Favorite Teddy Bear - Hi-5 - Season 11 Song of the Week

Mahatma Gandhi

Illustrations by: Amarjeet Malik

Thinker, statesman and nationalist leader, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi not only led his own country to independence but also influenced political activists of many persuasions throughout the world with his methods and philosophy of nonviolent confrontation, or civil disobedience.

Born in Porbandar in Gujarat on October 2, 1869, his actions inspired the great Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore to call him "Mahatma" ("great soul"). For him, the universe was regulated by a Supreme Intelligence or Principle, which he preferred to call satya (Truth) and, as a concession to convention, God.
Since all human beings partook of the divine essence, they were "ultimately one". They were not merely equal but "identical". As such, love was the only proper form of relation between them; it was "the law of our being", of "our species". Positively, love implied care and concern for others and total dedication to the cause of "wiping away every tear from every eye." Negatively it implied ahimsa or ‘non violence’. Gandhi’s entire social and political thought, including his theory of Satyagraha, was an attempt to work out the implications of the principle of love in all areas of life.Gandhi himself felt that he was most influenced by his mother whose life was an "endless chain of fasts and vows" as a devout adherent of Jainism, a religion in which ideas of nonviolence and vegetarianism are paramount.
Married by arrangement at 13, Gandhi went to London to study law when he was 18. He was admitted to the bar in 1891 and for a while practiced law in Bombay. From 1893 to 1914 he worked for an Indian firm in South Africa. During these years Gandhi's humiliating experiences of overt racial discrimination propelled him into agitation on behalf of the Indian community of South Africa. He assumed leadership of protest campaigns and gradually developed his techniques and tenets of nonviolent resistance known as Satyagraha (literally, "steadfastness in truth").
Returning to India in January 1915, Gandhi soon became involved in labor organizing. The Jallianwala Bagh massacre of Amritsar (1919), in which troops fired on and killed hundreds of nationalist demonstrators, turned him to direct political protest. Within a year he was the dominant figure in the Indian National Congress, which he launched on a policy of noncooperation with the British in 1920-22. Although total noncooperation was abandoned, Gandhi continued civil disobedience, organizing protest marches against unpopular British measures, such as the salt tax (1930), and boycotts of British goods.
Gandhi was repeatedly imprisoned by the British and resorted to hunger strikes as part of his civil disobedience. His final imprisonment came in 1942-44, after he had demanded total withdrawal of the British (the "Quit India" movement) during World War II.
Gandhi also fought to improve the status of the lowest classes of society, the ‘Untouchables’, whom he called harijans ("children of God"). He believed in manual labor and simple living; he spun thread and wove cloth for his own garments and insisted that his followers do so, too. He disagreed with those who wanted India to industrialize.
Gandhi was also tireless in trying to forge closer bonds between the Hindu majority and the numerous minorities of India, particularly the Muslims. His greatest failure, in fact, was his inability to dissuade Indian Muslims, led by Muhammad Ali Jinnah, from creating a separate state, Pakistan. When India gained independence in 1947, after negotiations in which he was a principal participant, Gandhi opposed the partition of the subcontinent with such intensity that he launched a mass movement against it. Ironically, he was assassinated in Delhi on January 30, 1948, by a Hindu fanatic who mistakenly thought Gandhi's anti-partition sentiment were both pro-Muslim and pro-Pakistan.
Gandhi’s intellectual influence on Indians has been considerable. Some were attracted by his emphasis on political and economic decentralisation, others by his insistence on individual freedom, moral integrity, unity of means and ends, and social service; still others by his satyagraha and political activism. For some students of India, Gandhi’s influence is responsible for its failure to throw up any genuinely radical political movement. For others, it cultivated a spirit of non-violence, encouraged the habits of collective self-help, and helped lay the foundations of a stable, morally committed and democratic government. Gandhi’s ideas have also had a profound influence outside India, where they inspired non-violent activism and movements in favour of small-scale, self-sufficient communities living closer to nature and with greater sensitivity to their environment. Prominent among these are Martin Luther King in the United States and, more recently Nelson Mandela in South Africa.

Friends

Bunny rabbit lived in the forest. He had many friends. He was proud of his friends. One day Bunny rabbit heard the loud barking of the wild dogs. He was very scared. He decided to ask for help. He quickly went to his friend deer. He said: “Dear friend, some wild dogs are chasing me. Can you chase them away with your sharp antlers?” Dear said: “That is right, I can. But now I am busy. Why don’t you ask bear for help?” Bunny rabbit ran to the bear. “My dear friend you are very strong, please help me. Some wild dogs are after me. Please chase them away,” he requested the bear. Bear replied: “I am sorry. I am hungry and tired. I need to find some food. Please ask the monkey for help”. Poor Bunny went to the monkey, elephant, goat and all his friends. Bunny felt sad that nobody was ready to help him. He understood that he has to think of a way out. He hid under a bush. He lay still the wild dogs went their way.

L.O.V.E - Hi-5 - Season 13 Song of the Week

Colour by number-3

Why Do Stars Twinkle?

By Upasana Sharma; Illustration by Kusum Chamoli

Watching stars on a moonless night can be an quite an interesting experience. As clusters of stars take familiar forms - of a bear, a man in armor wielding a sword, millions of other stars simply twinkle. As if they were playing hide and seek with one's eyes.

Why do stars twinkle?
We all know that each star is actually like the sun. And the huge collection of stars on the night sky is like a collection of many, many suns. But, the sun does not twinkle, one would point out.
Right.
The sun does not twinkle. It blazes down on us. If any of the stars were close to us, they would have also blazed down on us, or even burnt us down.
The stars look different because they are far away. And the light from the stars travels a very long distance to reach us. Actually very little of the light finally manages to reach us. Besides, it passes through the earth's atmosphere before reaching us. As the light enters the atmosphere, impurities like dust interfere its path. So, sometimes it is visible, and sometimes it is not. This effect is called twinkling.
There are certain stars in the night sky that don't twinkle. Well that's because they are not stars at all. They are planets. Planets do not twinkle because unlike stars they do not have their own light. They are like the moon. They reflect light from the Sun.
So what is a star? A star is born when a cloud of lots of different gases, mainly hydrogen, get together. The gas particles attract each other and slowly get compressed to form a huge mass of gases. And, as this mass grows, the temperature inside grows too. Until such time when it bursts like a bomb. This explosion creates a gas called helium, which is inflammable in nature. The helium becomes its fuel and it continues burning. Thus is a star born.
No wonder the heavier stars burn more furiously. They have bigger explosions, where more helium is released, providing more fuel. At the same time, these bigger and brighter stars have a shorter life. Why? Because they use up their fuel more quickly. The life of a smaller and lighter star can be as much as 100 times longer.

SUMMARY OF VERB TENSES

Present tenses

Simple present: She wants a drink.
Present continuous: They are walking home.

Past tenses

Simple past: Peter lived in China in 1965.
Past continuous: I was reading when she arrived.

Perfect tenses

Present Perfect: I have lived here since 1987.
Present perfect continuous: I have been living here for years.
Past perfect: We had been to see her several times before she visited us.
Past perfect continuous: He had been watching her for some time when she turned and smiled.
Future perfect: We will have arrived in the States by the time you get this letter.
Future perfect continuous: By the end of your course, you will have been studying for five years.

Future tenses

Simple future: They will go to Italy next week.
Future continuous: I will be travelling by train.

Conditional tenses

Type 1 conditionalIf he had the money he would go
Type 2 conditional He would be getting up now if he was in Australia.
Type 3 conditional She would have visited me if she had had time.
Perfect continuous conditional: I would have been playing tennis if I hadn't broken my arm.

Jom Bantu