A standing ovation to those who actually do something about the problems they see around them—a story of a simple teacher who rescues kids without a future. Namaste friends! My name is Amit Rajbhar. I stay in Chaknapur (Kosda) village, which lies in the Araji Line Block of Varanasi. Since the past 15 years, I have been working as a school teacher in the Asha Samajik Vidyalaya. It is run by an ngo called 'Asha for Education'...

One fine day, we woke up and found our city, country, whole wide world and everything else come to a standstill. Something absolutely unexpected, not even in the worst of our dreams, had happened. Then, suddenly, all the related challenges began hitting us. There came in the role of a teacher. I have been a person who is not so tech-savvy and struggles to overcome her anxiety about going online. In fact, just as me, there were many teachers, mostly at the verge of retirement, who were trying their best to connect with their students. We were aware that life shouldn’t stop because of the lockdown and that the show must go …

A Freedom Pledge on greenery—a promise to protect the forests and biodiversity of our planet.

Last year, when the lockdown was announced nationwide, I felt very excited at the thought of not going to school anymore and getting a break from studies. I had thought that this would go on for a couple of days and once the situation becomes better, everything would be back to normal. But then, the days turned into months, and I never expected it to go on for a whole year!

Attend classes, study, eat, sleep, then rinse and repeat. Sounds peaceful, doesn’t it? It sure did to me, at least in the first few weeks of lockdown. Though now, instead of the noisy interruptions by many loud students, my classes are punctuated by silence.

We all like pandas, don’t we? Those cute furry little creatures with big shiny eyes who do nothing all day but roll on the grass and munch on bamboos! But unfortunately, pandas live mainly in temperate forests, high in the mountains of southwest China, or in the zoos in which your parents will never take you because they’re six hours away from your house. I mean, why go to the zoo when you can solve 15 math problems from RD Sharma in those six hours and actually be ‘productive’ in that time!?

I blinked in confusion, “Psychics, yet again!” As I kept jotting down notes in my copy, I started another episode of daydreams in my mind. My friend messaged me in between asking, "Hey, which page is Ma'am teaching?" I frowned. "Maybe 39 or 40," I replied. I missed my friend because, in school, we never talked about which chapter we were being taught or what books we should bring...

Hello, Everyone! I was excited to go to school as our new session was going to start soon. But, but, but… just two weeks before it was about to reopen, we were banned from going outside. LOCKDOWN—Yes! This is the word which has a lot of power. Are you thinking that I am praising it? No, never. This innocent word locked us inside our homes for months and months and drove, we the students, online with no end in sight.

When a free bird is trapped in a cage, it writhes in pain and pines. My uncle had a parrot who used to roam around the house even though it had a cage to live in. That parrot is the representation of our lives before the pandemic. We used to live in our houses just the same but we had freedom too. However, during these two years, it feels as if our gates are shut with a huge lock called‘Covid-19’.

Carrying water by trains could be an emergency measure. Chennai has a strong tradition of water harvesting. But the problem is that most of these structures are either defunct or poorly maintained. Chennai which had 19 major lakes covering an area of 1130 hectares. But these waterbodies have been heavily encroached upon reducing their spread to just about 645 hectares. Its time that we understand the importance of water harvesting.

The little things in life are easy to misplace. What's even easier is to lose them. Here's a way to find all your little belongings at one place and make sure that you don't lose them.  Step 1: Take a rectangular cardboard box with a lid. You can use a discarded shoebox from the house. Step 2: Open the lid of the shoebox and measure its height with the help of a scale. Note the reading. Step 3: Take the leftover cylindrical cardboard from a finished roll/sheet of aluminum foil and cut it into smaller parts... Read more here.