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A few days ago I got a call from my old college mate whom I haven't seen for a very long time. The topic, which was about all the good old times that we had and about his recent graduation, changed to a touching story when he started talking about his father.
His father's declining health made him to stay at the hospital. Because of his illness, his father suffered from imsomnia and often talking to himself. My friend, who had not been able to sleep for a few days as he had to keep watch of his father's condition, became irritated and told his father to keep silence and try to get some sleep. His father said that he really wanted to sleep well because he was very tired and told my friend to leave him alone in the hospital if he did not want to keep him company.
After his father finished talking he fell unconscious and had to be rushed to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU). My friend was very sorry for he had spoken ill words towards his father.
My friend, whom I knew as a tough person, cried like a baby on the other end of the telephone. He said that from that moment on he prayed every day asking God to let his father woke up from his coma. He promised himself that whatever words came out from his father's mouth after he regained his conscious would be gladly taken. His only hope was for God to give him a chance to rectify his past mistake, a mistake that he might not forget for the rest of his life...
Often we complain when we have to accompany or to watch over our parents for years, months, days, hours or even minutes. But do we realize that our parents keep us companied and watch over us for as long as we (or they) live? Since the day we were born to our adulthood, and even when death comes to greet us, they are always at our side. When it's time for them to return to God, their memory lingers for the rest of our life.
Imagine how broken-hearted our parents will be to a seemingly inocent word of "no" which comes out from our mouth when they try to embrace us in their tender loving care, but which we often consider as something that bind us and hold us from flying the blue sky. What other words will replace the word "crying" when there are no more tears to shed from their eyes as the tears are wasted to shower our days so that our life would grow and produce fruits and flowers to liven up the dark days of the rotating wheel of life.
We can make promises to ourselves that from now on there will be no more complaints come out from our mouths when we have to watch and accompany our parents. No more complaints come out from our mouths when we feel that our parents have treated us like little children. Have faith, out there there are so many unlucky ones who have neither fathers nor mothers, who long to have the things that we most complain about, but never have them.
Actually, it takes only a second to contemplate and light the lamp that will bring us to where peace is dwelling. Now it's all up to us whether we want to spare our short time for a great and meaningful life ahead of our lives.
World Blood Donor Day

Although all reports indicate that the city is running at possibly the lowest levels of stocks for certain blood components, it is not that Sankalp is just complaining about it. Over the 2 month period from June 2010 to July 2010, Sankalp organised multiple blood donation drives with more than 1100 units of blood being collected. A million thanks to all the organisers and donors for standing up to the challenge. Here is a brief note on all the various camps held with different organisations.
With most of the Sankalp volunteers on vacation due to semester end holidays, only a handful of volunteers are involved in various Sankalp activities. Here is a snapshot of what happened in Sankalp over the last few days
The dengue infections have reached their peak in Bangalore. We have scores of patients around the city receiving treatment for the same. A direct impact of this is the increase in workload of the Sankalp Emergency Team.
Normally after a good blood doonation drive we try to sit back for a while believing that the units collected in the drive will be available to the patients. However, this season it is different. On Saturday 17th July, we had more than an hour long session when the phone hardly was put away. We had more than 6 blood requests - all for platelets - and all of them for multiple units of platelets. The city is seeing the worst crunch for platelets. The poor staff at the call centre is reporting nil stocks for platelets for most part of the day and simply forwarding the requests to be handled as emergency. And for the emergency team, the challange of ensuring timely supply of platelets is becoming a bigger challange with each passing day.
The World Blood Donor Day is celebrated on a world-wide scale on 14th June. This time Sankalp has taken the initiative to organize a Blood Donor Week .
The week highlights are inauguration of World Blood Donor Week, Donor Felicitation program organized in M. S. Ramaiah Memorial Hospital and Blood Grouping and Haemoglobin testing in all the Institutes in Ramaiah Campus.

Since it's inception, Sankalp has called itself a blood donation organisation. Those are big words for a bunch of engineers, because blood is a vast area in the medical field. understanding blood becomes highly critical for all volunteers and work in a more meaningful manner. there have been tremendous advancements in science and this has led to various new things.
One fine evening, Few of the volunteers of Sankalp emergency wing received a call. A patient in Gulbarga urgently needed AB- blood. Gulbarga is one of the remotest places in Karnataka with very little blood awareness, and finding a donor there was a tough challenge.
The Year 2009-10 was an eventful year for Sankalp India Foundation. The group of 30 individuals who call themselves Sankalp volunteers were kept very busy with the back to back activities that took place in the last year. We are happy to bring to you the yearbook of 2009-10.
The month of May was a busy one for the Sankalp volunteers. Most efforts went into getting things moving for the anniversary programme. Nevertheless, some things are always important and they have to move on. The clock ticks on, and so do the volunteers of Sankalp in their respective teams. Here is an update of what happened in the month that went by
Sankalp India Foundation is happy to announce it's much awaited "Disaster Relief Partner Program". First of it's kind in the country, this Program lays the roadmap for better disaster response planning.
On the 22nd of May this year, Sankalp India Foundation celebrated being 7 years old. To mark this milestone, a small event was organized at MSRIT. Well wishers, parents of volunteers, members from the blood banking community, friends, and people from organizations with whom we work were all part of the event.
CTC Disha
April was a busy month for the Disha team. The team started work to ensure that the online update mechanism that has been setup to ensure better inputs for other Sankalp team comes on track. The initial few sheets have been added and more is being done to provide regular accurate inputs.

The Brand New Sankalp T-Shirts are on their way. It costs Rs 250, gray in color and is available in Small (S), Medium (M), Large (L), Xtra Large (XL) sizes.
One of the unique characteristics of Sankalp is the fact that all volunteers are not from the medical community. Stumped? Almost all of the 30 volunteers who work on various aspects in the filed of blood are engineers!.
The emergency wing of Sankalp are always on their toes attending to emergency blood requests. Requests for rare blood groups, from places not heard of and more. All these have become a part of their daily routine. Helpling people find the right unit of blood at the right time has been the overall objective, and the team does it efficiently well.
One more blood request was catered! One more life was saved! The volunteers of Sankalp emergency wing had one more story to tell!
It was only yesterday, that a lady from Davanagere needed blood of the Bombay negative group. Nature acts in strange ways! Remove the Rh and H antigens from O positive blood- the most common group, and you'll have Bombay negative group blood- the rarest blood group possible! The possibility of finding this group donor is one out of twenty five thousand, biologically! Practically, most don't know their blood groups- so finding a donor was no less than locating a pin in a football ground! The volunteers took it up as a fresh new challenge- something they had never faced before!
The early history of British expansion in India was characterised by the co-existence of two approaches towards the existing princely states. The first was a policy of annexation, where the British sought to forcibly absorb the Indian princely states into the provinces which constituted their Empire in India. The second was a policy of indirect rule, where the British assumed suzerainty and paramountcy over princely states, but conceded some degree of sovereignty to them. ..
India, a nation that has undergone complete transformation after it got independence from the British Rule. But somehow the influence from the West never ceased to affect our culture and the growth of the Nation. The three major transforms taken from the entire lot is the way Mobiles, Cars and Malls have brought to the India nationality.
The story before: The positive role that dairying could play in providing income and employment opportunity was clear to policy-makers long time back and a set of measures were put in place to develop and protect the dairy industry. Immediately after India gained independence, the Milk Control Board was set up which controlled the supply and distribution chains.
India and space laws: A millennium perspective
THE LAUNCH of Sputnik 1 by the former Soviet Union in 1957, followed by a similar feat by the U. S., within a few months, heralded the birth of the space age. The development and application of space technology has since made a tremendous global impact in diversified fields including social, economic, cultural and scientific.
India is a country with a diversity of languages. Out of more than one thousand mother tongues, only eighteen languages are included in the eighth schedule of the Indian Constitution. Development of a particular state or region, to a very great extent, depends on the development of its regional language. This was an important reason given at the time of the formation of linguistic states, though many criticized such a linguistic “division” or “re-organization”.
 Past two decades have seen an unprecedented rise in the number of farmer suicides in our country. Across the nation, lacks of farmers have taken their lives in these years. Though this process is on for almost 2 decades, but it is only now that the nation is getting to know the seriousness and the extent of it. We are going through the worst ever farm crisis in the history of our nation.
3rd December 1984 Shortly after midnight poison gas leaked from a factory in Bhopal, India, owned by the Union Carbide Corporation. There was no warning, none of the plant's safety systems were working. In the city people were sleeping. They woke in darkness to the sound of screams with the gases burning their eyes, noses and mouths. They began retching and coughing up froth streaked with blood. Whole neighbourhoods fled in panic, some were trampled, others convulsed and fell dead. People lost control of their bowels and bladders as they ran. Within hours thousands of dead bodies lay in the streets.

It is hard to imagine today that there existed a time in independent India when the then Prime Minister of the country, Sw. Lal Bahadur Shastriji had to appeal to the nation to skip one meal a day. Our nation saw one of the darkest era when we faced acute shortage of food in the 60s. Ships from America brought in bad quality grain as charity to feel us and the Nation battled with the problems of rising prices and hunger.
 The Emergency in India denotes the 21-month period between June 25, 1975 and March 21, 1977 when President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed, upon advice by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, declared a State of Emergency in India under Article 352 of the Constitution of India, effectively bestowing on her the power to rule by decree, suspending elections and civil liberties. It is one of the most controversial periods in the history of independent India. During the Emergency, many opposition leaders were jailed, freedom of press was suspended and powers of the judiciary were curtailed
The Ancient Legend
In India there is an ancient legend about a girl, Amrita Devi, who died trying to protect the trees that surrounded her village. The story recounts a time when the local Maharajah's tree cutters arrived to cut the villager's trees for wood for his new fortress. Amrita, with others, jumped in front of the trees and hugged them. In some versions of the tale their dramatic efforts prevented the forest's destruction; in others Amrita dies in her valiant attempt.
The All India Muslim League (AIML) was formed in Dhaka in 1906 by Muslims who were suspicious of the Hindu-majority Indian National Congress. They complained that Muslim members did not have the same rights as Hindu members. A number of different scenarios were proposed at various times. Among the first to make the demand for a separate state was the writer/philosopher Allama Iqbal, who, in his presidential address to the 1930 convention of the Muslim League said that a separate nation for Muslims was essential in an otherwise Hindu-dominated subcontinent.
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