Want to live longer?
Now, what I am going to reveal you is a ‘public secret’. If you are a person who wants to live more and that too with good health, you have only one option – choose to live in the countryside. This is based on a recent research conducted in London by Office for National Statistics (ONS). The research report states:
“Living in countryside will make you live longer. Those born in village and dispersed areas could expect to live longer than those in town and fringe areas. Even the poorest people fared better in the countryside. Rural poor men lived for a year longer than their urban peers.”
The difference also examined among the older, wealthy migrants from the cities had demonstrable health benefits compared with the life of their urban peers, living in more crowded, less green spaces and served by more pressured public services.
Now, speaking of our Kerala, It’s a state with green luxuries and is now turning to a state that may face extinction on the same. The hot weather Kerala is facing today despite many showers of rain is an after effect of deforestation done by man to nature’s greenery. The cities are getting crowded and more polluted and, every morning we spot a new building sprouting up on another side of the city.
A shot from countryside
The accommodation business is now foreseeing a new possibility into the countryside building resorts in acres of land. Another painful factor is that the people living in countryside sell out their land for the price that do not even comes close to 1/4 of the price of land in a city. The people living in countryside find it very difficult to maintain acres of land that consists of coconut trees and other crops that are sources of income.
Despite of all this, it’s a fact that people who live in a city are now more on to buying lands in the countryside to spent their holidays. We can reduce global warming and the scorching heat of Kerala if each one of us can contribute by planting more trees and not allowing cutting trees that are already there. Let us also take care to protect the land we have in countryside and live longer!!!
Life inside China Walls
A slice of my School life..
You might be wondering… have I been to China to live inside the China walls. Sorry friends.. I am planning to describe my life inside the campus of Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya, Kasargod, and spread across 30 acres protected by a wall like in China. For your information, this school is located almost close to the Mangalore borders. If you haven’t heard of Navodaya Schools, I’ll make a brief explanation about it. 
Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas are Indian schools for talented children and form a part of the system of gifted education. In Kerala, we have Navodaya Schools in all the 14 districts. The objectives of the scheme are to provide good quality modern education to the children predominantly from rural areas, without regard to their family’s socio-economic condition. For more details refer to wikipedia.
If any of you have studied in Navodaya vidyalaya you will know how life goes inside (Now, things must have changed a lot for sure). “It was a prison and we were prisoners,” so I say and some other students (may be or may not).The imprisonment is for 7 years (from 6th to 12th). The main reason why we say this is that at our time, we couldn’t go out except to go home and that too was like once in a blue moon, as we say – for Onam, Christmas and for the summer holidays. Except this we had no contact with the outside world.
Once we return from the holidays, the far away sight of the School’s water tank would make us distressed and gloomy and, a day is needed to free ourselves from homesickness. Once a month our parents are allowed a visit and we used to await their coming like the hornbill which yearns for the rains. All the communication between us and parents were done through letters, like the things to be brought when they visited. Though, not everything was communicated through this method. It was the time we, especially the Navodaya Students utilized the Indian Postal Service.
Now, this is only one side of our Navodaya life…
To describe the other side of life inside the Navodaya Campus is a joy! We were a big family of over five hundred members. Inside the campus we are all one. If it’s Christmas, it’s Christmas for all… So are Shivaratri, Vishu, Onam, Pooja, Holi, Easter and all other Indian as well as Kerala festivals. Every celebrations and festivals had a spirit of oneness.
But this spirit of oneness is divided only when our Annual Days, Sports Days or a competitive spirit bonds the houses (each student is given and is divided according to a house like Ganga, Kaveri, Yamuna & Krishna). I excelled in many sporting events so did every student in the School.( I think my secret behind in achieving many prizes for running competitions…Shh…. is nothing but the 500 metre distance from our study hall to Dining hall 
). The united spirit during sports days, picking flowers to make ” Pookkalam” (flower carpet) for Onam, and various other inter-house competitions… all were real great fun and something that makes me smile when I think of it even today. I think, the life I described here is too little to know about Navodaya. Because it is something that I am unable to fully express out here.
But I’ll tell you, it is in here I learned about many things of life, music, art, traditions, festivals, languages and people. The schools are what that makes us out as a person. If the student is able to realise his/her potentials, the school system is a success. And, it is this realisation what makes one child the citizen of tomorrow.
To bring out good citizens for tomorrow, we need to do only one thing – give our children good and proper education while standing united in the spirit of being Indians first.
Photo Taken from the Official Website of JNV Kasargod.