Spirit of kolu

During Navarathri, people arrange kolus which usually follow mythological stories. If you’ve been inside temples, you would have seen that the walls have many grand sculptures of gods and godessess. we can see the arts of marriages of the gods, like Siva and Parvathi, Durga destroying the demon Mahisha and more.

During Navarathri, people bring these themes into their homes by keeping kolus. A kolu can be really grand with 11 steps depicting the stories of gods and godesses. this began started from story of birth of Krishna and his destruction of the evil snake Kaliya. we can see the gods in the top steps and idols of sages and saints, after the gods then while coming lower down, we can see scenes of local life people in markets, at weddings and so on.

Women get together and sing songs. This is a time when people of the community visit each others’ homes. Those who are too shy to sing in front of others cannot get away!

Dream about my India

What will the New Year bring? Living in a country without fear of terror attacks reined supreme in most young minds, while some felt we should be kinder to the environment, others felt that wildlife should be protected. Look inside for a glimpse of some dreams…

It’s a new year and all of us are filled with the hope of a new beginning leaving behind fear and terror and looking to good year ahead. Here’s what kids from different parts of the country have to say about their aspirations for India.

Feel that corruption is one of the biggest problems that India faces today. The greed of politicians and of government officers, they say, is at the root of the problem.

“The leaders must work for the people, and ensure the development of the country”

Moving on from corruption to poverty, the government must ensure that all its poor people has enough to eat and only through education will the poor be able to live a better life. Education is very important for development.

With the Mumbai terror attacks fresh in their minds, the students say that terrorists should be punished severely. While Prajwal believed that war is the only solution to dealing with situations, Abishek holds a different view. “People are more important than winning wars. In a war, innocent people of both countries will die.” Terrorism has taken too many lives. We would like to see our country as a terror free nation in 2009. Let’s get together to terrorize terror out of our territory

Impact of IT field in India

Information Technology plays a vital role in the improvement of economical status of India. Though India a developing country, IT raised India to the level of developed countries in the field of science and technology. Each and every world country needs Indians to enhance their technology. Though IT made India a developed nation it also has its own demerits.

The culture and tradition of a nation is as important as the economical status. We can say, India attained high economical status by losing its precious heritage and tradition.

As we all know, India is known for its heritage and culture. But as the IT field entered into India, slowly we lost out cultural identity. The irony in this is, the world countries, especially the western countries were keen in adopting our way of living, particularly culture and heritage. But we Indians were moving fast towards the western culture. We started imitating their mode of dressing, food habits and so on.

The young lads and girls were highly influenced by the western culture in wearing modern suits, and most importantly in marriage. The consequence of this is, we Indian lost our identity.

We free to adopt other cultures, but there are certain limitations. And we should not give up our heritage in adopting other cultures. As the young hearts of this nation we should think about this. The development of India should not be an outcome of loss of culture and identity.

NASA

In 1958, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration was established. Today, 50 years on, NASA has a host of programmers to showcase its achievements.

One of the objectives of NASA has been to interact with the community through extensive outreach programmers impacting the thoughts and imagination of generations of children the world over. Encouraging kids to dream big and study hard, through competitions, designed to get children thinking about space — and by extension, math and science — in new ways is what NASA aims at. Each year over 60,000 students get to directly interact with NASA’s educational opportunities.

NASA has numerous activities, games, amazing stories, study material, competitions, student conferences and scholarships for different age groups. From providing an opportunity of asking an astronaut on the space station a question, assisting students with homework and projects, assembling paper model spacecraft to interactive websites with every information on space and space related subjects, NASA is a must visit site for the curious child.

Importantly October 4 to 10 is celebrated annually in some 50 nations as World Space Week to mark the anniversary of two great milestones of humanity’s exploration of space. The first human-made Earth satellite, SPUTNIK I being launched on October 4, 1957, and the Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies, coming into force on October 10, 1967. Special World Space Week instructional materials in several languages with activities for all grades are made available to schools at no charge.

You can begin your own space odyssey and lucky for you that you need not even venture into space for it — just get to a computer and connect to NASA. This is one place where the sky is certainly not the limit – only a beginning to the limitless!