A depressing world, calling for action.

Nov 19th 2019

The major headlines of today’s malayala manorama newspaper was about the mysterious death of IIT student Fathima Lathif and the ongoing strike at JNU Delhi over the hostel fee increment. Going through the entire paper most news I found to be negative- deaths, killings, robbery, scams, inflation, global warming, plastic waste and the list goes on. But one thing that did stood out with positivity and hope are our young kids in school who won the Big Q quiz, the schools that won the ‘Nalla Paadam’ (translated as Good Lesson) , the ongoing State sports competition winners and the youth festival participants getting geared up for the competition. I don’t know if it’s the media creating a full on negative image of our world or its complete reality. I am sure it is real to the most extent. The colourful advertisements telling us we can shop till we drop from outlets that offer the most discounts is the second thing that can lift up your mood as you read a newspaper otherwise it is depressing to know what’s going on around us.

No wonder why people move out of the country. We all want a less depressing life. But these are not the problems faced by one country. All around the world you can see this. May be a little less in other countries than us. The huge no of scams, murders and injustice being served in our country can give other countries a run for their money. When I see this hopeful faces of those students who are winning competitions and those who did not make it to any competition, I feel sad that in a few years’ time they are also going to be part of this depressing world. 

We all know what we have to do. For every problem we have come across people have found solutions too. But we are terrible at executing them consistently. Taking my own state into account, there are a number of factors we can be proud of ourselves but we have been celebrating them for too long like our literacy rate.  Have we done something more? We can read and write well great. We can offer more. We have become a consumer state and we do not create jobs. We are hoarding our minds with knowledge and our houses with material things, but have we really learnt to live life with meaning and share our wealth, time and energy by giving back to the society.

So the question everyone is dying to ask, what I have done to make our world a better place.  Well I started growing some vegetables in my backyard and planted couple of trees and I try to reuse as many plastic things I can and reduce the no of single use plastic as I can by taking my own bags for shopping and a lot more which I will write in detail in my next blog. I am part of ASAP( Additional Skill Acquisition Programme by the Dept. of Education Kerala), skilling students from backward communities. Though I am on a break now due to health reasons. Then I am using my blog to bring awareness. Now what we need is more action and less talk as most of us are aware of the problems and even the solutions.