Drug Mukht

Life is what one makes of it. One can choose to continue to live in the suffocating net of giving in to one's temptations or take control, open their eyes and drag themselves out of there to become as free as a bird, just as they were born to be ! It's easy to lose control, lose track and get lost in the middle of the trends, the pride factors, and the misunderstood notions of enjoyment and having fun. Real strength and courage lies in never forgetting or undermining the fact that life mustn't be that complicated, and that it's the simplest things that give the most joy. Is a puff of smoke ever more energising than a reassuring hand on your shoulder by a friend that promises you that the going may be tough but it's all going to be okay ? Or has another shot of alcohol in the middle of indecisiveness, self esteem issues or guilt proved to be the best way to tackle with the problems that now seem to be the end of the world but are only just a new beginning ? Let's choose to experience, enjoy and enrich each second consciously - choose each decision, remembering and treasuring every memory along the way, and get high on LIFE. Let's lead a Drug Mukht life !!

- Rtr. Bhavya Sharma
Club Editor
Rotaract Club of Delhi Janak

We thank Rotaract Club of Bhandup, Rotary International District 3140 for letting us become a part of their intiative.

Happy World Rotaract Day

In the constant hustle and bustle of our ambitious lives, we tend to overlook our inherited privileges. Often it happens to an extent when we feel that everything that we're deprived of is our right. In our comfortable beds, AC cars and the best of phones and clothes, we overlook how the things we enjoy today have been a result of ages of systematic and sustainable living not only because our nation never saw that kind of money flowing in, but because our previous generations thrived on thrift, savings and thought about the long run at the end of the day, always. We belong to a nation where our grandfathers woke up hours before dawn to walk miles to school in time so they could get a job to feed their families two decent square meals, never wasting a penny and saving for the times of dire need. The sheer hopelessness and despair that passes through our spines is not as tangled as it seems. Because what makes the bigger picture is the little things, brought TOGETHER. So let's join each others' hands to make this picture complete. Let's do small, conscious acts everyday to save what we have in our present for our future. May it be little things like food, water, or clothing. Because something that's a reason for our complaints may be someone's wishes being fulfilled. Let's find the smaller pieces to the bigger puzzle, join them day by day to make the best scenery imaginable - a bright future and a better tomorrow not just for you and me, but for all the generations to come. Let's be a gift to the world !

Happy World Rotaract Day!

- Rtr. Bhavya Sharma
Club Editor
Rotaract Club of Delhi Janak

International Women's Day

I envisage a world wherein both men and women feel free to be strong and sensitive,where both can pursue their dreams without any inhibitions or fears of transgressing societal norms of what constitutes 'masculine' and 'feminine.'
The creator of the universe  created only biological differences,the rest is all socially constructed. The social and mental conditioning begins from the day a girl child is given a doll or kitchen house to play with whereas a boy is given cars and robots to play,when a girl is told to be soft and sweet-spoken while a boy is told to be strong and aggressive, or when unconsciously sexism gets ingrained from dialogues such as "Boys don't cry."
When we talk about maternity leave but not paternity leave,it is implied that the role of a father in childcare is less valued by the society.When the legal and religious framework of civilizations establish women as properties of men(fathers or husbands)they are like a
subservient oppressed class,forever deprived.When ancient literature talks about the sexuality of a man,but is silent about the aspirations of a woman,questions are raised about the patriarchal discourse.
When marriage is deemed to be the ultimate destiny of a woman,aren't we divesting her of the right to chase her professional ambitions and realise her full intellectual potential?Aren't you imposing on her a life,which is less than the one she is capable of living?
When motherhood is considered to be the transcendent role of a woman,aren't we establishing the glass ceiling which prevents women from reaching the top rung of career ladder?
When the institution of marriage inevitably compels a woman to sacrifice and compromise more than anyone else,when media and advertising portray women as sexualized commodities,when parents themselves conform their kids to gender roles,can we aspire to create a society" where the mind is without fear and the head is held high,Where knowledge is free,
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls?"
We cannot definitely ever live upto Tagore's words if women of low income families are denied the right to answer nature's call ,if natural biological processes like urination and menstruation are stigmatized taboo topics, to the extent that women are even considered "polluted" when the have their periods every month when the onus of maintaining modesty and privacy is more on the woman,than the man;when a woman's rejection is perceived as consent,when rape and molestation torment the victim and put a question mark on her dressing sense or character instead on the offender,for such and many more reasons-let everyday and not just International Women's Day be a day where we all consciously stand up and fight for the rights which make us human beings.

- Rtr. Manjima Misra
Club Editor,
Rotaract Club of Delhi Janak

Only I can see my world from my eyes.

In this world of population of around 7.4 billion (approx.) we come across new faces every day and we realize that not everyone is same, we all are different from one another. I mean imagine if everyone looked the same or experienced life in the same manner as you did. Wouldn't it be dull? Yes, of course and I have come to realize that these differences are the ones that make us a different individuals and gives us an identity. We all want people to understand us and accept our thoughts but this is not possible always, we often have arguments with our known ones because of the different thought process that we have, or different opinions on different things. I believe that in spite of arguing over it why don’t we invest our time to find a reason behind everyone's perspective. I trust that all our thoughts, actions and words depend upon our own previous past experiences, our social environment and this is why every individual have their own way of looking at things. We cannot expect everyone to understand us, that is not practical. We have to accept that every person have lived their life in different ways, not all of us had the same upbringing and same facilities, same opportunities, same kind of experiences, criticism, talents, abilities and environment. The other day I was communicating with one of my juniors who had a quote as her display stating "I don’t want to look back and realize I could have done better." This quote was perceived by her in a negative manner as she didn’t wanted to look at her past and introspect what had gone wrong and how much she could have done better, on the other side I made her look at this quote in an entirely different manner, I asked her that why does she don’t want to look back? What had gone wrong? I told her I would have loved to look back and realize what I could have done better because now in present I realize that I have developed the abilities and I am now capable enough of doing things in a much better way, I would have loved to look back and realize that now I have improvised and I am much more stronger, capable and learned than what I was yesterday. It's now I realize that today I am better than yesterday and that means that I am not just existing, I am living, I am improving and I am developing. I believe in learning through my mistakes and more over all the situations I face and every person I meet, I like to keep up with peoples perspective and understand there point of looking at things and I reason, What has led to such perspective? What's their story? What have they experienced? . We all will always be correct in our eyes, there are no good or bad deeds committed by anyone, it's just our perspective of looking at things. A criminal is right in his/her eyes, because according to their perspective that has been led by their past experiences, they are right. By this I am not saying we have to accept their perspective and let it be, we can try to understand their perspective and try to rectify it, make them understand the difference between right or wrong. We should try to understand and accept everyone's perspective and rather than fighting or arguing about it, we should be patient enough to make them look through our eyes. This world will be such a peaceful place to live if we just try to understand each other and start communicating in the real sense, rather than reaching to conclusions and further misinterpretation. Every problem can be resolved if we just try to accept and understand. At times, it might be our chance to make people understand or it might be our chance to understand others, because only I can see my world from my eyes, not the world and for a peaceful mind all we have to do is understand and accept the 'Individual Differences'.

-Rtr.Sagrika Behl
President, Rotaract Club of Delhi Janak

Thinking about commiting suicide?

We are all born unique in this world but what makes us common is our constant struggle to fit into the society which is always looking for excuses to not accept us. What we hardly understand is the fact that in the midst of constantly trying to differentiate ourselves from others we somewhere lose our originality which actually differentiated us from them in the first place.It is commonly observed that we mostly fear anything that we cannot fully understand and that's how things around us work, when the society fails to understand our uniqueness we are termed as being useless or simply an idiot.
The theory of life until now has been quite complex to understand, when we look around we see a massive amount of inequality, poverty, unhappiness, malevolence etc. But still an average human being somehow always finds a thing or a moment which would make him happy at least for a little while. We all try and look for some sort of inspiration or motivation to help us carry on with the arduous task of living. Agreeing to the fact that life can be lonely sometimes, when this period of loneliness gets extended a human enters an emotional phase called depression. We all would agree to the fact that at some point of time we all have felt weak, felt those chills down the spine where the only logical step that we think should be taken is the most illogical one. Some might say that "suicide" is a cowardly act, I was always a part of that group. I kept on asking myself or asked my god as to how can someone be so stupid as to not only kill themselves but also put their family members into misery. I thought people who had suicidal tendencies always deserved public ignominy.
It was 20th of May, an unusual Monday morning ,Class 12th board results were to be declared which is considered to be a big day in a student's life. I like everybody else was excited and nervous at the same time. I was pretty sure that I'll get marks above 95% so that I can easily get an admission into the best colleges of Delhi University. My parents had full faith in me because I was a sort of a topper. But sadly when the results were announced I realized that I had scored extremely good in 4 out of 5 subjects that I had. But you may call it luck or destiny that the only subject in which I couldn't score well turned out to be English which is the most important subject from the point of view of getting admission into DU. I realized as soon as I checked my results that I would not be able to get an admission into north campus. Instantly the thought of what people would think about me or how well my friends had scored came into my mind. Upon checking the results of all my friends I realized that all of them had scored well and were destined to go to the best colleges. Even though I had never thought I would feel it but for the first time in my life I felt jealous about something. I felt jealous that my friends would have a better college to go, a better career and maybe a better life. No matter how hard I tried I could not get over my failure of not being able to go to the college of my dreams. What added to the misery was the constant phone calls of relatives and friends who either called to enquire about my result or just to tell  me that how well they had scored. It was the time that I felt IT for the first time. The sense of failure got the best of me, I decided that I should probably commit suicide rather than going to some other college. I finally decided to take sleeping pills and finish it for once and for all. But for some reason I postponed it for a week. It was during this week that I went through everything  a person who is on the verge of committing suicide would go through. It was during this week that I realized that life always gives you answers to your questions it might just be in a different language. It was during that week that I found my moment of happiness.
I was sitting in my college canteen having a cup of coffee when I first noticed Raman. He was eating his samosa, bad sadly could not dip it into the chutney lying just besides the plate. Raman is Blind. He had that aura that could attract people to go and talk to him and so I decided to go and talk to him. While talking to me he told me that he had scored 80% marks which was enough to get him into a college of his choice. But still he ended up in my college which is not considered to be very good. He told me that it was a struggle for him to even come to our college which was a 3 minute walk from his house. It was nearly impossible for him to travel such long distance every day. "I anyways think, it's not in the college but in the ability and curiosity of a person that decides his probability to succeed", he said. It was amazing to see how a person with a disability made perfect sense when it came to talking. His determination to succeed made me feel ashamed of myself. I came back home looked myself in the mirror and thought how can I give up when he doesn't?

I would like to question the concept of society now, I believe that the society has been created so that a person can communicate with people around him and learn new things. A person can communicate with people so that he does not get into depression. But is the society playing its part? If yes then why are so many students in India committing suicide? If the society is doing its job perfectly then why have we failed to be tolerant towards heterodoxical views. We have amazing success stories of eminent personalities like Narendra Modi, A.P.J Abdul Kalam, who started from humble a beginning and went on to create history. Maitreyi once asked her husband "what do I have to with anything that does not make me immortal?", this question is the most relevant question I could ever come across. Today, We are all trying to be immortals our constant struggles in life are all because we want to be remembered when we die. But Is our being immortal based upon the kind of college we go to or the type of clothes that we wear? or is it just based upon the type of personality that we are able to develop? Is the question that we shall ask.

-Rtr.Anurag Mishra
Vice President, Rotaract Club of Delhi Janak

Can There Be Equality?

"History is always written by the winners", they say and it really is true. We today live in a society which is totally divided on the basis of religion race or caste but most important factor of this division is GENDER. As we go through the pages of the historical notes and books that have been provided to us we realize that it teaches us an important lesson about how things have worked around us since the very beginning of life on earth. All the knowledge that we gather teaches us  three things about this issue. (1) women cannot be equal to men, (2) some women are special who with great hard work are able to  achieve what only men can, (3) or lastly some of our greatest intellectuals in the society might say that there cannot be a common basis upon which they both can be judged.

From the initiation of human life on earth we are taught that the nature has given separate roles to both men and women. Earlier, men were considered to do all the hunting and gathering of meat and any other work that required muscle power. The ones who failed to do so were hunted down by the very animal they tried to hunt so this basically lead to the formation of an army of men who could hunt and gather food properly "survival of the fittest" as they would say. Similarly women were asked to take care of the household chores like taking care of the children or collecting woods or berries from the forest. Now just like men this developed a special kind of ability in women. the ability to differentiate between closely related objects for example, there are two types of berries in the forests both of them have a similar appearance but one of them is highly nutritious and the other highly poisonous. Now the women who were good with differentiation were able to find the nutritious berries and the ones who were not ate the poisonous ones and failed to survive leading to a formation of an army of women who were good with description.

Today, as we have seen, these differences have been substantiated with many psychological and social experiments pertaining to the life style of men and women. But what they fail to address the problem at hand, the problem of equality. The inhumane oppression of women has lead to massive movements amongst our society to give women an equal amount of respect for the work they do. The problem of oppression has lead to such a great extent that even the elitist members of the society are forced to go through it. If we look around us we get millions of examples, like women not being paid equal to men  even if they are at the same designation or a male actor of age above fifty is asked to play a role with a heroine who would be in her early twenties and the most shameful part is that the public actually enjoy their chemistry justifying this oppression. But is not it really true that this kind of difference only exists because we say that HISTORY or NATURE has always been like this? an experiment was conducted at the United States of America and the Masai tribe considered to be the most fearsome and aggressive tribes of the world. Through some simple activities and some complex machineries they came to a conclusion that women were less competitive than men (This conclusion is wrong and you will realize how as you reach the conclusion) .

A lot of steps have been taken to improve the condition of our women in the society, giving them reservations in education providing them with special seats in metros are some examples of it but are these methods really effective?  Protective discrimination is a facet of equality agreed but can protective discrimination bring about the much desired equality in the society? Women today in a conservative country like India are asked to wear the clothes that society accepts or make friends that society accepts and to the extreme live the way society has asked you to live. After putting on such boundations on them after asking them not to go out of their houses at night because it's not safe, is it enough to give them these special provisions to get them a status which would be equal to them? No it isn't. If women are to become equal to men they have to be given a chance to prove themselves on grounds that are fair to both men and women and then they should be judged if they really are capable to be equal to men. Why can't women run our administration our countries? Why cannot a man marry a girl and then move to her house from his mother's house? Why cannot a women go out and earn for the family while the men stay at home and take care of children/ when we ask such questions we realize that these things may sound very nice but it's not actually possible in real life. The truth is It is POSSIBLE ! a small village called KHASI located in India is already following this tradition where the traditional roles that have been assigned to men and women have been interchanged. The experiment that was conducted in the U.S.A and the masai tribe was conducted in this village with the same set of activities and the same complex machineries but this time the results were different! men were considered to be less competitive than women and it was concluded that women were able to carry out all the administrative activities in an efficient manner. Just a change of roles has brought so much change. This brings us to a conclusion that women can be equal to men provided the same psychological help and the power.

In the end I would like to conclude by saying "na teri hai ye zameen, na hai ye asmaan is zami ka.....tujhse hai ye zamana naaki tu is zamaane se hai" (the earth doesnt belong to you neither does the skies belong to the earth but, this society in which we live is existing because of us not the other way round). Society was created to fulfill all humans desires, to communicate and carry out life, thats how it should always be like! The history that we read today was sadly written by the winners of that time i.e MEN. Out of certainty I say that the history the coming generations would read would be very different and inspiring.

- Rtr.Anurag Mishra
Vice President
Rotaract Club of Delhi Janak

Happy Diwali :)

For a lot among us, Diwali is a time of stress and storm. Maybe because of the unexpectedly less Diwali bonus, not enough moolah in our banks left to splurge on a house, wardrobe makeover or a new car or a longer, louder ladi to burn when all the neighbours are together in the Gali in their finest clothes and attire because after all, it boils down to " the more, the merrier. " For most of us owning pets, handling them on one of their most terrifying experiences of their extremely fragile and short lives is a conflict in such a joyous occasion of our own lives.
It's not an unusual sight to see street dogs crouching, hiding and even feeding themselves in and from a huge collection of garbage disposed off carelessly from our own homes. If a same life is seen from a human perspective, it would be like sleeping, living and feeding on a bed of thorns. But we're lucky enough to be governed by a Right to Life and have a voice to express discomfort or injustices done to us, and also fight and earn for a better life. These creatures sent by God on Earth without any of these capacities deserve much better than what they face just because we can't contain our happiness on a festival, just because we have another laugh troubling a stray animal run for his life when we hurl a cracker at his leg which some drunkard broke while racing his car late at night, just because we don't seem to remember what the festival really is all about. The times are so grave that foetuses succumb to death even before seeing the light of the day and breathe their last before breathing their first breaths. Little children, are drawn into the high seasonal demand of labour for crackers during the time of Diwali because their priorities and not homeworks and lost notebooks, but the strong need to sleep with a full stomach or the burden of the expenses of a sick family member, battling for their life night and day, stuck in the darkness of their Kaccha houses, just like the vacuum of the vicious cycle of their fate. A vacuum, in which many lives get drawn into just so they can stay alive the next day. Lets give all these distinguishing lives a tomorrow that lasts more than the assurance of the next day but a future that we all can bank upon. Let's cherish the joy of giving happiness. Let's be a gift to the world !

Happy Diwali to all :)

- Rtr.Bhavya Sharma
Rotaract Club of Delhi Janak
R.I.D. 3011
2015-2016