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Tuesday, Jul 14, 2009
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New Delhi

Inside delhi

Painful experience

When the Capital was sweating it out under unbearable humidity and heat this past Saturday, a nine-year-old girl and her baby sister, who was not more than two years old, were made to wait for over two hours in a bus parked in Rashtrapati Bhavan.

The children were part of a group from Kothal Khurd Village in Haryana that was accompanying the sarpanch of the village who was being felicitated by the President for her work in public services.

“The children had to be left behind because we did not give their names to Rashtrapati Bhavan previously and the rules did not allow them to accompany us inside for the function. We were asked to let them stay behind in the bus. I wish they were at least allowed to sit at the reception inside the Rashtrapati Bhavan. It was very hot in the bus and though we managed to park it under a tree, the high humidity make things difficult for the children,” said the children’s mother.

The children who had arrived at Rashtrapati Bhavan at 10-30 a.m. stayed in the bus for over two hours accompanied by a female police personnel.

“My mother is inside with the President and I have been asked to take care of my sister. It would have been better had we been allowed to sit somewhere inside. It is very hot in the bus. I hope my sister sleeps till my mother comes back or she will get scared,” said the nine-year-old girl.

Bindu Shajan Perappadan

Fun-filled yoga

A special “Yoga for the Young” workshop organised at Mahavir Sthal here over the weekend turned out to be a fun-filled activity for the little ones.

The 12-step module involving the science of sound, colour, silence, laughter and breathing was aimed at improving the physical and mental well-being of children. Thirty children attended the free workshop organised by Dhyan Foundation.

Recognising the fact that children are a powerhouse of kinetic energy that makes them bubbly and wonderful, but many a time even edgy and problematic, the Dhyan Foundation believes that yoga can transform this energy into positive power and productivity.

“It was wonderful to see children sit in rapt silence without fidgeting. There was pin drop silence in the hall as though everything came to a standstill,” said Foundation volunteer Nitasha.

The best part of the module, said a seven-year-old’s mother Sakshi, was that it was woven around traditional games like “Statue”, “Who’ll blink first”, “Tippy tippy tap “and “If friends were colours what would you pick.”

Fourteen-year-old Ayush, who had watched yoga only on the idiot box, had a preconceived notion that yoga was only meant for patients. “I thought yoga had those weird ‘asanas’. But this was so normal like school games.”

The ability to focus gets boosted in such engaging exercises as “listening to the sound of silence”. Awareness levels can be enhanced with children being asked to shut their eyes and describe the environment. Right breathing is cultivated through an exercise where children are asked to watch the movement of their belly and blow air into balloons.

Madhur Tankha

Mathematical skills

Mathematical Sciences Foundation (MSF), a non-profit educational society, had recently organised a summer internship programme -- Inviting All Young Minds -- for students of Mathematics, Computer Science and Engineering drawn from schools, colleges, and engineering institutions across the country.

The four-week programme was conducted last month at Delhi Public School in R.K. Puram.

Out of a total of 450 applications received to participate in the programme, 68 were chosen after a stringent selection procedure.

Students came from cities, like Imphal, Srinagar, Kharagpur, Varanasi, Durgapur, Bhubaneshwar, Vadodara, and also places like Bhilwara (Rajasthan), and Bailhongal (Karnataka).

“All the selected students had expressed their desire to learn and apply their mathematical knowledge and skills to the proposed projects involving real life situations. The students were divided into 11 groups for working on thought provoking projects, such as Chandrayaan project, projectile dynamics, search engine for images, encryption, error correction and Jantar Mantar,” said project manager and MSF advisor Wing Commodore (retired) Sharad Chaturvedi.

“The children were guided by distinguished mathematicians as mentors, assisted by the MSF faculty and research associates,” he added.

At the culmination of the programme, prizes were awarded to the winning groups, and each participant was given a certificate, a stipend and reimbursement of their travelling expenses.

MSF has been organising similar events on a regular basis.

Parul Sharma

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