GrEEn DiWaLi

The festival of lights  Diwali  celebrates the victory of good over evil.

The lighting of diyas on a dark, moonless night signifies the end of all things negative.

This festival, if celebrated in the traditional sense, has little to do with fireworks. So instead of polluting the environment with them, go ahead and celebrate a 'Green Diwali'.

Here are 10 creative ways for you to make it an eco-friendly affair this year.

1.  Do not use electric lights to illuminate your home. Instead, opt for diyas (earthen lamps) and candles.

This will not only reduce the amount of electricity being consumed, the flickering diyas will look prettier too.

If you must use electric illumination, opt for LED lights. They use at least 80 per cent lesser energy than the regular ones and also come in various hues too.

 2.  Although there are a number of environment-friendly crackers that have begun to flood the market and are definitely less polluting than others, this Diwali give the fireworks a complete miss.

Instead...

Get all the children of the community to go for a nature walk the evening before and collect dry leaves, grass, twigs etc. Then celebrate this festival of lights by lighting a bonfire on the terrace or in an open space and serve homemade sweets and sherbet.

Fill up balloons with glitter or small pieces of coloured paper and spend the evening bursting them, either with your family at home or with a lot of friends.

You could even have the kids blowing up brown paper bags and bursting them by jumping on them. The cheerful sound will be enough to usher in Diwali.

    

  3.  In earlier times, rangolis were made to feed the birds. This Diwali, go back to doing that.

Instead of using artificial colours, make your rangoli with spices and other food items as follows:

• For white, use rice powder
• Yellow: Pulses or turmeric
• Brown: Cloves or cinnamon
• Green: Cardamom (chhoti elaichi) or fennel (saunf)
• Red: Dried chilly or even kumkum, if you wish
• You can even make a rangoli out of fresh flowers -- their fragrance is sure to create the perfect festive ambience.
• You can decorate the doorway with garlands of marigold and jasmine and set up vases of roses and lilies. They will enhance the beauty of your house way better than the paper streamers and artificial lights would have.

   4.  If you must paint your home during Diwali, then use eco-friendly paint.

Besides, here are a few ideas to decorate your home without having to paint it at all.

• Twist colourful saris and dupattas to create streamers. Or paint old newspapers and hang them up as wall decorations.
• Use brocade saris or gold embroidered dupattas as drapes and curtains instead of going on a shopping spree.
• Use your child's leftover craft materials like tissues, sandwich or rice paper to make paper lanterns (kandeel). You could use match sticks to form the spokes.
• Save on electricity and stop using the doorbell for a few days. Instead, hang a bell at the door entrance and let all visitors ring that instead. It will definitely add to the puja feeling.
• Bandanwars or traditional door hangings are the first thing that welcomes every guest. Make these with leftover papers or bright coloured cloth and then add glitter or paper flowers to them.
• Don't throw away any fused incandescent bulbs. Instead, turn them into small flower vases by placing an orchid in the centre as a decorative accessory. You can also paint them different colours and hang them from the ceiling.
• Use organic incense sticks and fresh flowers to create that heady fragrance that one associates with a puja. Do away with the synthetic room fresheners.

   5.  Although innumerable options are available commercially, many of them come with artificial colours and way too much sugar.

So this Diwali make your own sweets instead, using only natural products like milk, chickpea flour (besan), coconut, jaggery, dry fruits, sugar etc and keep them both nutritious and unadulterated.

Some of the choicest Diwali sweets you can try making at home would be:

• Laddoos made of besan and rava (semolina)
• Barfi made of coconut and milk
• Kheer made of milk, rice and jiggery
• Shakkarpare made of flour, ghee and sugar
• Gajar ka halwa made of carrots and milk

Diwali...(victory of truth)

Diwali the 'Festival of lights' is one of the biggest and grand festivals of India. The word Diwali means 'row of lamps'. It is one of the main festivals that falls under Hinduism. It's celebrated to commemorate the victory of good over the evil, light over darkness and knowledge over ignorance. The reason of celebration differs from region to region in India.The festival falls between mid- October and mid-November. During the period of time, everyone worship goddess Lakshmi and also many traditional activities are performed during the five day celebration.

1. Birth of Lakshmi

It is said that the occasion of Diwali is actually the birth anniversary of Goddess Lakshmi. As per Legends, the Goddess of wealth, Lakshmi was re-incarnated on the new moon night of the Kartik month. This is why Diwali is celebrated to mark the importance of this day and seek the blessings of Goddess of prosperity.

2. Return of Pandavas 

The great epic Mahabharata says, it was Kartik Amavashya when the Pandavas returned from 12 years of exile to Virata kingdom as a result from banishment by Kauravas at the game of dice. The Pandavas were welcomed by the people by lighting earthen lamps. Since then Diwali is celebrated to mark the return of Pandava brothers after a long rigorous exile. 

3. Victory of Rama

Diwali is the day when it is said that Lord Rama returned to his kingdom Ayodhya after conquering Lanka. Lord Rama was exiled by his father Dashratha, the King of Ayodhya, along with his wife Sita and his younger brother Lakshman.Lord Rama returned to his Kingdom Ayodhya after 14 years of exile, in which he put an end to the demon Ravana of Lanka. After this victory of Good over Evil, Rama returned to Ayodhya and people welcomed them by lighting rows of clay lamps. So, it is an occasion in honor of Rama's victory over Ravana or Truth's victory over Evil.

4. Krishna killed Narakasura

Narakasura ruled the kingdom of Pradyoshapuram. Puranas says he has acquired immense power from a blessing given by Lord Brahma after a severe penance. Under his rule, the villagers suffered a lot of hardship as the demon tortured the people and kidnapped the women to be imprisoned in his palace with his invincible might.Unable to bear the tyranny of the demon, the celestial beings pleaded with Lord Krishna to save them from his torture. Lord Vishnu in his 8th incarnation as Krishna destroyed the demon Narakasura and rescued 16,000 women from his captivity. The celebration of this freedom went on for two days including the Diwali day as a victory festival and the story is a reminder that good can still come out of evil. 

Our New Friend are Electronic.

I am so sure the title of the writing is enough for you to understand what it is all about. But I shall be discussing its positive as well as negative effects on human life. Facebook, twitter, chatting windows are giving us more pleasure then the reality. we try to be in news we love to on the lips of many people we don’t hesitate to share our every single life incident on FB or Twitter.  I check facebook almost every day more than 30 times to see any new notification or message or friends request.  I am always in the on chat , I love chatting. I know its not gone work and I may feel isolated whenever I am offline. This online way of socializing is killing the fun that we use to have in schools. In those days when ever we feel lonely we use to drop in to the friends home to spend the whole afternoon with them. Should we allow these gadgets and social medias to take our happiness like this away from us. Let me share an instant. Just some days ago hurricane Sandy hit the coast of NYC.  The whole city was helpless, isolated and cut from the technology as it disturbed the power station pushing the whole NYC in darkness. There was some positive and some negative scene into the picture. Many people regretted this . they were not able to message or connect with each other coz of dead cell phones. Some took this opportunity and kept being in contact by arranging get together in this dark time. But the experience of being suddenly smartphoneless caused some to realize just how dependent on the technology they had become. But there are some whom dropped in to their grannies and spent some quality and social time with them. I am sure by doing this you will not miss anything. Just imagine waking up with the sun, exploring the neighborhood, checking in on friends, cooking by flashlight and going to bed soon after sundown. Hear news from a battery-powered radio and checked. The more we get addicted to these gadgets and imaginary social friends we will surely lose the essence of the life given by Almighty.  Don’t try to challenge him he has better ways to teach us lesson. “It’s strange, how in the end you feel like a prisoner to your device. It’s the one thing you wanted to work, more than anything. But will always long to come back to beholding beauty of the reality.”

Women Entrepreneurship

Women entrepreneurship has been recognised as an important source of economic growth. Women entrepreneurs create new jobs for themselves and others and also provide society with different solutions to management, organisation and business problems. However, they still represent a minority of all entrepreneurs. Women entrepreneurs often face gender-based barriers to starting and growing their businesses, like discriminatory property, matrimonial and inheritance laws and/or cultural practices; lack of access to formal finance mechanisms; limited mobility and access to information and networks, etc.

Women’s entrepreneurship can make a particularly strong contribution to the economic well-being of the family and communities, poverty reduction and women’s empowerment, thus contributing to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Thus, governments across the world as well as various developmental organizations are actively undertaking promotion of women entrepreneurs through various schemes, incentives and promotional measures.

A Day to Stand For Environment

 Best part of studying in IILM is that it gives every student the opportunity to show their creativity. There are almost 25 clubs and every club has 2 or 3 OBs ( office bearer). They get a big opportunity to not only learn how to organize an event but also to develop  leadership qualities. Today was my 1^st event for Eco Green club. “Eco Green”- by its name it’s clear that this club represent environment . The purpose of this club is to create awareness among the society by spreading eco-friendly knowledge to students.

The most awaited event of our enthusiastic club was scheduled on 3^rd of November. It was a hectic task to organise a event for the 1^st time and that too according to the plan. We started the event by  celebrating 5 days dedicated to the 5 elements of environment.  The days were “ Land, water, air, save electricity, Floura & fauna.”  Calling it as “Eco week “.  Each day we displayed many the importance and affects of human interference on these elements of the earth. Recycled posters where and many small activities were organized to keep the students aware. Basically we were trying to spread awareness on how to save the environment.

At last of this 5 days event we planned to close the eco green event by a big event in which many students shall be participating. 

 Our Senior OBS and the junior OBS together made plans of what to execute and how to execute. On the D-day the whole hard work was to be judged. We planned to do the eco green quiz. The quiz was about the environment and the human impacts , some questions from the current affairs also. Many Teams gave participated. The elimination round gave chance to only  5 groups get the opportunity . The five groups went through 3 rounds which evaluated them on the basis of their eco natural intelligence. The whole even went very smoothly and with a lot of enthusiasm. We all had a good time. The questions were equally easy and equally tough. There were two winners and they were awarded cash prize and certificate. The audience were given chocolates for every correct answer asked from them.
                

This event would have not been possible if the Club coordinator ‘Nair Sir’ would have not made an extra effort to materialize the plan. We are thankful to him for supporting our enthusiasm and to trusting our ability.  Thanks to team members for having faith in me so much and standing by my side every time. The participants are the best part of any event and a special thanks to them. Rest the day ended happily and everyone went with a smiling face learning a lot of hidden facts of the Mother earth.