To engage school kids during this lockdown, Republica is organizing a Daily Contest where we have been publishing the best submission everyday in Republica. Meanwhile, here are other three top articles along with the winning article sent to us for Topic 1.
Topic 1: Life lessons you are learning during lockdown
WINNER
Name: Darshana Neupane
Grade: V
School: Kavya School, Buddhanagar, Kathmandu
Cooking, Gardening and Nepali typing
When the government asked all the schools to wrap up their final examinations by Chaitra 05, 2076, I had so many plans to do during my month long vacation. From visiting different recreational places like museums and amusement parks as well as travelling to my father’s ancient town in Terai, I had the whole month planned well in advance. Then entered this thing called Covid-19, followed by the lockdown announced by our government, shattering all my plans.
As of today, a whole first week of lockdown is just about to pass, but for me it feels like as if I have been staying indoors for a month or so. Hats off to all the introverts out there as I have no clue how they do it because as an outgoing person, I am having a very hard time staying in. Besides sleeping for 10 hours, watching T.V. for at least 5 hours, reading all the books out of my bookshelves and after going through all the possible interesting lessons in the e-learning application downloaded by my parents, I still seem to have so much time left in the day. Phew! Do we still have 24 hours in a day or has our government extended it to 30 hours? Just saying!
Well, out of all the hygienic things that this virus is trying to teach our world, for me it has been a bit of a different learning experience. To be honest, I have never been this close to my parents before. With all the rush of completing school’s daily assignments followed by regular project works, I hardly had the chance to spend quality time with my full time working parents until now. Lately, I have been helping my mother in the kitchen and by doing so I have learned to cook few food items, not to mention by burning the food in the process quite a few times. My father has also taught me Nepali typing which I think will be useful for me once I grow up. Everything from honing my computer skills to cooking skills to gardening skills, I believe I have done it all in the past one week.
Social distancing, quarantine, isolation, etc. are the words that are now a part of my vocabulary. I have always been a clean freak as I always take a very good care of daily hygiene, specially washing hands. Counting from 1-20 while rubbing my hands with soap as well as using hand sanitizer more frequently than anyone else in my house is the new norm. Sometimes, I tend to think that we as humans, our lives are so fragile that even a microscopic organism has the capacity to outnumber our days. Our government is doing its best to contain the deadly disease by keeping us all inside our houses and despite of the fact that the very purpose of the lockdown is to keep the citizens of our nation safe indoors, some people of this country seem to be taking the same lightly by going out even during non-emergencies. So, I wonder if the word “Covidiot” that describes these types of people, that I read the other day on social media is for real.
On the whole, to wrap things up, the most important lesson that I have learned in the past week is that in this trying times, we must obey our government and stay at home with our families and let the mother nature re-boot herself because it may not actually be our government that is telling us to stay isolated, it may be the mother nature trying to tell us the same but in a hard way. Let us all keep patience for this too shall pass!
---
TOP 3 ARTICLES
Republica Daily Contest Topic 4- Write about a book you read...
Name: Zainab Moyiz
Grade:8
School: Premier International School
Self discipline, socializing and more
Who would have thought that the seemingly small coronavirus would be the cause of us losing our freedom? Up until today coronavirus has affected almost all the countries of the world, while continuing to take people’s lives and health it is also letting the people of the world take a break from the hustle and bustle of their daily lives and sit at home and enjoy the things that they” didn’t have time for” (sound familiar?) I personally am immensely enjoying the time at home and learning a lot of things that I could never do due to lack of time or just plain laziness. In these days i have been engrossing myself with learning different life lessons like:
• Learning the importance of family time:
These days when we are cooped up in our houses with no friends to go to, no book clubs, no parties, the only source of entertainment (apart from internet) is your family. This week I have learnt more about my family than I ever thought I knew I think it made our bond stronger and I realized that family is with you through thick and thin.
• I learnt the importance of “me time”:
Being quarantined has given me more ‘me time’ and has changed the relationship I have with my own self. It has taught me how to be comfortable in my own skin and how to love yourself more. As my social interactions are limited, I am the only person who I have to keep busy and maintain my sanity.
• Value of workplace/school:
At first the idea of school from home sounded very relaxing but it turns out that online school is even HARDER than normal school. It made me realize how going to school keeps me preoccupied for most of my day.
• The importance of socializing:
Being quarantined at home cuts the chances of meeting up with friends, having a vacation ( basically doing anything that requires you from going outside). This limits my daily activities to such an extent that I feel lazy and bored all the time.
• Self-discipline:
During the weekend you could do whatever you wanted because it was only two days of freedom from seven working days, but being home quarantined means that you have all this time in your hands and have no clue what to do with it. Staying home the whole day makes you want to eat and sleep more than usual which will reduce your immunity power greatly. I learnt that we need to set a mental routine for our self and allot times for activities, eating, naps etc. to make staying at home as enjoyable as possible.
• Appreciate your house-help
With household help given an off till further notice, it becomes the responsibility of the whole family to divide the work amongst themselves. After a while I realized at this point of time that my house has transformed into those reality tv show house in itself. With duties and responsibilities assigned, I think that by the time the lockdown is over I will be a pro at everything starting from cleaning, washing dishes, dusting to cooking and washing clothes.
Although this lockdown is driving us all out of our mind, it's teaching us all one thing which is gratitude. Not just towards the government but schools, doctors, nurses, house helps etc. and teach us to not take our freedom for granted.
So that’s it StayHome, StaySafe
---
Name: Aarush Bhutra
Class: 7
School: The British School
Every grain counts
During the lockdown I have learnt many life lessons. One of the crucial one being sharing. Being in lockdown means having to use limited resources. These are like water, food and hygiene items. Most of us would eat half your meal and say “I am not hungry just throw this away”. All of us have been like this. However now with limited resources we have realised the importance of everything. Every grain counts.
Another important life lesson I learnt was to help each other to make it quicker. Most of us have didis and dais to do our housework chores. However now they all are gone to their families and we are on our own. Most of us would leave someone to do all the work, however this is not right. We all should help by managing our own rooms and objects. If we do not do this the person doing the work will take a lot of strain which would result in them feeling angry, tired and sometimes sad due to the fact no one is helping them in their family.
The last lesson I have learnt from the lockdown is our own wellbeing. Due to this lockdown we have been quarantined at our house. This means that we cannot meet our friends or go outside to play or anything. Missing out on these activities can lead to depression, anxiety and bad immunity. So to keep ourselves safe we should dance, sing, draw, talk to your friends through phones and many more things which keep you happy.
These were my life lessons from this lockdown. I am sure everyone has more about their own life so we should write them down and stick it to your wall, discuss them with your friends or anything. Just remember, stay happy and stay safe.
---
Name: Kriesha Pradhan
School: Premier International school
Grade: 10
Little Things
This lockdown that has been imposed upon us really proves that even when we’re limited to our homes, we’re not quite limited to learning. In a matter of just a week I’ve learnt how to cherish family time, practiced pickle making with my mom and reflected on many things. Above all, I’m finally beginning to learn to appreciate little things more and more. Little things matter so much, yet we often fail to acknowledge that. What is time but a string of fleeting moments; and every second has a beautiful moment ingrained unto it only if we choose to see it. Little things matter so much; like how when solving a math equation a single sign error gives you a completely different answer. Life is but a blur of achievements and regrets, a monotonous script that is made interesting by the little minute details. Over the course of the years, we become habituated to looking past those details and directly at the bigger picture.
When boundaries are set within the peripheries of your own home, there is very little to look forward too. And so, I’ve been looking forward to the little things. I may not have anywhere to go in the morning but I still love waking up to the sound of the birds and feel the freshness of dawn. At around three, the sun has finally settled on the western horizon, it is still blazing but the dimness of dusk is already approaching it. The wind turns to a gentle breeze and the leaves rustle slowly as the birds make way to their home. The sky changes colour from cornflower blue to an ombre purple or orange or pink. The stars ascend us and a heavy quietness falls upon the city. For years, this was just the normal passing of a day which now feels so special in the way the gust of wind is stronger at different hours and the colour of the sky is different everyday. It gives a sense of solitude and calm in a world composed of so much chaos.
Great poets from Laxmi Prasad Devkota to William Wordsworth wrote about these very little things- whether it was the dawning of spring or a field of daffodils and they’ve gained fame for those pieces of poetry. There are little things throughout the day that allow us to smile and to wander but we wave them off and instead plummet into our daily life without noticing all that we could have, living in the future rather than the present. The present seems daunting to us while the future- slightly utopian. When in real life, if we could start cherishing even the little things, we could make every moment perfect and find bliss in the simplest of things.
Our days encompass so much more than the measure of it’s productivity. At the end, we’ll remember- how our dogs leapt to greet us, the smiles imprinted on the faces of people we love, the constant bickering with our siblings ;it's the minute details that we’ll remember. For it’s the little things we collect as memories. If the duration of our life were to be measured in an hourglass, those grains of sand would be made up of those moments and once our time is nearly up, those little moments are all we will be holding onto. This is a lesson I’ve learnt and with every passing day under this lockdown, I’m continuing to learn it, continuing to appreciate the little things and make the most out of those moments by finally living in them.
