Aparna Rana

 रफ़्तार ने फिर ज़िन्दगी की चाल रोक दी। स्कूल से लौटते वक़्त ऑटो वाले ने एक तरफ इशारा कर के बताया कि दोपहर में यहाँ एक दुर्घटना में दो लोगों की मौके पर ही मौत हो गई। शाम से ही ये बात दिमाग में घर कर गयी है। हम सब अगली सुबह का इंतज़ार करते हैं। एक नए दिन को नई उम्मीद, नई आस से जोड़ते हैं। घर से निकलते वक़्त शाम को लौट के आने के विश्वास के साथ घर वालों से विदा लेते हैं। और ये हमारी रोज़ की दिनचर्या है, एक बंधा-बंधाया नियम। रोज वही रास्ता, वही मंज़िल, वही सपने और उन सपनों को पूरा करने के लिए नया हौसला। रफ़्तार पकड़ लेते हैं हम, दसों दिशाओं में चौकन्नी नजरें दौड़ती हैं। हर कदम सोच के, समझ के बढ़ाते हैं। पर आज की घटना ने अनायास ही सोचने पर मज़बूर कर दिया, हाँलाकि हर रोज अखबार और टी.वी. की खबरें ऐसी घटनाओं से भरी होती हैं, पर अगर कुछ आँखों के सामने हो तो उसका अलग ही मनोवैज्ञानिक असर होता है। एक विचार ने कई सवाल खड़े कर दिए... घटना हुई, निश्चित रूप से उस समय हर सम्भव प्रयास किया गया होगा। कहीं न कहीं कुछ बुझती हुई उम्मीद होगी उन ज़िंदगियों को बचा लेने की। क्या किसी को दोष देना चाहिए? क्या किसी को सज़ा दे...

  Education is important, how we are going to score good marks without studying? See, a good career requires lots of studies. Great… Now what..? Schools, colleges all are closed. A big question suddenly started soaring. In these times a savior came in light, technology. Trust me at any cost we cannot compromise with studies. The means of leisure are now the tool for education. Let’s take a look on our living style of some past years.. we were slaves of mobile, laptops, desktop and were living a virtual life with virtual relatives on various social media platforms.   This technology, to some extent, lifted some rift in the families. We were struggling to sort this problem, agree? Now, come back, this technology has flipped the scenario completely. We were not ready for such type of situation that arrived uninformed, as all the other sectors education was also a matter of concern. How to manage this was the biggest question. So, take a closure look, the social media pl...

 किसी से कुछ बांटने की खुशी ही अलग होती है। विशेष तौर से अगर ये खुशी मुस्कान हो तो। घटना नहीं बताऊँगी, शायद महत्व कम हो जाये, पर हाँ कभी कभी बहुत नगण्य दिखने वाली घटना भी आंतरिक सुकून दे देती है। ऐसा होता है न कि जब घर का कोई सदस्य किसी काम से बाहर गया हो तो उसके लौटने पर हम उम्मीद करते हैं कि हमारे लिए कुछ न कुछ तो आया होगा। समाज में प्रचलित विभिन्न वर्गीकरण को अगर आधार मान के चलें तो मध्यम वर्ग और उससे ऊपर के सभी वर्गों के लिए ये कोई मुश्किल काम नहीं है। पर उस परिवार का क्या जो निम्न या अति निम्न की श्रेणी में आता है?  ऐसा तो सम्भव नहीं है कि इच्छाएं सामाजिक वर्ग और पैसे देख कर आएं। एक माँ या पिता जो दिन भर मेहनत करते हैं और महीने के अंत में अपनी मेहनत की तुलना में बहुत कम तनख्वाह पाते हैं, जिनका उद्देश्य सिर्फ अपने परिवार को भूखा न रहने देना है, अपने छोटे बच्चे की इच्छा को देख कर भी अनदेखा कर देना शायद जीवन जीने की एक कला है। अज़ीब लगता है जब सड़क पर छोटे बच्चों को गुब्बारे बेचते देखती हूँ, समझ नहीं आता यही गुब्बारा एक बच्चे के लिए मनोरंजन और दूसरे हमउम्र बच्चे के लिए जीविका ...

While surfing on some social site I came across an interesting post related to education and evaluation of human. Somewhere it hit my thoughts and made me think and write. We have reached a new height, everyday a stone is turned and a new milestone is being set. We have reached the moon, stars are not far, the galaxy is neighbour to us. These all become possible when education became inevitable part of our lives.  And then came COVID... lives changed, scenario changed, perspectives changed, working pattern changed. All the sectors got affected in different ways. But there is one sector that changed the whole scenario and way of looking at the problems too.  We were busy in making our lives easy, and a day arrived when that invention started taking our lives to a new height. Let's take a ride down to the memory lane.. the era when thumb was used to do official works. Then a systematic civilization arrived and we started using pen.. and then using a pen became the mark of being ...

 "Teaching is a beautiful way of learning..." We all complain, we all have issues, problems, difficulties, pain and what not. And respecting our this tendency God has given us an opportunity as COVID, now we can complain anytime for everything and most importantly without feeling bad or guilty about our behavior. I agree we have to maintain social distancing, we have follow certain norms to be safe. And undoubtedly this is affecting our health on either side. Physically we are comparatively less active, in result there is lethargy, weight gain, and it has a simultaneous effect on mental health as low mood, restlessness, lack of interest etc. Many of us are experiencing lacuna or ups and downs in our professional life also. Every profession has different struggle.  In my case, even during this time frame we have to continue teaching as it is. So, as a teacher I learned how to use virtual mode for teaching, trust me it was difficult but not impossible. Another struggle that I h...

  Being a teacher is fun, seriously. You can experience all the other professions just by deciding being a teacher. Need less to say about the time we are going through, new difficulties, new challenges, and yes if there are challenges there are ways to handle them. What happened today, I was in school and was recording a video for the students, after recording I started editing and then obviously sent it to them.  Of course, nothing so exciting till here, all the teachers are doing this. And that's my point. This pandemic turned me into a videographer & editor.. wow! Personally I never had liked computers and never bothered to learn much about the device.  This difficult time is not only affecting us negatively it has enormous positive things to give too. It is proved that if you engage your mind in learning something you feel motivated & charged. In these challenging times  I learned lots of new things, working online is one of them. As I already had shared...

When you dance it is not only your legs that move, your hands, your eyes, your face, your soul, your thoughts, your imagination and your heart also frolic. You transform into a sophisticated person. All your words, all your actions reveal the genuineness in you. Dance as much as you can, it is a wonderful prose.. it makes you feel alive. Dance for yourself, it is a food for soul. Dancing gives satisfaction, it gives a feeling of solace.. it is like painting with your feet, with your face, with your hands and with your beautiful eyes! Dancing is like praying. An act of redemption.. you are you.. only you at the moment you dance. Nothing right nothing wrong, it's just you and.. you! A journey that introduces you to inner you! Trust me despite all the journeys this one has a soul that speaks to you, talks to you , accompanies you, and fulfil you with solace. It is invigorating. We are rich in our culture and heritage. Lots of dance forms, lots of expressions an...

Eyes are meant to see & cherish beauty around us. Somehow our liking and disliking is also affected with this. We form a world that is so comfortable for us but what if you opened your eyes one day but could not see, scary...! But, there are people who see and feel the world without eyesight, they have vision without visibility. I have a childhood memory that impacted me for my entire life. I was in a train journey with my father and asked him to buy me some groundnut. He bought and handed over a 10 rupees note to the vendor (he had no eyesight). He took the note and started walking, my father called him back asked 'I could have given you a blank piece of paper, how did you know that this piece of paper is exact the amount you have asked?' Then he explained how he had recognized that, also he taught me that. That day I realized any disability is not a disability until you accept it as disability. More or less, our mental health is determined by the way we take our life...

Leave your mind blank for some time, after a while you will find lots of ideas floating there. Then hold your pen and start curating your ideas into beautiful phrases, prose & poetry or a simple paragraph maybe. The best way to do this is to let your mind travel wherever it wants to go. Don't fight, don't create a rift, once it's done with all the roaming it will naturally come back to you... and trust me 'this' will be the mind that you always wished to have. The travel of mind collects enormous no. of information. Once you get the intel, simply start working on that, start filtering useful and not so useful things. What happenes usually, we don't allow our mind to go out of our control, and who wants to be caged, this exactly happenes to our mind. Set it free, it is travelling virtually only, it is not traveling out side your brain. So, once it's able to experience the world automatically will start behaving the way you want it to behave. Try to...

One more celebrity committed suicide. Now for a couple of days this news as well as the value of mental health will float in full swing. In this lockdown only I watched Chhichore, and genuinely loved the movie for its message to the society. But now the question that is popping up in my mind why do we watch such movies if the actors who are getting paid for such roles are not taking the lessons in their life. Well, suicide definitely can not be & is not a solution but if the person doesn't found anyone trustworthy to him this remains the only way. Why don't we teach ourselves to be patient & attentive enough to listen what a person wants to say. It has become our usual practice to make fun. Listening and sharing are the tools that open up the pathway to a more comfortable life. I won't blame this year, not only bad things are happening in the year. We, as individuals, are now able to understand that we don't need so much to survive. We learnt to spend time ...

I am kind of person who enjoys all the small things happening in life (बड़ी घटनाएँ ज़रा कम घटती हैं न!). Jokes apart, love what you do, live what you love doing. That so happened to me today. As I was taking the class of Psychology students of class 12th, I was like down in the memory lane when I was a student and was struggling to understand what psychology is. Though, we have a syllabus to cover (आप इसको सर पे तलवार भी कह सकते हैं), but psychology is not mere a subject. It is a part of life, an open discussion, respecting perspectives.. as we all have different opinions even for the same situation (that's what the topic today). To learn this subject you have to think beyond subject. Each and every object is your subject, your eyes, ears, brain etc are the tools. Being observant and receptive is a high demand. Lots of things to write and invite a debate. Years after I spoke my heart out what psychology is for me, because you simply can not bind it in definition. And guess what...

A term that suggests and tells you to be isolated or practice social distancing. This actually is the literal meaning. The time we are facing this time actually is a golden opportunity to distant yourself from all that is detaching you from yourself. You never know what inspires or influences you to do something. Sometimes you are totally unaware of the talents & skills you have. We, as social animals love to be surrounded by people like us. We fake our lifestyle just to impress others and to feel good. This life style has snatched off our reality, our true selves and what not. Think what if we start practicing quarantine in our lives as essential need. What if we isolate ourselves from others so that we can have wonderful coffee, meaningful conversations and lots of me time. There is always positivity hidden in every sort of life. Distant, and get closed to the nature, listen the music of the wind, feel the chirping of birds, talk with the leaves, flowers. Trust me th...

                                                                         Life… is not hard!                                                                                                             Life, in various ways, gives you chance to learn, explore and understand. As if, sometimes when things are not according to our wish we start feeling ourselves helpless, same happens to the person who naturally has some deficiency. They find it a bit ...