The Sunshine Within You

India has, over the years, struggled to find medal-winning athletes for the Olympic Games. Let's take a look at the past performances of our players and team.  As an independent country, India won the first gold medal in 1948 in field hockey defeating Great Britain in the final. In the subsequent years, the expectation of medal was from our hockey team alone. After winning gold in 1980, the hockey team went downhill. Several times after 1980, Indian contingents have to come back empty-handed with a few exceptions in between. We have been helplessly standing close to the bottom in the league of third world countries.  India saw a watershed performance at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, where Abhinav Bindra stunned everyone and became the first Indian to bag an individual Olympic gold along with wrestler Sushil Kumar and boxer Vijender Singh winning bronze medal. Only four years later, a large 83-member contingent from India took part in the London Olympics, while setting a new benchmark

In the Olympics, Gold medal is something which is glorified and celebrated from its intrinsic value as only the top performers of their relevant sports get to hold it. Every Olympian sees gold in their fantasy while getting trained for a particular sport. In case they miss it, they need to wait for years to reattempt and compete for the top position with the young entrants of the world. That must be exhaustive and tiring task. Four years only sounds small interval. However, only those who are mentally strong can wait, train and compete again. It's certainly not a child's play. Never before has the Indians took  so much interest in sports such as Javelin throw. The cricket loving nation was mapping the distance of Javelin thrown by Neeraj Chopra with great enthusiasm. Because for the nation lacking Olympics gold medal, Neeraj was the last hope of securing it.  23-year-old Neeraj Chopra was born in an agricultural family in Panipat, Haryana. The Javelin thrower, in his childhood,

One sector which is silently hit by the Covid-19 pandemic the most is the education. As a precautionary measure, schools were the first to be shut even before a formal announcement of lockdown. After all, education doesn't come under the umbrella of essential services.  According to the data from UNICEF, schools for more than 168 million children globally have been completely closed for almost an entire year, and more than 888 million children worldwide continue to face disruptions to their education due to full and partial school closures.  In India, only one in four children have access to digital devices and internet connectivity. There is a large rural-urban and gender divide which is why not everyone is able to benefit the digital revolution. Such vulnerable children unable to access remote learning might never be able to get back to learning even after the pandemic fades away, and could be easily exploited as child labor.  Shifting Classes Online   To those who can access it,

At a certain point in life, we dream of moving abroad in search of better career opportunities, gain experiences, or to improve quality of life. However, it is not an overnight process; we have to face many challenges in the course of its preparation, from the very beginning, to which we find ourselves stuck and the dream remains unfulfilled. Living with a dream that cannot be fulfilled mixed with regrets is one of the most depressing feelings in the world. On several occasions, it all happens because of a foreign language. English is a cool language. It is important no doubt but it is foreign to many of us, if not most. It need not be replaced with mother tongue or native languages, but it is indispensable especially for those who aspire to go abroad for work or study. A great mathematician or a stalwart of a technical field —those who are called nerds— can eventually fail, if he is unable to express his works in the language people can understand. To reach out to the masses

After an exhilarating Holi, comes the boring and haunting board exam, the exam for which no amount of preparation gives an impression of sufficiency. Students across the nation get excited as well as depressed. They are ‘excitingly depressed’. Excited to give the final exam of their school life, to enter into a new world, and depressed thinking what society would say if their marks won't be that good. Sharma Ji’s meritorious child is making things worse. While the level of questions asked in the exams has become easy these days, the quality of students being produced is decreasing, WhatsApp, Social Media and expansion of internet are to blame. The internet and smartphones may help students in their higher studies, but it misfires in case of younger kids. It only serves as a distraction, the biggest of modern times. Earlier, when kids go out to play some sports, it was treated as a distraction from studies. But now, it has been understood clearly that it wasn't seeing the

After Diwali came the inevitable cloud of smog in Delhi. The fact that smog is going to arrive any moment was known to every single person living in Delhi, just the intensity of this smog was a bit surprising. And why not? The toxicity of air was 14-16 times more than the safe limit. The PM 2.5 level skyrocketed making people vulnerable to various respiratory problems. Usually when the smog checks in, a translucent greyish layer of air cover the city. But this winter, this layer was quite thick, almost opaque. As this year's smog came right after Diwali, a number of people directly blamed Diwali's crackers for it. On the other hand, some remain critical of the farmers of Punjab and Haryana who burned their paddy releasing poisonous gases in the air that reached Delhi through the wind. While both burning crackers or crops fairly invite criticism not because they polluted the air but because these actions could have been avoided or minimized. Diwali is celebrated everywhe