Is it life or football?

This Is How Football Prepares You For The Struggles Of Life

Manasvi Kadian, AIS Gur 46, XI

The game of football and the game of life may seem poles apart at the first glance, but somewhere amidst all the rules, the goals, the happiness and letdowns, you realize that the two are more or less the same, one imitating the other as the game played on the field turns out to be the game we play every single day.

Faces in disguise
In life, we always categorise everything as good or bad, and everyone as either a demon or an angel. The same holds true for when you are on the field. You will always find a team of people who are willing to stand by you through thick and thin, but there will also be people who will stand in the way of you achieving your goals and happiness. The entire ordeal is easier in the game; but in real life, it’s not the easiest task to spot bad people. They  don’t wear black capes. Sometimes they could be hiding in plain sight and we would never know.
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Bouncing back
A lot of challenges come our way when we’re in the game, the most difficult one being scoring a goal. It is no walk in the park. You have to handle a lot of pushes and pulls to get a hold of the ball, and even when you have it in your possession, you have to stay alert as the other team is always on its toes to snatch it from you. Each time you fail, it adds to their success. Numerous rejections and betrayals might be thrown at you, but don’t lose hope. Because after all the falls and the hits, what will matter is the goal that you scored with all your strength and the support of your team.

Taste of karma
People are never fair. They will try everything in their power to push you down and stay ahead of you, to fulfill their own selfish motives. They will resort to unfair means and find ways to hurt you. And it is only normal if all feels lost when something like this happens. But remember, the universe works in mysterious ways, and there’s always the referee’s yellow card. In life, that yellow card may not be literal, but it will get to  all the people who consciously do wrong. Always have that faith.

No happy endings
You may have put your best efforts into the game, but as the game nears its end and you are only a step away from the winning goal, there is a chance that you might have to pass the ball to someone closer to the goalpost. The credit might not be yours, but it’s okay to not have the spotlight sometimes. Because being in a team means holding each other’s hand and working together. Sometimes, it is important for you to step down for someone else to have their moment, because not every story is yours. In your story, you might be the hero/heroine; but in someone else’s, you might be the one lifting them up to glory. 

At the end of the day, it becomes important to realise that it’s not about the ball of miseries or the goal that leads you to happiness; it’s about how the game of life and the game of football is played and the amount of effort you put into both.

What the Internet taught us

Vidhi Batra, AIS Noida, XII H

I like how the Internet taught us
To find the perfect caption
Every time our dry Instagram feeds
Came tapping on our door to beckon

Be it through a Facebook status
Or a trending retweet on Twitter
We have learnt to express ourselves
Behind the screens, be it sweet or bitter

I like how the Internet taught us
How to express love in 6500 languages
Cramming numbers in the contact list
While our human memory damages

The world now only revolves
Around our laptops and tablets
In the era of Netflix and YouTube
A book seems bland to our palates

I like how the Internet taught us
To hide our stutter behind voice notes
Verses of sorrowful poems
Are only what a teenager now quotes

While memes go viral within seconds
And get outdated in the next
Now the only conversations we hold
Are initiated through a text

I like how the Internet taught us
To check notifications every minute
We post what we think will get likes
Until we become just the right fit

Now we gorge only on popularity
Huddling for comments in every way
Hey, will you remind me again
A hundred followers, did you say?

Pledge for a cleaner India

Inspired by the Youth Power team Dharashakti, Class II students of AIS Vasundhara 6 took the pledge provided by the team on their page in the Youth Power special edition dated April 29, 2019. The students remembered the cause because of various activities conducted by the YP team with them. In order to take one step closer to a cleaner India, the students filled the ‘Pledge’ column provided on the page. The junior coordinator teacher of the school, Ritu Nagar, further sensitised the young ones on the need for cleanliness and greenery. The young students, thereafter pledged to maintain the same around them and achieve the objective of a clean country and a clean world. They also promised to cut and paste the pledge on their bedroom wall to remember their role as a ‘green warrior’.

Eleven years- a sojourn

Come March, every year when I start sifting through the Youth Power reports of the YP teams to peruse what the children have done, I am left amazed. The causes they have taken up, the number of activities they have done to spread awareness, the innovation in solutions they act upon, is inspiring. For me, as the programme nears its culmination, it is like an annual festival that I enjoy every bit.
For the past eleven years what has really overwhelmed me is the way Youth Power has evolved to a platform for innovation and transformation. The way these young minds think has even made people change their lifestyles. I, being a fresh example of this. While going through the report of YP team of AIS MV that created awareness on ‘Bone health’, I was alarmed to realise the harmful effects of aluminum foil. The team suggested use of ‘Uniwrap’ as the solution. And today, courtesy this YP team, I am a proud user of ‘Uniwrap’,  for the better. Like me, there are many whose lives have been impacted by YP. From being a youth initiative to lifestyle innovator, this programme has come a long way in past eleven years.
With the YP Grand Finale coming to a close, singling out a winner is the most challenging part. Truth be told, the real winner is every YP team. For what matters most is the extra mile they all walk to make world a better place.

A dream for change

Eleven years ago, I had a dream, a dream of making Amity a chalice of holistic development with the vision of social change, social empowerment and upliftment of the society in its core; I had a dream of making the young minds sensitive and responsible global citizens of tomorrow. A dream where my Amitians did not just work to develop themselves but to also develop the society and the world around them. And with this dream, Youth Power was born.
Today, as I saw the culmination of the eleventh  YP Grand Finale, I can proudly say that my dream has been realised. The efforts we all had put in as a team has made YP a true harbinger of social change. As I flipped the pages of the voluminous reports, which are the fruits of the projects that every YP team undertook, it made me feel proud to read the creative thought process of children and the level of maturity with which they handled the situations that they they came across. Be it bringing light to a school in a remote village or installing sanitary pad dispensers in government schools or adopting a barren land and converting it into lush green, Youth Power teams have gone places and brought changes at grass root level. It made me feel confident that this programme has once again prepared another batch of students ready to take upon bigger challenges in life, to bring about a constructive change in the society.
I also know that this dream would not have become a reality without the support of my GT team, all teachers, staff, parents and even the spouses of YP mentor teachers who stood by them throughout the process. It’s been a long journey, but a satisfying one with many milestones still to build and achieve.