IS CRYING ACTUALLY A SIGN OF WEAKNESS ?

It’s strange how we all consider crying as a weakness .

It takes a lot of courage , especially nowadays because all of us seem to be wearing that fake smile really well.

It took us to a point where now only happiness is considered as an acceptable emotion.

Have you ever thought how gutsy you have to be , to be able to cry? Especially when crying is considered weak , vulnerable and unacceptable.

We all go through it wether it’s bad days or hurtful situations .

So have you ever thought, why only the four walls of our washrooms know the sound of us sobbing?

Why do we cage our emotions inside our own body until it hurts so much that it finally breaks out in the form of damaged health.

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So i want you guys to do me a favor and ask yourself;

Are you brave enough to be vulnerable? 

To reach out when you need help?

To dive head first into your shame ?

Are you strong enough to be sensitive?

To cry wether your hurting or your happy , even if it makes you look weak?

Are you confident enough to listen to the people in your life ? 

To hear their ideas or solutions? 

To hold their anguish , to actually believe them even if what they are saying is against you ?

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Can we redefine our meanings of strength, bravery this and toughness?

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Acceptance is one thing that helped me a lot , because accepting a person as they are is one of the most difficult thing and yet the most beautiful thing , because acceptance leads to not judging and when that happens you are automatically ready to seek help from them when you need it.

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Inspired by Justin baldoni.

how i’ve been bullied.

I’ve been bullied as a child and i still am as a teenager .

The first time I was bullied was when i was in second grade .

It was my second day in a new school , and while coming back home by the bus there were only three of my senior boys and I there . I sat in the front next to a window , thinking , wondering , doing my own thing , and when I don’t even notice that these seniors came close to me got something poky and just touched my shoulder , then i tuned back and they said “ You don’t look pretty , you don’t deserve to live , so we gave you an injection that will kill you in an hour , if you tell it to anyone you will die even faster. “

I believed them . I believed that if I tell anyone I’ll die even faster  .

I colllapsed on the floor crying as i stepped in to my house , i started crying , crying so hard that I could faint at any moment , I didn’t stop crying until it was nearly two hours later when I realised I didn’t die . Later I told my parents they complained , then the school took action about it .

But you know a few things don’t change . They kept bullying me , over and over again saying I don’t deserve life , i don’t deserve to be alive . Everyday I came home in tears , making myself believe in what they wanted me to believe , that I didn’t deserve to live . 

This continued till those particular seniors left the school .

There  was a point when I got so  fed up of complaining ,that , i stopped , i gave up . 

Went through that level of criticism EVERY SINGLE DAY . 

I never told anyone how bad it felt to be bullied , cause i knew they’d never understand , trust me even today when i think about it , I break down .

I got over it , but every time i think about it , i fail to be strong person i am all the time .

Then they finally left .

That’s when I thought it was over , that i didn’t  need to have to though it anymore . 

But again , things change , two years ago when I shifted to my new house , my bus route changed , and I wasn’t used to the people there so i slept , morning and evening . This girl , used to throw the inside of oranges at me and squeeze them on my head , while i was asleep . Again I didn’t know her , not even her name .

She squeezed orange peels into my eyes , and it burned like living hell .

You see by this time i was in seventh so I said people will change and let her go , then yes things did change instead of oranges she threw bread and foil at me . 

I complained, no action taken . I thought again she’s another human she hopefully dose have feelings , so she’ll  change . And as i said she did  ,again she did , now these hurt way more than oranges, bread and foil , these are called words  ,and trust me they hurt way more than war weapons slammed into your body .

Now this other girl also joined her ,

 they tell me fat , ugly , fit for noting , stinky , dark skinned .

Yell at me saying I’m a whore , I’m a slut and what not .  

I have held it in for months now , i can’t now , not anymore . I’ve never regretted anything in life , but now i do , I regret not taking action on her all this while . I am gonna correct it .

 

adventures in punjab

PUNJAB

As my school generally come up with crazy ideas , this time they named it oak venture and took my class to Punjab where each student , stayed with an other students family in Punjab for six days . This was a new thing for me, like I went on vacations with the school but , never lived with a local family .

It all began with a bang ! A garland in my neck and a tika on my forehead !
I mean I had to be the luckiest, to have a family that took care of me like their own child, the family I lived with has showed me immense love , affection and care , that I could never , ever forget that I have another beautiful family living in Punjab.


I lived in a village named “Manana” , It had all the local punjabi village atmosphere and fields all around , with tiny roads and beautiful sunsets . During the time I went the family was celebrating a pooja , for health and happiness, it was a three day ceremony , where a book from the Gurudwara comes home and the gurus read it a loud , in their tradition everyone has to cover their head , the men had paddies and the women had to cover their hair with a duppata or a scarf.

A few days before the pooja me and Divjot ( host child) went to the gurudwara , she was very kind and had explained me the entire history of sikhs .where I found amazing point of views and things that we probably don’t even know about.

The Kada that the sikhis wear is not just a religious thing , it is an iron bangle that energises your body so you become harmless .

While at the school with friends , me and a few others tried on some panjabi parandhas and pagdies .
We also visited the Golden temple in Amritsar, where we had our lunch which is called Lahore at the temple .
We also felt and drank the holy water of the lake , the lake is holy because the gurus have dipped in the water .
Later on we visited the Jallianwala Bagh , where we saw the welll that the Indians jumped into to protect themselves from the British . We also saw the bullet marks on the walls , and the bushes that were carved into the shape of the British shooters .
We also visited a government school in kanpur , where we saw the extremely talented kids , who also presented us a dance before we left , in the school visit we met the sarpanch of the village and got a chance to ask them a few questions, we as well spoke it the local people and the teachers of that school, the best part of Khanpur was our tractor ride into the fields , they left us out in the fields where we ( mostly me ) got a little too exited and got a shoe stuck n the mud .
Even though it was amazing .

Soon after we came to the school to perform our Panjabi dance , which we learnt in Mohali , with that we had an open mic session, where they asked us a few questions and we had to answer them based on how we felt .

My school just gave me an amazing opportunity to build new relations , and I really thank my school for that 🙂

over all it was an amazing experience , where I learnt a lot of new things , and built amazing relations !

grattitude

We all express our emotions in one way or the other, as per our perception we tend to think that happiness is the best emotion,and trust me you are right ,it is the best emotion of all , but what makes us happy?

All of us have different reasons to be happy , one person might be happy because he got a job, an other person might be happy because he’s  getting married . 

Most of our reasons may differ , but we all have that one reason that keeps us together and that is gratitude. 

We all have people in our lives who , helped us become who we are now , it might be your parents , your friends or even an auto wala . 

Even though all of us have gone through a lot and are  here because of our efforts, we do have people who kept us safe and we have to thank them , before and after every step we take , because they made the us, the person we are . It will not only make them happy , it will also keep us grounded to the reality . Otherwise our  success will lead to arrogance.

 Millions of people we don’t know , work to make our lives comfortable . There must be someone who is struggling in the agricultural fields to feed us every grain we eat today , there must be a person who wakes up at 4 in the morning to give us milk , and we have to be great full to them and respect there service.

Maybe it has always been in the back of your head , to thank them but it never really came forward, most of us tend to take it for granted and forget that we are here because of them . 

But this is a chance , a remainder to thank everyone who loves you , everyone who took care of you , and everyone who helped you grow .

You might be like me , a little shy to express love and gratitude, but lets  overcome it this year , and I’m gonna be the first one to thank everyone who are a part of my life . And I hope you will do it as well 🙂

THANK YOU ! 🙂

HAPPY BHOGI!

MY TAKE ON RELATIONS

Communication is expressing yourself , your thoughts and your actions .

They should mean something. Every thing you do has to make sense to yourself , at times even when they don’t, you do it because you think it’s the right thing to do.

All of us have close friends , but why aren’t they rest of our friends so close to us ? Because we choose…we choose the person who we want to be close with.

Just because I know your entire biography dose not mean I’m close to you . 

In my terms a close person means ,someone who you share your feelings with , someone who you express your emotions with , someone you trust. 

It’s strange how this person can be the person you hate the most , and when I say that I mean  it. Because the girl who I hated the most in sixth became my best friend in seventh and still continues to be so.

You can only become close to a person when you start to , when you start to tell them your problems , when you start to share your happiest moments with them . 

It is still hard for myself to believe that this person who I hated the most is now the first one to strike my head whenever I hear something happy or sad . And it’ s not just becoming close to them for once , it’s about maintaining a relationship with them . It’s about how you keep in touch with them , you might just talk to them for ten minutes in an entire week , but you still manage to tell them every single useless thing on this entire earth.

Getting back to why we choose the people who we become close to , it’s when the other person gives us confidence that they won’t judge you , whether you are good, bad or ugly. When these people tell you  to do something , you do it . Even though you  know that they maybe wrong, and you do it because you trust them .

And TRUST is the key.

                                 

ADVENTURES WITH RHA

Oh my Gosh! I love Ad-hocs. Handling Ad-hocs is like acting in an action movie. So much of exitement, tension, planning, speed, action are required to handle an Ad-hoc.  Let me tell you what is an Ad-hoc in Robinhood Army. 

We have regular drives and Ad-hocs. During the regular drives, the timings to collect the food and distribution and the slum that we are visiting are preplanned.  Where as Ad-hocs are sudden, they are not planned. When a restaurant has excess food left they call us.  The fist thing we do is check the quality of the food , we do that by asking the donor when the food was prepared, for how many people we can serve the food to, we smell the food and then taste it to tell if it is actually good. The food we serve should be in good condition so that anybody can eat. 
  One day we got an unexpected call from three branches of Cognizant, a software company to come and collect the food. While we were breaking our heads to plan the collection and distribution, another call came from Ayyappa Temple, Folk Residancy and Optimum building asking us to collect the food.  We didnt even have the time to plan, yet fifty six Robins have gathered and got into action. Various chapters of Robinhood from Hyderabad participated in this. In a span of eight hours, we collected, transported and distributed the food for about 5,400 people residing at various slums.     It makes me so happy that a small group of 56 Robins were able to do this in such a short span.  

THE SMALLEST THINGS WHICH PUT A SMILE ON MY FACE :)

It was one of the most happening days if my state , the people here are going to elect a new government , that is going to rule over them for the next five years , the media , rich , middle class, and poor , hindus , muslims , cristians  , people of all religions cast and creed , gathered near the election booth as always to execuite their right to vote .

While the entire state was busy with elections , one of our team member got a call at the start of the day post breakfast, from Phonix arena , an it building near madhapur   saying that they have food for  1000 people . scince  breakfast time had almost come to an end , what can we do with the food ? 

The point here is , maybe the middle class & rich have the distingtion among breakfast ; lunch; dinner; supper ; etc etc ……But for the undrpriviledged , what is required is just “food” .
So we decided to recive the food & distribute it in meenakshi , rainbow & oracle 3 ,slums . Me , Barish , Jay , Namrata , Ambrish & Swamy .

We distributed it was lunch time , after serving the pongal and chutney while we were keeping them entertained , Anshu went and got them chocolates , later on after distributing the chocolates ,when we decided to leave , this boy who renamed himself as ‘DJ’ came up to me and offered me some of his chocolate , I seriously made me cry ,

The way he  expressed thankfullness it just makes me not have words , and  now if you had to ask me what is the best moment of your life then I shall definetly say that , this moment it is , and this moment will stay in my heart and with me throughout .The love Dj had in his eyes will just make you forget everything and do this for the restof your life , you will feel that nothing materialistic can define or replace the love they all show us.