After a long gap, I took out my camera.. it had some issues, but after some cleaning, when I tried out some random shots, it came out quite ok. Not bad for such an old camera.. It has stood with me for quite some time now.. Canon SX50HS.
Here are the shots..These are from my office which Sri Aurobindo Society located at No.11, St.Martin Street, Puducherry, India.
All days are beautiful.. be it the first day - Monday or a Sunday.. Every day is special, different, have a character of its own. Just happened to capture some random images today morning.. Water, flowers, colours etc.
India has seen a considerable decline in Covid-19 cases, while the world is seeing another possible wave led by Omicron subvariant BA.2. Though there are recent reports of new Covid cases in Delhi and other cities and even three new cases in Puducherry, the general public is already asking "What? Covid? That's long gone"..
At least in Puducherry, almost 80% of the people are already off the masks, and no social distancing or any other symptom of any precaution. Even the police on traffic duty are off the masks. The public meetings are common, with large crowds and no maks for almost 90% of the audience.
But are we really out of danger? Are our vaccination coverage good enough? Do children - most of whom are yet to be covered by vaccination out of danger? We still do not know. Let us hope any new wave, even if it occurs, wont be like the second wave that ravaged across India in May 2021.
(Image courtesy, the New Indian Express)
Every year the last week of April is observed as the Wold Immunization Week and so it starts today.
For this year, the main focus is Long life for All. This year, it is even more important because of the ongoing pandemic among the fear of a fourth wave of the Corona virus which started in 2019 and still ravaging across many parts of the world. At a time, when the cases became zero in Puducherry, today's update (25 April 2022) from Puducherry says, three new cases have been reported. We need to be more vigilant in preventing another wave.
I see that the masks have disappeared except for a few here and there.
Borrowing the words from WHO site https://www.who.int/campaigns/world-immunization-week/world-immunization-week-2022,
From the Alliance for Good Governance (AGG), which is a collective of several organizations including Sri Aurobindo Society, PondyCAN, Pondicherry Science Forum, HOPE and many more, we are back with a new edition of the Water Festival christened WaterFest '21. This time, this is even more interesting. With over 10 government departments and over 15 civil society organizations, community organizations, and grass-roots level groups, we are also getting over more than 100 schools and the children (maybe more than 50,000 school children) and through them to more than 2 or even 3 lakh parents and the general public!!!
Exciting ..it is. So far, we have covered more than 10 schools where each school will receive the Neerkudam (a pail of water) containing waters from ponds of previous schools and in a beautiful ceremony will take a water pledge in the presence of the Neerkudam which represent all the waters (water from the water bodies of Puducherry) and in each school, water from their own a Started on 2 February 2021, which is the world wetlands day and expecting to close by 22 March 2021 which is the World Water Day, the seven weeks in between is filled with a lot of field-level action. Members of AGG and the All for Water for All collective along with the Directorate of School Education and other departments are driving one of the largest water-awareness campaigns that Puducherry has witnessed. Every participating school will identify a pond or a water body near their school and will carry out various activities around the pond including getting community support for cleaning the pond, researching the pond and its eco-systems as an experiential learning process like exploring the mathematics of a pond (dimensions, size, shape, volume, surface area, etc.), the physics and chemistry of the pond (pH of water, electrical conductivity, soil porosity, etc), biological (biological oxygen demand (BOD), chemical oxygen demand), etc), geography of the pond-eco system, history of the pond (oral history from village-elders regarding the origin, name, etc.), hydrology of the pond (its feeder systems, drainage patterns, inter-connectedness of the pond with other water bodies, etc), sociology, economics, and the list goes on. The idea is to learn from the pond-eco system in a holistic, integrated manner and in an experiential way so that children can learn from nature multiple subjects and topics which are otherwise, vertical, water-tight compartmental learning with no horizontal, cross-linkages and with absolutely no connection to their own lives or the community to which they belong.
The initiative is called One School-One Pond (OSOP) where the children will become torch-bearers of rejuvenating the natural water eco-systems and also convert the local abandoned water bodies into an eco-education centre.
