The Stone Angel is a novel by Canadian writer Margaret Laurence. The novel was first published in 1964 by McClelland and Stewart This novel is one of the best-known works of Laurence’s series of five novels that is set in the fictitious town named as Manawaka, Manitoba. The Stone Angel narrates the story of Hagar Currie Shipley, presently 90-year-old Hagar struggles against being put in a nursing home, which she sees as a symbol of death. This narrative alternates with Hagar looking back at her life.

Pride

Pride is the most prevailing theme of The Stone Angel is that of pride. Indeed, Hagar’s great pride helps Her to cope with the many difficulties she faces throughout her life. This pride, however, also separates And detaches her from others resulting in several strained relationships which she was unable to mend.As Hagar comes to realize towards the end of the book, most of the problems in her life stem from her excessive pride. Her sense of superiority is behind her ill-treatment of others, her refusal to acknowledge when she is wrong, and her inability to compromise with others or to see their point of view. Her behavior throughout the story leads to the destruction of several long-term relationships that might otherwise have sustained her and enriched her life.

Ultimately, her illusory superiority only leads to her own suffering. This point is emphasized in the scene where she is in the hospital and is visited by Mr. Troy, who sings a hymn about rejoicing for God. Previously, Hagar has been reluctant to pray, as belief in a higher power requires the relinquishing of pride and embrace of humility. Yet at this moment, Hagar is finally moved to tears, made to viscerally realize that it is her pride that has imprisoned her throughout whole life, blocking her from the true purposes of life: love and happiness.

Womanhood

The complicated duties and burdens of womanhood are laid bare over the course of The Stone Angel as the elderly Hagar Shipley reflects on her life. A woman’s options in life are often restricted to marrichildbearing, and the other sorts of “feminine” skills that Hagar learns at finishing school. For her whole life, Hagar is dependent on a man, whether it is her father, her husband, or, later, Mr. Oatley, for whom she works as a housekeeper. The roles of wife, mother, and daughter do not satisfy Hagar. She refuses to be the heiress to her father’s business. She views sexual intimacy with her husband as a chore and burden to bear. Hagar is alienated from her own mothering qualities, having lost her own mother as a new-born. Her emotional rigidity makes it impossible for her to nurture others, at times even becoming apathetic towards her own children. This all contributes to Hagar’s sense of always waiting for something more in life and not knowing who she is.

Memory and the Past

The novel consists of alternating passages from a past and a present, both of which exist within Hagar’s Mind. She is either remembering or perceiving the world around her with an old woman’s suspicious  Eyes which give her observations their special twist and colour. It opens with Hagar recalling the stone Angel in her rich and racy inner prose, the prose of thoughts readers are expected to believe are addressed To them. And then Hagar describes the cemetery and suddenly switches to the present. From this Beginning until about the last quarter of the book, The Stone Angel maintains parallel chronological patterns, the present following sequentially the last days of Hagar’s life, and the flashbacks following, Also sequentially, the course of her life as it appears in her memories. Hagar’s journey through her own memories is painful and burdensome though she wishes she could change the mistakes of her past, she cannot. Towards the end of the novel, Hagar at last accepts the permanent and unchangeable nature of the past, knowing that to continue lingering in memory and shut out her present moment will only lead to spiritual “defeat.”

Resentment

Hagar resents what she perceives to be interference from other people and deliberate attempts by them to control her or to thwart her will. As a young and unmarried woman, she wishes to become a schoolteacher, but her father vetoes the idea, trying to push her into managing the accounts for the store he owns. Whereas her father sees an opportunity for Hagar, she sees only a short-sighted attempt by him to ruin her career plans for his own personal gain. She marries Bram Shipley partly out of resentment, as she knows her father believes Bram to be an unsuitable and unworthy husband. When Hagar insists on marrying him, her father cuts her off without a cent and changes his will so that she will inherit nothing. Jason Currie thus develops his own resentment towards his daughter, whom he refuses to see for the rest of his life. The resentment of these characters stems from their pride and need to be right, which end up isolating them from their family.

  Leslie Marmon Silko is an American writer. A Laguna Pueblo Indian woman, she is one of the prominent figures in the First Wave of the Native American Renaissance. She is a widely known novelist and a poet, her career is significantly distinguished by making people aware of ingrained racism and white cultural imperialism, and a commitment to support women’s issues. The clash of civilizations is a continuing theme in the modern Southwest and of the difficult search for balance that the region’s inhabitants encounter. Silko explains that the Laguna view on the passage of time is responsible for this condition, stating, “The Pueblo people and the indigenous people of the Americas see time as round, not as a long linear string. If time is round, if time is an ocean, then something that happened 500 years ago may be quite immediate and real, whereas something inconsequential that happened an hour ago could be far away.”

Ceremony is a novel by her which was published in 1977.  The book is constructed through a series of flashbacks, epic poetic retellings of traditional Indigenous stories, moments of immediacy and hallucinations. The title is highly significant as it shows the inclination to the oral traditions and ceremonial practices of the Navajo and Pueblo people. The Laguna Pueblo is a federally recognized tribe of Native American Pueblo people in west-central New Mexico. The people of Laguna have a long history of residing in and farming along in west-central New Mexico. Laguna history begins long before the advent of written records in the Southwest. The Pueblo of Laguna has a well-established Tribal Law system.

The novel reveals the story of Tayo who is an injured man returning World War II veteran of mixed Laguna-white ancestry following a short stint at a Los Angeles VA hospital. He is returning to the poverty-stricken and dispossessed Laguna reservation, and he suffers from “battle fatigue”. He is haunted and worried by memories of his cousin Rocky who died in the struggle during the Bataan Death March of 1942. Initially he found liberation in alcoholism so that he could forget his pain and distress. His Old Grandma and medicine-man Betonie help him through native ceremonies to develop a greater understanding of the world and his place as a Laguna man.

Ceremony has been called a Grail fiction, wherein the hero overcomes a series of challenges to reach a specified goal. Silko’s writing skill in the novel is deeply rooted in the use of storytelling that passes on traditions and understanding from the old to the new.

Ceremony gained immediate and long-term acceptance when returning Vietnam war veterans took to the novel’s theme of coping, healing and reconciliation between races and people that share the trauma of military actions. She explores several other important aspects through Tayo’s struggles with alcoholism and healing after returning from World War II , the Pueblo myths, and the interactions between these two stories.

The purpose of ceremonies is the transformation of someone from one condition to another as in Tayo’s case the transformation from diseased to healing. Ceremonies are ritual enactments of myths which incorporate the art of storytelling and the myths and rituals of the Native Americans.  They are important for Tayo’s identity construction as one can see through his mental development after his experience with Betonie and the ceremony.

“Healing” means the revival of the self and the return to the roots and marking one’s origin.  One important part of the process of healing is rejecting witchery. Tayo is perplexed in between multiple worlds that is between Laguna culture and white culture, and between witchery which is seen as a force opposite to creativity. Tayo rejects witchery when he refuses to drink alcohol his friends offer him. He does not only refuse to drink alcohol, he also distances himself from his old friends and a life full of violence. The search for the Laguna culture and its rituals also helps him to deal with turning away from witchery. He respects the rituals of his culture by being open for the ceremonies which is another important aspect for his healing. Tayo is being taught spirituality by Betonie, this way he internalizes the Laguna culture. It is important that the Laguna community, e.g. his aunt, who tells Tayo to go to Betonie, helps Tayo with his healing, because that way Tayo can overcome the alienation he feels caused by him being half-breed. Betonie also helps Tayo to recover through ceremonies which relate Tayo’s American identity to his Laguna identity and therefore combines his past with his present. The fact that Tayo learns more about and experiences ceremonies is another important aspect which leads him to healing, because he learns about his culture.

The appreciation of the Laguna culture is essential for his healing. He still needs a spiritual ceremony after the white man’s medicine, which indicates that he needs to experience his old and his new culture. When Tayo covers the deer’s dead body at the deer-hunting, which is a gesture performed out of respect, he shows that he initiated Laguna myths, because Laguna mythology connects all living creatures. Through his connection with his lover Ts’eh, Tayo is able to move forward in his healing, not only in body, but also in his spirit as he connects to the divine feminine within himself. After all of these experiences Tayo’s dreams no longer haunt him, because he learns to deal with his past and he is able to link the American to the Laguna culture .The cattle function as spirit guides, which leads him to healing because through them he learns to forgive himself for the drought.

Throughout the novel Silko delves into the complexities of being caught between multiple world views and cultures. She focuses on the importance of blending the cultures, showing how Tayo can only regain health when he chooses how to identify, and by creating his own world that bridges the gap. Through Ceremony Silko invites the reader to take a look at the witchery within everyone, and points out the steps one can take to create healing and wholeness.

 A major
problem in the whole world right now is the excessive use of available
resources. We are continuously using the natural irreversible resources up to
the level of our own satisfaction without planning for the future. What we need
to understand is that we are not using what our ancestors left for us rather,
we are taking away what belongs to our future selves. We have to keep in mind
the consequences of our actions on the future generation and therefore, choose
a path that is sustainable enough.

Sustainable
development is a method for such a careful and planned development. It means
that availability of resources for the future generation which will allow them
to have a average quality life, at least as good as what the current generation
is enjoying.

The basic
aim of this development is to make sure that the future generation does not
suffer for the actions taken by us today. They get to live a life as
comfortable as us.

At the same
time, we should also focus on the economic growth. This is why the term
‘sustainable’ is used. The preservation of the world should be our prime focus
along with rapid growth of our economy. A path is only sustainable if the stock
of the capital assets is constant or rises with time.

The term
‘sustainable development’ was introduced by the International Union for the
Conservation of Natural Resources (IUNC) 1980 in their World Commission
Strategy report. According to them, sustainable development refers to the
development that meets our own needs without compromising with the needs of the
future generation.

AIMS

·       Sustainable use of resources without
the taking anything away from the future generation

·       Prevent further damage to our support
system – environment

·       To conserve the biodiversity and
other resources for long-term needs

WAYS TO
ACHIEVE SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

1.RESTRICT
THE USE OF RENEWABLE REOURCES

Renewable
resources should be extracted on a long-lasting and appropriate basis. What we
have started to do is extract them as much as we can with the hopes of making
profits without calculating if it is even needed or not.

2.SUBSTITUTE
NON-RENEWABLE WITH RENEWABLE RESOURCES

Non-renewable
resources like natural gas, oil, coal must be substituted with the renewable
ones. Non-renewable resources are something that cannot be made by the man. At
the rate that we are using these, it is definite that one day they will be
extinct, and nothing will be left for the future. Therefore, we need to
understand that only a certain amount of these resources must be used, and
majorly renewable resources should be used.

3.BECOME
INPUT EFFICIENT

The
technology that we are using right now must be used in a way that it produces
more of the input for renewable resources and not just consume them. It will
help to increase the production of renewable resources and eventually
non-renewable ones will be preserved.

4.POLLUTION
AND POPULATION CONTROL

The
extremely increasing pollution has already done enough damage to the ozone
layer as we all know. A very important part of the environment has already
started degrading because of our actions. This must be taken as a lesson by us
and we should keep a heed on our activities. Also, the increasing percentage of
human population is leading to an excessive use of resources and this needs to
be controlled.

When a piece of jewellery’s displayed in a shop, surrounded by hundreds of other designs all dazzling you at the same time, it can be hard to pick out the right thing. Take that process online and on the best websites, you’re presented with a curated selection of pieces tailored to your budget and style preferences — all in a few clicks.

We’ve scoured the web to find the best collections on easy-to-use websites that make it that bit simpler to pick up a unique design that you won’t see everyone else wearing.

Many people browse through popular ecommerce stores and search engines to find whatever they are looking for. While there are some disadvantages to buying products online, there are many more advantages and benefits.

Here are the top 5 benefits of buying jewellery online:

1. Convenient

As we all know, shopping online is convenient. You can easily visit your preferable brand’s website, find the product you want without getting out of your time. Lets take an example of a ring, you want some L Shaped Nose Rings, you can easily get it via online shopping. It’s also convenient because you don’t need to wait for the store to open. If you work irregular hours or are very busy, then you probably don’t have the time to visit the store. It allows you to buy things without hurting your schedule.

1. Variety

Most physical jewellary shops have a limited array of products. They can only hold so many items, and there are often many policies affecting the availability of products. For example, there might be a certain item that is only available to those versions of the business that exist in the mall. Online buying allows you to find many products that you wouldn’t be able to find in a physical store.

1. Better Prices

Most of the times, people get confuse on where to buy body jewellery. Cheap deals and better prices are available online, because products come to you direct from the manufacturer or seller without middleman being involved. Many online jewellery shops offer discount coupons and rebates as well. Apart from this, online shops are only required to collect a sales tax if they have a physical location in our state, even if we buy from a store across the world.

1. Price comparisons

Comparing and researching products and their prices is so much easier online. Also, we have the ability to share information and reviews with other shoppers who have firsthand experience with a product or retailer.

1. No Crowds

If you are like me, you hate crowds when you’re shopping. Especially during festivals or special events, they can be such a huge headache. Also, it tends to be more chaotic when there are more crowds out and this sometimes makes us feel rush or hurried. Grumpy, annoying, and smelly people also annoy me when I’m out shopping. Plus, parking becomes a huge issue. All of these problems can be avoided when you shop online.

Covid-19 has forced universities across India, and the world indeed, to suspend physical
classrooms and shift to online classes. In India, while this transition has been smooth for
most private universities, the public ones are still adapting.
As soon as the Covid-19 crisis broke out in India, in Kerala the universities like Kerala
University,Calicut University, MG university all announced the suspension of classes
until March 31. While others waited to see what would happen next, they started
exploring online classes. There are many education startups which got boost during this covid pandemic too. 
But as a state like Kerala there are so many Limited conditions that disallow the students
from conducting online mode of education. While technology is enabling, it can also be
limiting, especially in India, and a state called Kerala where we both have and have not
anywhere basic access is a challenge. Not every student has a computer or fast-
streaming internet at home. This leads to issues with attendance and participation in
online sessions. A survey revealed that 100per percent of students were accessing the
materials through the mobile phone where there may not be full data in there phone as
a result they are not able to download material sent by the institute or study online. As a
result around 3 7.5 % students are only studying their online material and 37.5
percentage of students are not able to study the online materials and 25 % of the student
are not even aware of the materials.

Only small percentage of students can only able to
access the materials about 62.5 percentage of students cant able to access the materials
due to the network connectivity problem and around 12.5 per cent due to the insufficient
data and around 12.5 % is due to the unfavorable home conditions that they have and
12.5% they have stress due to the inability to access the materials on time percent of
them had internet connection good enough for streaming real-time lectures. In the
survey about 75 percentage of students have one to five hours online classes are
conducted and about 12.5 percentage of students have for 10 to 15 hours online classes
are conducted in a week as a result of this this online classes this situation of having
stress for the students is highly because about 75 percentage of the students reported
that they have more stress than the offline classes and only 12.5 per cent of the students
said that they have less stress because maybe these students have good favourable
condition at the home and most of the students reported that they have many stress due
to the unfavorable conditions at the home. Most of the students have opted for the online
mode of classes around 50% is to talk about the online mode only 25% is about the
record class. The teacher cares through the online mode of class and in this scenario 62
percent of students have disagreed and 12.5 percent of students have strongly with the
second because the Teacher cannot ensure the full participation of the student in a class.
Most of the students and parents are also feeling tensions about the online conduct of the

exam because in online conduct of the exam the questions are of objective type with the
students not able to write the full answers and the 62.5 percent of students have told that
they are not preparing the objective type of exams. Another important thing that make
the students keep alive and Happy was that of the bonding with their classmates but this
Covid time has destroyed and or the bonding with the classmates in the online platform
37.5 % of students are reported that they are Adjusting for the time being and 50
percentage of reported that they are not satisfied and the 12.5% is a of said that they
have maybe the students were be a group of students who have high network
connectivity and good technology accessibility. Another survey they reported that the
students reported that 87.5%says that online education destroyed their physical health.
These are evidence from the survey which is given by the students from the different
colleges in Kerala.

It is clear that this pandemic has utterly disrupted an education system that many assert
was already losing its relevance. In his book, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, scholar
Yuval Noah Harari outlines how schools continue to focus on traditional academic skills
and rote learning, rather than on skills such as critical thinking and adaptability, which
will be more important for success in the future. Could the move to online learning be
the catalyst to create a new, more effective method of educating students? While some
worry that the hasty nature of the transition online may have hindered this goal, others
plan to make e-learning part of their ‘new normal’ after experiencing the benefits first-
hand.

Lakhimpur Kheri violence: Akhilesh Yadav is on a sit-in outside his home in Uttar Pradesh capital Lucknow.

Lucknow: 

Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav has been detained by the police from outside his residence in Uttar Pradesh capital Lucknow where he staged a sit-in after being stopped from visiting Lakhimpur Kheri district, where eight including four farmers were killed in violence on Sunday.

“Even the British did not commit such atrocities as much as the BJP government is doing on the farmers. The Minister of State for Home and the Deputy Chief Minister should resign. ₹ 2 crore should be given to the farmers who have lost their lives. Their families should be given government jobs,” Mr Yadav Police as he led the protest outside his home in Lucknow’s Vikramaditya Marg..

“The government does not want any political leaders to go there. What is the government hiding?”

In an escalating confrontation with the Yogi Adityanath government, Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra had a face-off with police personnel early this morning after was stopped from visiting Lakhimpur Kheri. She was was detained late last night on her way to Lakhimpur Kheri to meet the families of the farmers who were killed.Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel and Punjab Deputy Chief Minister SS Randhawa were not allowed to land in Lucknow, Congress sources said.