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Kinjal Pandey

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To stay relevant in the 21st century – the University of Delhi (DU) needs to let go of its laissez-faire attitude. Read our Editor’s take on why DU is trapped in its own history.

Making it into DU was a dream for so many of us. We battled the unpredictable and exhausting board examinations, obsessed over  cut-off lists, and withstood the impossibly frustrating admission process to finally make it here. Once here, all the effort seemed worth it. To study with the brightest people in our generation, participate in DU’s competitive society culture, absorb its active protest culture, and learn under its brilliant faculty, made it a one of a kind experience. This, coupled with a relatively relaxed attendance policy and reasonable fee, was enough to make this place a dream come true.

However, three years in the University and my rose-coloured glasses have finally worn off. What I saw as the culture of protest is actually teachers and students demanding basic resources and rights. What was seen as thriving society culture is the students’ way to keep themselves occupied and challenged since the varsity offers few opportunities to do so. The affordability of DU is constantly at threat, with newly established schools like Delhi School of Journalism charging a hefty fee and offering sub par education in return. With the Higher Education Funding Agency and the current government’s obsession with privatisation, DU’s accessibility is historically most vulnerable right now.

However, this is not all. The bigger problems with DU are related to its academic rigour. The truth is, towards the end of our three years, there is very little that the institution has taught us.

This facade of DU’s reputation has limited influence; recruiters and major corporations are distinctly aware of how little a DU degree teaches you, which is perhaps why they avoid us like the plague. Navigating the process of landing your first job on your own is chaotic and most people seek the security of campus placements. However, in DU, the word ‘placement’ is reserved for commerce students from the five top – ranked colleges in the varsity. It’s not as if commerce students or those in top colleges are necessarily more skilled than the rest of us but selective elitism goes a long way. The rest, pursuing other “non-employable” degrees in the remaining colleges, cannot aspire to be recruited in any capacity.

Don’t get me wrong, I am grateful to DU for the exposure and experiences but they were by and large the product of the hard work of the students who made societies their life and gave them their competitive edge. Apart from its reputation, there is very little that DU offers us. My resentment stems from the fact that I, like my peers, am horribly under-prepared for the real world. It is responsible to revive the curriculum to make it competitive with other universities, and it is their responsibility to realise that their job does not end by offering students mere theoretical knowledge.

Sports facilities in DU are underwhelming and most sports’ quota students find their own way of training themselves independently. Certainly, there is a funding crisis that the varsity is experiencing and the threat of a bigger impending crisis looms above the surface, but even existing funds aren’t appropriately utilised. For example, in 2017, the varsity returned 108 crores to the University Grants Commission (UGC) because it could not find an avenue to spend it. Three crore rupees allocated by the UGC remained under-utilised and had to be returned as well.

As I reflect upon my three years in DU, I am grateful for the creative minds I got the opportunity to interact with. However, nostalgia has not clouded my judgment and I know that there was so much more that DU could have offered and so much more that I deserved. The only people who graduate from DU and make it in life should not be B.Com. students, IAS officers, rich kids whose resources get them into an Ivy – league college for Master’s or those studying in Hindu, Lady Shri Ram, Stephen’s, and Hansraj. The rest of us also deserve access to an education that teaches us the required skills, has a curriculum abreast with top international universities, and offers us the opportunity that allows us to get employed if we wish to be. Like an egocentric, ageing actor who cannot get over their glory days, DU is iconic but stuck in the past. It needs to catch up with the times and enter the 21st century. After all, reputations alone can only last so long.  

Kinjal Pandey
[email protected]

Young Love is naïve, innocent, and intense. It is one of the most sincere feelings a person experiences. It is time we acknowledged the beauty of young love and incorporate it into our lives.

We have all been caught in the throngs of having a massive crush, which inexplicably ended up becoming teenage love if our feelings were reciprocated. Teenage love is the sweetest of joys and its beauty comes from the lack of wariness that both individuals have. This innocent form of love that we experience when we are 14 or 15 lasts for a short while. Time hardens most of us, our idealism and unconditional faith in love go out of the window post our first heartbreak. Caution, over-thinking, and insecurities seep into our behaviour until we forget what it is like to love someone wholly and unconditionally.

As we step into college, most of us are burdened with commitment issues. We try not to fall for someone too soon and too hard. Breakups, disappointments, and popular culture have made us afraid of love. We are afraid of things falling apart before they even start, we write people off without giving them a chance, and we have caged our hearts as if they were fragile pieces of intricate glass.

Nat Cole King once crooned, “The greatest thing you will ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.” His words continue to be as true today as they ever were. We are prudent when it comes to love and it is causing us nothing but pain. To close off our hearts to most natural of human instincts of loving and forming bonds is dangerous and hurtful.

Image Credits: Karen Rozetsky
Image Credits: Karen Rozetsky

The beauty of young love stems from the fact that even though it is largely used in the context of teenagers, it isn’t limited to them. Young love can happen in the final year of college when you’re desperately looking for it or when you are 45 and you aren’t. We cannot make ourselves fall in love with another person. However, we can only make sure that we don’t close off our heart when we meet the right one. Sure, this method might lead to a fair share of heartbreaks, but that does not make it any less worth it. Perhaps it will last forever, perhaps it won’t. There is no effective way to predict anything. A love story is no less beautiful than one that lasts a lifetime. After all, spring is beautiful, even if just lasts a second.

It is high time we stop camouflaging our emotions or second-guessing the intentions of others. We are too cautious, too careful, and too wary. We fear love rather than seek it and it is costing us our happiness. Perhaps it is time to throw caution out of the window and fall head over heels in love. Perhaps it is time we loved without worrying about where things would go. Like they say, the heart wants, what the heart wants.

 

Feature Image Credits: Karen Rozetsky
Kinjal Pandey
[email protected]

The freedom to loiter, occupy public spaces post 9 p.m., and see how our campus looks at midnight is a luxury and experience that women students are denied.

Earlier last week, women from Daulat Ram College (DRC) Hostel protested in front of the Vice Chancellor’s office demanding the removal of members of the hostel administration who infringed their privacy and policed their choices. The protests barely affected the administration.
As a student journalist, this development didn’t surprise me. A year ago, I was pursuing a story on hostel in-timings. Both Miranda and DRC had strict hostel timings that were religiously enforced. In contrast, when I spoke to the evening shift guard of Kirori Mal College Hostel, he breezily mentioned how he lets the boys come late if it’s a friend’s birthday or allows them to go out at midnight if they are hungry. This casual remark hit me very personally as having lived in a hostel the last three years, I know I would not be allowed to go out after 10 p.m., no matter whose birthday it was or how hungry I was.
Most women’s hostels and paying guest accommodations have an actual metal grill gate that is shut and locked at 10 p.m. and opened again at 7 a.m. before classes. Why would a good woman be out between these ungodly hours anyway? We are quite literally locked inside brick, mortar, and metal, sometimes without a fire exit. Our moral guardians like to believe that these in-timings don’t interfere with our education. Attending lectures is a luxury we
are allowed and anything beyond lectures though is curtailed by these timings. They ensure that there are no parties, no midnight walks at India Gate, no unplanned trips, and no chai at 1 a.m. We are quite literally modern
Cinderellas, as the clock strikes 10 our facade of empowerment and emancipation falls apart, like a badly
stitched polyester dress after one little rip. I particularly detest the social media forwards that urge men to respect women “because she is someone’s wife, daughter, sister, and mother” but make no mention of the fact that she is human and deserves to have her autonomy respected. I wonder if we will ever live in a space that does not restrict
us to these roles alone. It is exhausting to rise and set with the sun, to rush home as the clock ticks 9, sweating frantically as I lose my patience as the clock ticks closer to the deadline. It is high time the University administration let go of this facade of hostel in-timings. If we are old enough to vote, old enough to get married, then we are old enough to decide when to stay in and when to go out.

The scam that hostel in-timings keep women safe from harassment is the biggest lie. If there were certainty that I would never be harassed if I never set foot after 9, I would be willing to pay the price. But these so-called
pretenders who appear to care about our safety are the same people who avert their eyes as they see a man elbow a woman’s breasts in the metro. To say that you should stay in and protect yourself from rapists is the ultimate form of victim blaming. It implies that the responsibility of protecting oneself from harassment lies with the victim. It says that if you stay indoors then the perpetrator can find another victim, probably one out later at night, less covered up, and less sober.

The three years of college life are often the first time when girls get to move beyond their house. College life allows considerable time for youngsters to experiment, roam around, and have the first taste of freedom. These are
the days that people recount as they regale about the risks they took, the weddings they gate crashed,
hours they killed while doing nothing, etc. But when you deny someone to loiter or even run errands for 10 hours every day then you are essentially denying them the opportunity to have fun. A sight of girls carelessly singing songs
at Sudama Tea Point past 8 p.m. is a revolutionary imagery. It may be nothing for the guys, but the girls still
dream of loitering, just existing outside.

Kinjal Pandey
[email protected]

We talk about the many anxieties of a sixth- semester student, enveloped in placements, entrance exams, and last days’ blues.

“Be what you want to be, taking things the way they come” goes an old Bacardi jingle. This is one of the many iconic tunes that can be good advice to anyone at any point of their lives; except perhaps students in their board year, or a first-year student trying to squeeze into relevance in college, or a third-year student navigating across placements and interviews, or an adult struggling to “adult”. You get the gist, the simple advice of taking one day at a time is too uncomplicated to be truly helpful. Isn’t it? Life, as we know it is so very complicated, with each so-called “last battle” giving way to another and just when you thought you were done navigating the unknown, an ocean of uncertainty materialises. According to the wisdom of someone who has been on this earth for all of 20 years, the feeling that success at each and every step is the be-all and end-all of making it in life, that not meeting a particular milestone satisfactorily would mean the untimely death of all our goals, is universal. But our life goals, the person we want to be and the things we want to do are certain things that can be achieved in multiple ways.

The anxieties of a third-year student, accompanied by the desire to make the most out of college in terms of personal experience, with a dash of urge to take a trip with friends, to do justice to the society you started out with, the urge to attend all your classes one last time, and to stroll every lane on campus, drink cups of chai with everyone you met, loved, and lost. The notion of “ek baar aur” (one more time) can be overwhelming. The bottom line is, we want it
all. Living our best life with one’s friends, doing justice to our hobbies, activities and organisations where we
are now in leadership roles, excelling academically, and this overstimulation of hope and expectations is overburdening and is the perfect recipe to make us give it all up and accomplish none of it. The pressure of everything, combined with the ridiculously high expectations we set for ourselves, are exhausting. Between the mock tests and entrance examinations are given till now, semester exams that we just wrapped up, and everything else that seems to be coming up, I wonder whether we will find the time to sit in the college lawns with friends without once worrying about one entrance exam or another. The line where you live life to the fullest versus being negligent towards your goals is a thin one, even harder to demarcate since college students live without the pressures that come with employment and adulthood. So how does one navigate his space that is full to the brim, with nostalgia, excitement, fear, freedom, ambition, and other hundreds of emotions I cannot put into words? The only solution that comes to mind is to keep taking one day at a time. The iconic Francis Assisi quote, “Start by doing what is necessary, then what is possible, and suddenly you are doing the impossible” seems like the wholesome advice that allows us to work on our goals, no matter how huge, without getting overwhelmed.
There will still be days when we might fail miserably – oversleep, binge-watch and eat, not take certain entrance exams seriously, and have major regrets later. We must accept that our “human-ness” would make at least a few mistakes along this journey. However, one ought to remember that making mistakes does not give us the
licence to quit altogether. After all, falling down nine times and getting up the tenth is the foundation of the human spirit (along with being the chorus of a loved Cardi B song).
This new year, remember that we are humans, and our failure is neither our defining characteristic nor is it permanent (unless we want it to be). As an unsure student in my last semester, unaware of where I will be and what I will do in the next six months, the only advice I would like to give myself and you are – “be what you want to be,
taking things the way they come.”

Kinjal Pandey
[email protected]

Being in a women’s college was once a decision made on the basis of cut-offs and convenience, however, it ended up being a transforming life experience.
One of the greatest gifts I stumbled upon in life, was the opportunity to study in a women’s only institution. At the risk of being stereotyped as an angry misandrist, I would say that merely experiencing a space that is free from men is important. Women’s colleges, especially in the University of Delhi (DU), are starkly different from their coeducational counterparts. Women’s only colleges are fundamentally non-political and more academically driven spaces, with fewer opportunities to channel youthful angst. However, the mere existence of women’s colleges gives us the opportunity to step away from what can almost always be the inescapable presence of men. This is not to say that we are running from them, it is to emphasise that the heteronormative spaces that accommodate both the genders can often be stifling because of the overpowering presence of men.
Without the active presence of men, all roles including the roles of a goon, the angry ambitious student politician, the bully, the guide, the mentor are all taken up by women. Women in co-educational set-ups are usually allocated dainty little spaces with cookie cutter edges, all the while carrying the Sisyphean burden of being wise, compassionate, and forgiving. The luxury of failing, losing one’s calm, being selfish, is exclusively reserved for men. The emotional toll of merely existing as a woman is no secret. Being the bigger person in a conflict, staying out of conflict or controversy, or being the peacemaker, is draining to those of us who are not peacemakers at heart.
This does not imply that the patriarchy does not seep into women’s colleges. Indecent curfew timings, the kind that assumes women are delicate flowers in need of protection, are controlling and unquestioned. Women’s colleges and the problem of how to accommodate transgender students within their ambit is a question that remains unanswered. The varsity is now operating on two extremes, on one end are girls colleges: apolitical and academic, the ones that win it laurels. On the other end of the spectrum, are co-educational colleges: angsty and troublesome, inciting chaos. It is almost as though the varsity is a parental figure and girls colleges are demure daughters, while co-educational colleges are trouble-stirring sons.
I do not imply that men are toxic, and do not claim to be victimised by their mere presence either. But the set-up of a women’s only college is not normal, it is not representative of the real structure of society. Therefore, the gender roles that are well-established in society, to the point that we do not even question them, do not accompany us inside the walls of these institutions. Instead, realisation about the extent and impact of the patriarchy,
can sometimes be felt by moving into segregated spaces, since the alternative offers us no respite from the status quo.
Being in a space exclusively reserved for women has been revolutionary because it has helped me grasp the extent to which the patriarchy influences us, it has helped me understand and un-learn problematic behaviour that Is internalised. Gloria Steinem said, “The first problem for all of us, men and women, is not to learn, but to unlearn.” A women’s college has helped me un-learn that only men lift heavy desks across corridors. From physically scaling walls to tie up election banners to manually guarding barricades on the celebrity performance during the college fest, I’ve seen women do it all. It isn’t merely limited to the physically challenging aspect of it. Emotionally, it has been a liberating experience that has allowed me to enjoy female friendship and finally understand, that it is irreplaceable and most relevant in order to understand and experience the beauty of
being a woman.
To know and bask in the presence of women who are smarter, kinder, more resilient, and compassionate than me has been an opportunity of a
lifetime. “Unlearning” what the patriarchy has conditioned me to believe would be a lifelong journey, but I am glad I got a head-start in my
alma mater, surrounded by women who inspired me for a lifetime.
Feature Image Credits: Kartik Kakar for DU Beat
Kinjal Pandey

In a trophy decision for the student fraternity, the University has waived off the fee that used to be charged for revaluation of the answer scripts of the students subsequent to the declaration of the End-Semester Examinations.

In an unprecedented decision coming out from the High Court of the national capital, it has been proclaimed that the University shall waive off all the fee that was erstwhile charged for the revaluation of the answer scripts, making things easy for the always financially insecure student fraternity.

The court refuses to stay the validity of the Central Information Commission (CIC) order, that allowed the scrutiny of answer scripts through Right to Information (RTI), and instead, plans to undertake a deeper look at the order passed by the council. To ensure that a proper channel is followed, the court also waived off the fee that the University used to charge for the purpose. The court plans to question the right of the students to seek inspection of scripts on a later date. January 30, 2019, has been allotted as the next date of hearing on the matter.

In the light of an RTI filed in the month of September, 2018, the decision comes as a financial set-back for the University, which accrued revenues of around INR three crores between the sessions 2015-16 and 2017-18, through fee levied on the students for revaluation of scripts and charges levied for handing over Xerox copies of the answer scripts to the students.

The case was born when two years ago, in 2016, when a former law student at the Varsity demanded the scrutiny of his evaluated scripts through an RTI petition. The matter dragged in the court for two years, but failed to gather pace. Hence, the student was compelled to move to the CIC, which delivered the verdict in the student’s favour, allowing him the inspection of his scripts as it is prescribed under Section 2(j) of the Indian Right to Information- “larger public interest”.

With figures input from IANS.

Feature Image Credits – DU Beat

Aashish Jain

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Every year, October 8 is celebrated as the Air Force Day. Amidst parades and fly pasts, the nation salutes the valor and patriotism of these bravehearts on the front lines, but are medals of honour and pension schemes enough when the state asks for absolutely selfless service?

Promises of respect and power have been used to incentivise recruits into armed forces since times immemorial. Expectations of patriotism and bravery justify that state’s underpayment and provision of substandard living conditions for military personnel. Media coverage of public controversies like that of the Rafale Deal, deeming the loss of a fighter jet akin to burning the cash equivalent of its monetary value, completely ignoring the loss of lives, paints a picture of the utilitarian dystopia our society is doomed to evolved into.

India loses approximately 1600 military personnel (on duty) every year, without going to war. A majority of these calamities can be credited to ‘technical failures’ of fighter jets and naval vessels. For the large quantum of Indian Air Force (IAF) planes dropping out of the sky, shoddy maintenance and lack of pilot trainees are major driving factors. Although the IAF is known for its high standards, those standards are largely for its pilots; maintenance crews may not share that quality. There is a dire need for trainees, the absence of whom led to  rookie pilots moving straight ahead to frontline warplanes such as the MiG-21. The upshot – young pilots died at an alarming rate. India is the largest importer of arms, Russia being a major source for these imports up until the recent past. Russian made vessels and jets have not only been unreliable, but the Russians have also been accused of being tardy with supplies of spare parts.

In 2014, the death toll jumped to 6400. The same year, Admiral DK Joshi of the Indian Navy made headlines last year after resigning following a series of submarine accidents that left 18 sailors dead. Not surprisingly, the vessels in questions were Russian made and supplied.

Amid growing concerns, India decided to turn to the west for production and procurement of Military Grade  Weaponry. Domestication wasn’t possible owing to the gross incompetence, lack of funding and dwindling employee strength of Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL), the Indian counterpart of the Boeing Company (leading defence contract behemoth).

2 years later, Narendra Modi took office, amid promises of military modernisation. The Rafael Deal is an initiative in that very direction, but it’s been scandalized with controversies about corruption at large.  The Rafale Deal is a similar contract, where the Government of India will procure 36 ready-to-fly Fighter Jets from Dassault, a French Weapons Manufacturer. Congress has alleged the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government of corruption and raised questions as to why there isn’t ‘technological transfer’, and why HAL isn’t manufacturing these airplanes.

According to The Hindu, the deal was initially estimated to be worth $10.2 billion (Rs.54,000 crore). The plan included acquiring 126 aircraft, 18 of them in fly-away condition and the rest to be made in India at the Hindustan Aeronautics facility under transfer of technology. The deal was initially estimated to be worth $10.2 billion (Rs.54,000 crore). The plan included acquiring 126 aircraft, 18 of them in fly-away condition and the rest to be made in India at the Hindustan Aeronautics facility under transfer of technology.

Nirmala Sitharaman, Union Defence Minister, has time and again emphasised the incapability of HAL to  guarantee the safety of these planes, if domestically built. Critics of the government continue to question this contract, calling it huge wastage of money. But amidst this political storm, there lies an inherent trivialisation of the lives of those operating these aircrafts.

The citizens of India need to understand and own up to their responsibility to the members of the Armed Forces, which is much more than celebratory tweets about valour, courage and bravery on every National Holiday or AirForce/Army/Navy Day.

Feature Image Credits – Daily Hunt

Nikita Bhatia

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Members of the Academic Council and the Executive Council allege the removal of the Dean to be linked with the ‘fake marksheet’ case of Ankiv Baisoya.

A Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) report was prepared in 2017, according to which various guidelines pertaining to the deputation procedures had been violated by the University of Delhi (DU), leading to the existence of unauthorised positions in. The officials employed in the said posts were receiving unauthorised payments. There were allegations that no circulars had been published in Employment News or presented to colleges, for the vacancies in 11 posts.

According to a report in the Times of India, on Monday, 1st October 2018, Gurpreet Singh Tuteja, Deputy Dean of Students’ Welfare (DSW) approached the finance offer with regard to the fact that he had not been paid his salary. Allegedly, the finance officer informed him of the DU administration’s decision to stop the payment as Tuteja was asked to resign from the post. As per the Times of India report, the former deputy Dean finally received his salary after approaching the registrar’s office in the company of senior members of the Academic and the Executive Council. The reasons cited for this by the DU administration include the aforementioned CAG report, which also included the statements that the deputy and the joint Deans of Students’ Welfare had overstayed at their positions.

Accounts from various reports suggest that several members of Academic Council and Executive Council have alleged the follow-up actions to be a farce for preventing an efficient and just course of action in the investigation of the ‘fake marksheet’ case of the newly elected President of the Delhi University Students’ Union (DUSU), Ankiv Baisoya. He has been under the microscope ever since the allegations of him providing a fake marksheet for his graduation started surfacing, earlier last month. In a recent turn of events, DU has received a letter from Thiruvalluvar University, Vellore, which stated that Baisoya’s marksheets were inauthentic and the latter had no association with the University. The DU admission panel had sought to look into the matter, but no official updates have been released by the DU administration on this case since then.

As per reports, Tuteja has been asked to join as a professor in Zakir Husain Delhi College where he earlier taught Mathematics.  Many members of the Academic Council and Executive Council members raised questions on the ongoing nature of the functioning of the DU administration. As cited in the Times of India report dated 1st October 2018, one of the Academic Council members informed that the Delhi University administration asked the principal of Zakir Hussain College to wait at the college so that Tuteja could complete his rejoining procedure.

DU Beat contacted Gurpeet Singh Tuteja regarding the same, but he refused to comment.

Anushree Joshi

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Anoushka Sharma

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Being sad, for so many of us, has become a habit and not a temporary feeling. Learn more about how to deal with it efficiently. 

You should read this article if :

  • You have suddenly become disinterested in socializing.
  • You get emotional, angry or even end up crying for no apparent reason.
  • You’ve stopped caring about stuff that used to interest you.
  • You’re sleeping or eating more, or less, than you used to.
  • You’re finding it hard to do all the things you used to do (such as work or chores)

In Jonathan Haidt’s book The Happiness Hypothesis, he suggests that the conscious mind is like the rider, and the unconscious mind like the elephant. Modern psychology now firmly believes that as much as he tries, the rider is unable to control the elephant, which means as human beings, we are largely unable to override our unconscious processes. Now, that sounds like some lack of hope for all of us!

Furthermore, Haidt also suggests that “the rider evolved to serve the elephant.” This means that a lot of the conscious explanations we have for our behaviour are largely just serving the purpose of justifying the cognitive processes of the unconscious mind and, it is not the other way around. So the question remains, what happens when the elephant is doing something that the rider doesn’t understand? What happens when it feels like we’re sad for no reason?

This is an important question because there is never ‘no reason’ for your sadness. When people believe they are sad for no reason, it means that either they have yet to identify the reason they feel sad or they have identified the cause but aren’t content with the answer.

It’s perfectly normal to have sadness in your life. Some kinds, however, can be a cause for concern. There are three types of sadness most of us fall into,  short-term sadness, triggered sadness, or Depression. Now, Depression needs to be tackled by an expert!

Sometimes, the other two kinds of sadness becomes a comfortable habit to reside in. When the mind focuses on sadness, it becomes comfortable and easier to think negatively and this develops a habit.

Therefore, when the mind, used to being a negative mindset, realizes that there isn’t much to be sad about, it begins to create issues or reasons to be in a ‘sad’ situation, just for the comfort. The mind might become almost scared of happiness and develops the notion that the happiness will go away one fine day and it would take time to get accustomed to the sadness once again. Since it will hurt, the mind does not want to take that chance altogether.

You need to remind yourself that the best cure for sadness is happiness. It is as simple as that! Anything that reduces your ability to build your own happiness must be avoided or altogether, eliminated. You must not try too hard to be happy but develop it as a general demeanor.

Don’t attach your happiness to external rewards or postpone being happy until sometime in the future, as that will become a habit. Don’t expect someone else to make you happy.

Most importantly, don’t equate happiness with momentary pleasure.

The best way to learn a happy demeanor is to spend time with people of the same nature. That is when you naturally inculcate the habit.

It is said that passively accepting your sadness is the same as forgetting to build your own happiness. It is wrong to perceive happiness as just a mood. It’s rather a long-lasting state that is more accurately called well-being. According to Deepak Chopra, “There are practical things you can do to help cultivate it such as: give of yourself; work at something you love; set worthy long-range goals that will take years to achieve; be open-minded; learn from the past and then put it behind you; plan for the future without anxiety, fear or dread; nurture close, warm social bonds; and develop emotional resilience. ”

He goes on to say that, “Developing emotional resilience is perhaps the most important because that’s the ability to bounce back from bad things in your life. How do you encourage it? By being present with your feelings instead of fearing them, by getting past victimization or “poor me” thinking, by making a plan of action when things go wrong and sticking with it, by associating with people who are emotionally mature and seeking counsel from someone who has managed the same kind of crisis that you now face, by focusing on the times you have survived and thrived in the face of tough circumstances, and by appreciating and rewarding yourself for dealing with your difficulties. ”

Therefore, whenever little things bog you down, it is time to remind yourself that emotionally mature happiness is the best way to save yourself from downswings in your mood. Sadness is temporary. It exists, and fades away as well, but what Chopra calls “well-being” can be made to last a lifetime. Since it is just a journey, it doesn’t matter how close or far away we are form how happy we desire to be. Every person has the inner guidance to support themselves, most of the times. What differs a happy person from a sad one is simply committing to that journey and taking those first steps with hope and belief in yourself, rather than waiting for miracles to happen.

With inputs from Deepak Chopra for Oprah (http://www.oprah.com/spirit/why-youre-sad-how-to-stop-being-sad-deepak-chopra)

Feature Image Credits: Unsplash

Khyati sanger

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On Sunday, the official website of Kirori Mal College was hacked. 

Hacking of college websites has now become a pan-university phenomenon. Almost on a monthly basis, instances of college websites being hacked are heard of. The recent hack of the UPSC Website saw the set-up of a new benchmark in the field of unethical-hacking. It seems as if the hackers are on a get-set-hack spree, smiting college-after college. This time, they made the official website of Kirori Mal College, (KMC), their victim.

It was observed on Sunday, September 30, 2018, by some college students that a clumsy notice had been uploaded in the News&Information section of the website. The notice, which seemed highly unprofessional in its language, accused the college student fraternity of accepting bribes during the elections, and that this shall have humongous long term implications. It requested the student fraternity to rise up against corruption in the elections and accused other political parties in the college student union frame of offering “Movie Tickets” in exchange for votes. The notice implored the students to rise up against this activity and proclaim power over their union.

Prima facie, it seems that this has happened in connection to the recent political scenario in the college, where the students in the college were actually offered Free Movie Tickets to shows at Amba Cinema for the movie “STRI”, and the same front emerged victorious in the College Student Union Elections.

According to Shivam, a student from KMC, who wants his course and other relevant details to reamin hidden- “This is obviously something that involves high skill and knowledge pertaining to computers. We had a candidate during the college student union elections who is from the Political Science Department, and has developed the college application as well. This candidate lost the elections to the post of the college president. Hence, it is almost sure that it is him who has done this.”

Although this gives a particular direction to the story, there are also counter-allegations from the supporters of the particular candidate. According to Kuldeep, another student from KMC, “All of this has been done to tarnish the image of our candidate. It is something that has been thought all the way through with profound attention to detail. They know that our candidate shall be the primary suspect, because of his computer based skills. Hence, this is being done post elections to highlight the false statement. Our candidate is a true Kirorian, he would never engage in anything so unethical and disproportionate to his character.”

This incident, apparently, has led to bifurcation of the college fraternity into two fronts. While the administrative investigation is under process, the security layering of the website has been scrutinised, all the loop holes removed and security tightened up to prevent any such incident in the future.

Feature Image Credits – KMC students

Aashish Jain

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