Avni Singh
Podar World School Sama, Vadodara

My dad’s ever-changing job made us live almost everywhere except in India, our home country. We visited our extended family in India during the holidays, especially Varanasi, my hometown; they took us to the great river, the Ganges. The very first time when I travelled to the ghats (the steps leading to the river), I was excited to behold a spectacular sight of the river that takes away our sins with it. The Ganges, thronged by people from all corners of the subcontinent, serve as a water source for hundreds of villages and cities. I had heard several stories of the holy river from my grandparents. My cousins often bathed in it like a pool in our backyard.

I was utterly stunned and saddened to see the sight of the river. It was bursting with plastic bottles, flowers, polythene packets, and things I possibly could not describe. We returned without touching the water. Distraught with the thought of how a river considered holy, to be in such a state? I imagined that no one had tried to clean it up. Researching on it I found that Ganga Action Plan (GAP), launched in 1986, had tried cleaning it but did not achieve its high goals of preventing industries and sewage lines from polluting the river. So, during our visits in the later years, we just visited the Ganga as a ritual. I learned from my parents that the government had launched the Namami Gange program in 2014 to clean the river, and I hoped it would succeed.

The COVID-19 pandemic brought us back to India in 2020. Our relatives said that the Ganges looked cleaner as most industries were closed during the lockdown. There was a buzz in town that though COVID-19 made us suffer, it cleaned the river naturally. The river certainly looked clean from the outside. However, I had my doubts. So, I surfed online and came across reports of NGOs that work for cleaning the Ganges. They conduct water quality tests often and the recent results were shocking. The main reason for the pollution is untreated sewage water disposal into the river. The industrial wastes, leftovers due to religious activities, and land pollution runoff into the river add to the low water quality. Thus the river is not wholly cleaned. I am not proud of having a pool in my backyard but ashamed of not making any efforts to clean the great river that gives lives to millions of living beings.

Well, logically, after reading about the faecal material in the water, I had no intention of going into it. However, when we made a trip to the ghat this time, everyone except me was inside the water. As I watched, a man got in the knee-deep water and spit out a huge mouthful of well-chewed tobacco. My family watched this and rushed out of the water, not minding the cold at all. Then, he brushed his teeth and gargled in the same water. Finally, he bathed in it and worshipped the same river, which he polluted a few minutes earlier. We should all join hands and contribute to cleaning the river and the minds of the people who worship it but do not respect its sanctity. 

( Photo by Shiv Prasad on Unsplash)

Sananshi Pidyar
Convent of Jesus and Mary, Ambala, Haryana

We all have a legion of fears constantly throwing us off our Game called Life: the fear of being an utter failure, the fear of rejection, the fear of the unknown, and the fear of dying alone. 

Deep down these fears perpetually haunt us, and living in denial is an attractive alternative, because avoiding negative thoughts is easier than acknowledging them, which are at times excruciating to think about. And before we know it, we stop feeling anything, numbness and indifference dawn over us like thick impenetrable fog, obscuring these emotions from view, but strong gales of nightmares and pelting of Life’s famous lemons bring them to the surface in plain sight. 

Being face-to-face with them triggers our defence mechanism, our guards rise and we try to push them away, keeping them locked and chained down a chasm. But they creep out with amplified impact, like cancer cells after a failed chemotherapy. 

We all know by now that the Universe is not our best friend and will go to any lengths to make Life miserable, pressing where it hurts most and bombarding us with its challenges, almost knocking us to a breaking point, only to provide momentary breaths of respite from time to time that keeps us going. 

Life is programmed in such a way that its “ideal version” is just a hologram, fathomed by our deepest desires, its existence purely theoretical and imaginary, realising our goals simply makes the hologram more vivid and vibrant, but ultimately it can never be materialised. We might get close to this quintessential existence but never enough to reach it.

Life only throws at us what the Universe believes we can overcome. So instead of failing in our attempts to sail through it, we must accept the inevitable stumbles and setbacks, not let fear dominate our lives and appreciate the seemingly trivial moments of joy. 

Sananshi Pidyar
Convent of Jesus and Mary, Ambala, Haryana

On a lacklustre Wednesday evening, after being berated by my mother for my lack of discipline, I was following my nighttime regimen of brushing my teeth before bed. As I stood in front of the mirror while my mind wandered to the realisation of how shambolic my life has become, my eyes gazed at my curly tangled hair, which was no less than an allusion to my chaotic life. It felt as if I was yearning to strike a symbolism between two, a metaphor, for something that is in my control but not quite.

I seemed to stop dead in my tracks and couldn’t help but think of all the ways I had let down the people I care about, how I have completely abandoned my principles and become an unrecognisable version of myself. My mirror-self seemed to scoff, beckon then dare me to turn over a new leaf. 

Armed with a pair of scissors in hand, and conviction in my heart, I cut my locks to a length to which I almost couldn’t recognise myself. And instead of the expected gasp, I saw a smile plastered to my face. I was shocked at my rather daring act, and the fact that there was complacence where there should’ve been contrition. And I sensed a foreign feeling prodding through my solar plexus, quite perplexing until I realised, I felt empowered. 

For most of my life, I have admired women with short hair by the likes of Angela Merkel, Ursula von der Leyen, Maharani Gayatri Devi and a legion of others who have carried themselves with such grace and poise. To me, they are the epitome of grit and conviction, and my subconscious has led me to associate short hair with traits that I would like to imbibe, but above all of it, I felt liberated.

I felt that with every snip of the scissors, I was letting go of all the pain and the disappointment that had accumulated over the past, cut down and stashed away into oblivion. Just like that, a simple haircut became an intangible, spiritual search for a transcendent consciousness.