In my previous blog, I wrote about bridging gaps. Speaking of which, there’s a noticeable gap between Planet Venus and Mars, the apparent origins of women and men respectively. If you come to think of it, the descriptions do make sense.. After all, planet Venus is pretty much in between the cool-blue earth and the blazing sun – It reaches out for the star yet remains down to earth! So this blog is dedicated to those who’ve come down from that beautiful planet.
As the cliché goes, the essence of being a woman is her gentleness and her tenderness. But, these traits are misunderstood to be her weakness. In fact, I’d say they’re like grass blades which are also gentle and tender – That is what makes them flexible to bend with the storm and spring back into action thereafter. The gentleness, therefore, is a grass blades’ strength, not its weakness. The same goes for women.
The unfortunate part – a lot of women, especially in rural areas, do not realize this strength. Hey, grass blades need some nourishment too! Many families have to choose among their kids because they have a limited income and education isn’t cheap. Sadly, the choice made is to educate the boy child, because men are thought of, as family-supporters.
Changing some obstinacy will take a while. Until then, a point to note in their conundrum is that ‘Education is not cheap.’ Here’s where international institutions such as the University of London International Programmes come to the rescue because they have agreed to provide education online through mediums like Coursera.
The reason online education helps is because it reduces two major chunks of expenditure: infrastructure costs (the only requirements are a laptop and an internet access which needn’t be full time) and faculty costs (with self-explanatory videos, they only have to add value to the in-sourced content) . Sounds like a pretty sound education policy..
Coming to my education (!), the month of March is more of a march-past time, because we’ve got just two months to go before the exams. But just like marching men parade across grandeur and color from time to time, we come across the festival of colors every March! Holi is the Indian fest that calls in the season of spring. Thus, we celebrate it by smearing colors on each other.
All the seven colors emerge from the same white light – this is the best illustrator of unity in diversity. We all might come from very different fields and cultures, but we share the roof of the International Programmes, which unites us as a strong student body that cherishes its diversity! So, a very Happy Holi in advance, to everyone out there.
And, happy International Women’s Day – ‘Gentle-ladies and men’, celebrate the joy of being a woman, or of having a woman in your life, because you’re worth it!
Here’s a picture of an Artwork made by my friend Raksheta Giridhar. An apt representation for all the femininity and colorfulness of the month! Cheers 🙂
Hema is studying the BSc Banking and Finance with the University of London International Programmes in India.
Great Job!!
Thank you 🙂