resort to cheap tricks, the good quality food provided by the government does not reach the poor people.
  • Sometimes the illicit fair price shops owners make fake ration cards and sell the stock out in the market.
  • The coverage of these FPSs has not been up to the mark.
  • There is huge ambiguity as to which families are above or below the poverty line.

Despite of all the shortcomings, Public Distribution System is one of the most important food security networks in India.

WANDERLUST

In this pandemic, what is the thing that we miss the most? Ofcourse, it’s getting out of our homes and socializing. Travel! Who doesn’t like traveling? Exploring new places, getting to know new people and their culture sounds pretty exciting to me! It’s fascinating to watch their lifestyle and understand it during the time of staying.

LIVE IN THE MOMENT!

I, myself, have traveled a lot of places during my summer breaks and have learnt a great amount during those travel. Traveling isn’t just always about the fun elements, but also studies have shown that exploring new places can do wonders for both physical and mental health.

HOW DOES TRAVELLING BOOST OUR MENTAL HEALTH?

  • IT’S SUCH A GREAT STRESS BUSTER :

From working at home and working at the office to students focusing on their studies, can create a lot of tension and stress.

Doing workouts might be one of the best ways for stress release, but I’m sure most of us are either just too tired or lazy to do so! So what’s the best alternative? Just pull out your car or bike and go out for a long drive! Traveling need not mean going on international trips or vacations, but sometimes, going to your favorite place or spot can help a great deal too!

  • A NEW WAY TO REINVENT YOURSELF :

People talk about new starts and beginnings and everyone likes to be independent but honestly it’s easy to love others but harder to love yourself. You might be surprised when you travel to a new destination and find out what might be your insecurity is just a way of living of people there.

These days many of us have become so subconscious regarding all the diet and fitness. They calculate the amount of calorie intake and avoid oily foods, but I remember when I traveled to Punjab, India, and there people eating oily foods and were never once insecure about gaining weight and just enjoying their life, so apparently when you travel north, the temperature drops, and you need to take more calories in order to have a normal body temperature and sustain. Traveling widens your horizons of possibilities of life.

  • A GREAT SOURCE OF HAPPINESS :

What is better than traveling with your friends and family? It gives us so much joy and excitement. We forget all about our personal life and drama, and just live in the moment!

Your emotions are directly or indirectly linked with the people you are close with. So when you travel with them, your mental state elevates and you feel a great amount of love and happiness. Emotions are a very powerful thing. Once under its influence, you do things that you normally would never dream of. Happiness is one such emotion, it can give you a great deal of self-confidence.

  • IT MAKES YOU RESILIENT :

Every one of us likes to be in our comfort zone, and keep things under control, so when faced with some strange and peculiar situations, we tend to panic and lose control!

With traveling to new places, where you know nothing about the people or their culture, basically diving into an unfamiliar place will help you get resistance to panic and once you master your emotion and become confident, you also try to push yourself out of your comfort zone. So believe me when I say ‘Normal is Boring‘! Be creative and push your limits, it’s never too late to learn new things!

How to boost your self-esteem?

Self-esteem is basically the overall opinion about yourself, how you feel about yourself which includes your abilities and limitations. Everyone lack confidence at some point of time in different situations which is temporary but having low self-esteem leads to unsatisfied and unhappy with themselves for most of the time. Generally people who are having low self-esteem are:-

  • Critical about their own personality
  • Ignores their positive qualities or aspects
  • Uses negative or cuss words to describe themselves
  • While having self-talk with themselves, they are always negative or self-blaming.
  • Doesn’t believe if someone compliments them.
  • When things go wrong they always blame themselves for the failure instead of considering other things in account such as actions of other Individual or some crisis externally.

With these things in low self-esteem person, it reduces the quality of life which often leads to:-

Fear of Trying – The person who has low self-esteem will always doubt themselves in terms of their abilities, worth and challenges to experience something new in their life.

Fear of getting judged – People with low self-esteem may avoid the social gathering or some activity based on a group of people, just because they are afraid of being judged on negative basis.

Self-care – People with low self-esteem lacks in taking care of their self as they neglect themselves.

Negativity – Person with low self-esteem constantly abuses or neglects themselves which leads to attracting negative feeling which eventually causes anxiety, sadness, depression, shame or guilt.

Self-harming behaviors – Person with low self-esteem always puts themselves in a situations where they are at increased risk of harming themselves. For e.g. – Drug abuse, eating disorder or suicide.

There are many causes of low self-esteem like unhappy childhood, relationship break ups, low performance in academics, ongoing medical problem or Mental illness. But there are simple ways to boost your self-esteem and that are:-

Record your story

recording your life story is a fun and therapeutic strategy that countless people have used not only does it help you remember what you love about yourself but telling your story also motivates you to maintain that positivity in the future but it’s not just about reflection the fact that you’re writing down your story plays an important role because when you write something down you have to be clear you have to be concrete you’re forcing yourself to be specific about who you are so if you’re feeling confused your story can give you the clarity that you’re looking for.

A Point to Pride

Instead of looking back in time you can also boost your self-esteem by setting goals for the future for example, you’re an aspiring author but you’ve never actually written a book before you’ve written plenty of short stories but you’ve always been too scared to try something bigger maybe you’re worried you’re going to fail or you’re just feeling overwhelmed and you don’t have enough faith in yourself to take on the challenge how can you build the self-esteem you need to accomplish your dreams try setting something called a point of pride a point of pride is one specific goal that you accomplish in order to prove something to yourself.

Self-evaluation

You can boost your self-esteem by changing basic things like the way you speak for example you might be using self-critical language you undercut your own success you belittle your own accomplishments and you overrate the value of the people around you. The problem is you probably don’t even realize that you’re doing it it’s become almost automatic for you so how do you change something that you don’t even think about try studying the way you speak every time you undermine your own achievements go and write it down that way you can focus your attention on your harmful language and gradually change it for the better you may not notice a difference at first but over time this simple strategy you can use it to make a huge impact on your self-esteem.

Self-compassion

One of the hardest things of building self-esteem is learning how to forgive your own mistakes you want to be perfect, you want to be respected and successful so whenever that doesn’t happen you either pretend that nothing happened or you become your own worst enemy you criticize yourself and you hold a grudge but both of these approaches have the same fundamental problem they’re focused on preserving the good you’re trying to maintain this fragile image of yourself you expect to be that perfect successful person so you react negatively every time that doesn’t happen you either ignore your mistakes or you tear yourself down and slowly but surely you chip away at your self-esteem so what should you do instead the real secret behind your self-esteem has nothing to do with preserving the good it’s about forgiving the bad you’ll spend the rest of your life making mistakes we all do there’s just no way around it so before you can believe in yourself you have to learn to live with those failures little by little you can boost your self-esteem by actively forgiving yourself each time you say something stupid or make a careless error just take a minute to acknowledge what you did wrong.

When a person is having a high self-esteem then they appreciate themselves and others too, they see the world from the positive light and also understands other people’s problem. Their relationships are loving and calm full and also they speak up calmly and tell other their opinion towards and topic freely.

From Salem to Sydney , Natarajan’s cricketing journey is nothing but full of inspiration

“ If you travel deep inside some 340 +km  from Chennai, you get to see a small village called Chinnappampatti. With barely any transportation available you would only find buses that will take you there. If you happen to visit the place , ask for Natarajan , the whole village loves to talk about their humble chella paiyan, which loosely  translates into  go boy ,” says a local resident .

 And rightly said . Cricket has no limits. It doesn’t have the foggiest idea where and which place you are .  In India , people are so determined  by cricket that each and everyone wants to break into the national  team as if it is super easy and then you will find strict mothers who chase you  for playing the game and breaking the windows. Having said that , nobody believes in you as they do.

 In Tamil Nadu, cricket was never a career option but a pass time . however , with hard work , proper path and determination some do make it . And one of them is  Thangarasu Natarajan .

 Natarajan’s family wasn’t monetarily wealthy. While his dad functioned as a coolie at a railroad station , his mother ran a road side snack stall. being the eldest child  , Natarajan was constantly stressed  about his family , but cricket has been a friend in need for the Natarajan family .

In an interview with Times of India ,the left arm quick recalled his early  days of struggle , “ We didn’t had enough food on the table, it was truly a struggle .”

“ we all studied in a government school and there were no facilities or mentors who could help me with my cricketing ambitions ,”  says Natarajan.

At a time when basic necessities  like food and water were hard to come by  let alone cricket gear , the bowler sharpened his skills  by playing tennis ball cricket .

His fortunes started changing after his breakthrough performances in Tamil Nadu premier league (  TNPL) , first with dindigul dragons and then with lyca kovai kings that caught the attention  of former kings XI Punjab ( now Punjab kings ) coach , Virender Sehwag , and was bought for a Whooping 3 crore,  making  him the highest unpaid Indian uncapped player in the auction .

However , his dream came true when he was selected for the Indian national team , after some stellar performances for the  Sunrisers Hyderabad in the Indian premier league 2020.

The left arm quick picked up two wickets in his ODI debut and three wickets for 30 runs in his T20 Debut , helping the team win on each occasions . Upon his return from Australia , the Yorker king was taken  on a chariot in his village in Salem district of Tamil Nadu.

Natarajan’s cricketing journey is full of inspiration. It teaches us that with hard work and dedication , anything can be accomplished . We , as Indian cricket fans , wish Natarajan carries his good form for  team India in the foreseeable future and keep on making his fans and his loved ones proud .