How do you feel while walking near a source of water nowadays? We feel like holding our breath or covering our nose while walking near it. We also try to walk as quickly as possible. We cannot see any aquatic life in these sources of water. We can see only plastic bags, waste materials and dirty water full of industrial wastes and chemicals along with human waste. The surroundings of these source of water are also as dirty as the water. We can see animals bathing, people bathing or washing their clothes and utensils or throwing out the human wastes in the sources of water. This misuse and dirtying of these sources of water is known as water pollution.

In villages and city slums, people use the water of the sources of water to drink and for all their household purposes. Owing to the drinking of polluted water, people fall ill and get diseases like typhoid and cholera and sometimes due to lack of treatment they die. People use the water to irrigate their crops and the polluted water causes harm to the crops also. So, we should not pollute the water. We should have proper dumping place for waste materials, we should recycle things and we should have proper drainage systems. We should take preventive measures to avoid water pollution and conduct awareness programs in villages and city slums to avoid water pollution.

— Garima Ghiraiya, Class VIII, Alok Vidyashram School

My country in my dream:

As I plunge deep inside the panorama of my thoughts, I find myself surfing my dreamland. My dreamland gives a pellucid vision of my country Nepal with new features, new characters and new structure. Not enclosed within today’s parameters of sufferings and hardships, I find my country a real paradise, an utopia.

In my dream, I find my country in topmost positions in science and technology, culture and tradition and it is aloof from violence and terrorism.

Here, the blowing winds speak of peace, birds sing about harmony, rivers talk of sweet remembrance and the sky speaks about broad-hearted Nepalis people.

I find my countrymen patriotic, determined and honest. They fill their motherland’s eyes with the tears of glory, joy and pride. They do not find any difference between friend and foe, brother or stranger.

Rabindra Nath Tagore once said “Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high; where knowledge is free; where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls, into that heaven of freedom my father let my country awake.”

— Sailesh Acharya, Class X, New Summit School