Benefits of Smiling

People seldom notice old clothes if you wear a big smile - Lee Mildon,

Smiling is a sure thing to do daily, but do you really enjoy it? Life is so complicated, tension-ridden, fast and unorganized that we often forget to value some of the important things that make it wonderful. Take smiling as an example. It is obvious to feel good and smile about anything anytime, but when it comes to really enjoying the moment and wear a natural smile, how many of us really qualify the test? Given below are some of the most important reasons you should smile from heart.

Smiling helps you become attractive. Frowns, scowls and grimaces are all known for pushing people away from you while a natural smile sourced from true feeling of something good attracts more and more people towards you. It fights aging, relaxes muscles and keeps you healthy.

Keep Smiling For Stress Free Life

It has been seen in research that smiling people can easily deal with stress and any other concerned situation. It can help change mood. So, next time you are feeling blue, do not forget to smile. Chances are your worries will vanish on the sudden arrival of fresh and healthy feelings.

Smiling people encourages others around them to become happy and calm. It is also important to know that smile helps the likelihood of health troubles. This is perhaps because it improves the immune system by making you feel less stressed under pressure.

Smiling Releases Endorphins, which is a natural pain killer and by increasing the flow of blood it lifts the face and lets you feel younger and beautiful.

Smiling people seem to be more successful and they are likely to be more popular than those who wear a bad face. Last but not the least; smiling helps you feel good, come what may. It constantly sends message to your brain that life is good and it’s worthy to enjoy and there’s nothing to be worried about.

Blogging Can Help You Improve The World

Blogging is a great way to express your thought over topics of your interest. Through blogs you can interact with people having similar interests and exchange views with each other. A majority of internet users have their personal blogs.

However, a certain group of people are using blogs for bringing change in society. They are spreading words about several global concerns like environment, nature, protection of wildlife, organic farming practices, sustainability and self sufficient ways of living. Through their experience and knowledge they are encouraging other to contribute their part for the world and work for development of a better tomorrow. If you are into blogging and have interest in social and global causes, you can also utilize the power of blogging to improve the world. This article titled "Using Blogging To Improve The World" introduces you with the best ways to improve the world using your blog.

Reusability Tips – Buy Used Items Instead Of New

Adopting reusability in life can be the best gift to our environment. By reusing old and useless things in most innovative ways, we can reduce different types of pollution and help preserve Mother Nature and our surrounding too.

One of the great ways to adopt reusability is to buy used items instead of new. Through this approach we can not only contribute to the environment protection but also save our hard earned money. The benefits of buying used items are well elaborated in this post titled "Why To Buy Used Items Instead Of New" on Varanasi Estate website.

How To Control Anger

It is crucially important to control anger before it controls you. But life is so fast, things are so complicated and people are so slapdash that controlling anger turns out to be a hard hitting task. You lose out on an argument despite being in the right side, someone wrongly affected your career or just anything like that can leave your anger burst. While doing this is practically reasonable, it earns nothing but health hazards and social problems. There are better ways to control anger without feeling bad about any condition. Here we cover only a few:

When something seems going out of control, do not lose mind. Count 50 slowly or think the person who is putting you up in bad mind has no clothes wearing. Although a little weird, it may help you feel relax.

Have deep breathe, look at the sky and learn to control the situation. Looking at nature like birds, butterflies also help. If nothing is coming of help, just scream out on open place. Make sure to make it louder just from inside.

Make a note on what happened. How to react with the situation. After some days, when you will read the note, you will feel happy about the memories on why and how things grew like this

Pray to god to be with you and control you. A silent prayer from heart will never go blank and the almighty will lead to the correct path Close eyes and learn to mediate, remember the best childhood times, and most importantly think what the person you want to see yourself as? An overly irritating and easily frightened one or a smart, intelligent person who knows not to be angry easily.

All these little stuffs help you become happy without reacting badly on situations. We will cover other ideas in the forthcoming series. Keep coming.

Bees and Beekeeping for Nature and Ecosystem

Bees are one of the most important creatures of nature. They contribute heavily in forming a healthy ecosystem. They are change agents for gardening and farming system due to their pollinating activities. People who think bees are only responsible for giving us honey should learn more about the benefits of bees and beekeeping.

Some of the hands on benefits of beekeeping are discussed in these wonderful articles: 

http://www.varanasiestate.com/beekeeping-101-benefits-of-beekeeping/

What we can achieve by becoming a beekeeper:

http://www.varanasiestate.com/beekeeping-101-about-beekeepers/

However, they are disappearing due to excessive use of pesticides and electromagnetic radiation caused by mobile phone and wireless devices. Varanasi Estate is advocating protection of bees and encouraging people for beekeeping.

Humans are engaged in beekeeping for more than 15000 years. Even our ancestors were aware with the immense benefits offered by bees. But, we are nowadays forgetting bees like several other gifts of nature. We are migrating towards organic sugar and forgetting the original sweetness of natural honey.

So, it's the time when we all should start taking action for protecting bees and encouraging people towards beekeeping. We have to learn about the advantages of bees and beekeeping and also about the disadvantages of not having bees on this earth. May be it will help us being serious for this noble cause.

Let's take action and get another lesson from bees, to stay united for a common cause.

Sustainable Agriculture Video

Sustainable agriculture is all about farming with a focus on core ecology principles. Adopting sustainable agriculture practices helps farmers, end users, animals, and the whole environment. Here is a video illustrating sustainable agriculture in a very simple and effective manner:

For a detailed view about what is sustainable agriculture, have a look at http://www.varanasiestate.com/what-is-sustainable-agriculture

How to Harvest Rainwater and Greywater

You don’t know the value of water until the well is running dry…

Water is a wonderful renewable resource, the value of which we often tend to ignore because of our unlimited access to it. But the picture is certainly not fair everywhere. The adequate amount of water supply is still a dream in many areas of the world where drought and other weather perils are a common trend. When one wastes it because s/he doesn’t know how to store the excess amount, someone else is looking for a lifesaving drop. Much (if not all) water deficiency problems can be addressed by harvesting rainwater. In the ancient times, societies around the world used to have rain barrels to hold the water for future purpose, but the practice had been paused mainly because of our lack of awareness. Fortunately, the growing concerns helped us reconsider the harvesting concept.

Benefits of rainwater harvesting are many. It reduces ground water decline, conserves surface water wastes during the monsoon times, reduces the level of soil erosion, and develops a culture of resource conversation. Besides these, the water can be used for a range of purposes, including watering the plants in your garden. It saves you money and helps you realise a number of benefits. So literally when it rains, it means opportunities are falling from the sky. Learn how to harvest them below:

Where to harvest: The water can be harvested from different areas, depending on the amount of rain and pattern. The options could be as diverse as rooftops, paved/unpaved areas, stormwater drains, water bodies etc.

How to harvest rainwater for gardening: The whole concept of rain water harvesting revolves around three elements:

1. Collection Space 
2. Transportation system 
3. Storage facility

Analyse your collection space. If it is a roof which can rightly channelize the water, try to determine how much water you are required to collect for the gardening. On an average, 25/40 foot roof can shed more than hundreds of gallons of water hourly. The collection of water also depends on the number of barrels, which can be purchased from the garden supply stores. 


The transportation system is based on the roof drain pipe and gutters you install. The pipes should be strong and large enough to transport the water. Use fitters to keep debris, misquotes and other problems away.


The storage facility is the barrels you purchase. You can even build your own (watch our next articles). Consider placing them properly and that they can store sufficient amount of water. To counter the overflowing, you can fix a pipe with them and distribute it to the garden area, where the water would not stay idle.

Greywater is the usual household wastewater that is still unscathed from toilet waste. The sources of greywater could be shower, bathroom wash basins, washing machines etc. This water is different from the toilet wastewater, which is also called black water.

Benefits: It can be used for different purposes. The most common is to water the plants. It improves plant growth, encourages soil fertility, reduces fresh water usage etc.

How to reuse greywater: The simplest form of collecting and reusing greywater is to allocate a bucket in which the water can be preserved for a few hours and then supplied in the garden. Alternatively, a good number of alternative methods are available through which the greywater can be distributed directly to the garden area, but for that you have to follow certain guidelines. Greywater is not benefical for the plants if handled improperly. The water can also be used for other purposes including cleaning.

Greywater irrigation could be unhealthy if you have little space and unsuitable soils. We’ll cover a comprehensive article detailing everything about greywater recycling in an upcoming article. Don’t forget to read the post.

Varanasi Estate Invites Permaculture Farms to Share Their Project Bio

Attention permaculture experts, practitioners, and farm owners! 

Have you shared your experience or project details with Varanasi Estate? 

Spread your words in front of the whole world through our growing community. 

Hurry up!!

Only Four days left of permaculture month at http://www.varanasiestate.com

For more details visit: Our Invitation Post

Permaculture Resources

Permaculture defines resources as the energy or elements in a system. The non-living components can include sun, wind, rain and minerals,  and living components such as people, animals, plants and fungi.

One way of defining the resources we use is to take the “use and result” approach, and look at the consequences when we use these naturally occurring elements.

We view “use and result” in this way;

Those which increase by modest use: Palatable shrubs and grasses which, if managed carefully with techniques such as cell grazing, will continue to increase in yield. If these resources are over or under grazed, they can become either extinct or become tough and loose palatability. Information is also considered in this way: if used well, information will increase, if unused it becomes outdated.

Those unaffected by use: a good view, climate, a pile of stones used for mulch or a heat store and climate. Any well managed ecosystem will be unaffected by its use. Those which disappear or degrade if not used: An unharvested crop, grass which could be cut for hay, swarms of bees, ripe fruit, and water runoff.

Those reduced by use: overharvested fish and game stocks, clay deposits, mature forests, coal and oil.

Those which pollute or destroy if used: residual poisons, radio actives, large areas of bitumen or concrete and sewers running pollutants to the sea.

We can see in many parts of the world where natural systems have been permanently polluted or allowed to degrade beyond the ability to recover- hence famine and war prevail.

Permaculture design seeks to apply an understanding of how natural resources regenerate, so as to repair and restore degraded systems. This is not only for the health of that system in its own right, but for the flow on effects to human culture and activity.


Published at VaranasiEstate (on February 24, 2012) 

How to Start Planning Your Own Transition Town

Transitions Towns do not just spring up over night. They require careful planning and delicate handling if they are ever going to come to fruition. Though it is a lot of hard work, particularly for just one person. Therefore, you will need many hands to help you out, which I guess if the first step to setting up your own transition town.

Rallying together a group of people as like minded and as passionate as yourself is the first step you will need to creating your own transition town. This can be done in a number of ways. You could be one of the lucky ones whose friends just so happen to share your exact point of view as you one everything and will therefore go ahead with anything that you say. But this is a very rare occurrence, so I’m going to assume you are just one person with an idea. If you want to rally people, interact with them. Pound the pavement with a petition, organise events to draw like minded people into your group. This will be an effective, and also fun, way to get people to jump on board with your plan. Another way you could do this is to raise awareness of what a transition town is and why it is that we need them. To do this, create practical and visual examples of what it is that you wish to accomplish, so that those who see it and are interested will become intrigued. For example, displays of solar panels, aquaponic tanks and even worm farms will have people questioning, and those who share your view will become intrigued and voila! You’ve started an entourage.

It is important to make sure that your Transition Town does not simply stop at a talking point. It can’t be one of those topics that comes up every get together with friends around the open fire that never actually goes anywhere. You and the people who are helping you need to remember to remain proactive, proficient and, most importantly, passionate.

It is also important to remember that Rome wasn’t built in a day; your dream will not come true overnight. You must start small and set the foundations first so that you can build up from there. Setting out to accomplish the impossible will only ensure that the town will fall flat on its face and you’d have to start over again. So set the structural integrity first, make sure that enough people are involved and that you have adequate support from the appropriate organisations.

Well, that’s the simplest way to ensure a successful planning of your transition town. It is essential to make sure that you have enough people who are as enthused as you, that your passion is equal to the task and not just wasted words and that you take each step as it comes, going slow and steady so that no detail is rushed.

Published at VaranasiEstate (on February 24, 2012)

How To Achieve Self-Sufficiency

For a sustainable living, self-sufficiency is important. But to achieve self-sufficiency, the first thing we need to do is to bring a change in the overall way we work, think and live. No specialized course on self-sufficiency can teach us how to change ourselves. It is 'we' who need to initiate things for our own cause; to secure our today and improve our tomorrow without being dependent on any external source.

Here’s a quick guide on how to get one step closer to a sustainable living.

First, let’s understand what does it mean to become self-sufficient. It is a state of being independent where you no longer need any aid, support, and assistance from anyone else other than yourself to survive and sustain. So, you self-govern yourself because you have all the resources required to lead a happy life. When you achieve the state, you become mentally stress-free (to a large extent), and economically independent.

Now, let’s get back to the point, "How to achieve self-sufficiency?" As mentioned earlier, it all starts from within. You need to explore the possibilities of what can you do depending on your abilities and resources available. To start a sustainable living, you need not to step out of your home in search of help. You are the power person and your home is your happy lab.

Start from doing little things, as simple as plant your own vegetables in your own garden and save the useful seeds for future planting, begin rain water harvesting by preserving it naturally, begin worm farming to produce great fertilizers, raise dairy cows to get your daily dairy products, cut tree branches to build your home furniture, use solar panels to meet your home energy requirements, do fishing if you love to, value the effectiveness of renewable resources instead of relying on non-renewable resources.

These are just a few of the many ways self-sufficiency can be achieved. It will take time in understanding, analysing, and practicing these activities, but it will earn you a complete sense of certainty with every passing day.

Practicing the above-mentioned things relieves you from being dependent on any external source. Like when you plant trees, raise cows or begin rain water harvesting, you are no longer dependent on shop or municipality. While you become self-sufficient, you do your bit in improving the ecology.  For example, without throwing away the dinner leftovers, when you use them into the worm compost for worm farming, worms eat these; make great fertilizers as well as help in maintaining ecological balance. Thereby, by becoming self-sufficient, you are improving your abilities to raise and grow your own stuffs as well as helping in maintaining an ideal environment where we can breathe trouble-free.

However, is it practical enough to say you can grow all your foods on your own? Do you have enough time and resource to live your daily life without taking anyone’s help? Perhaps, this is where the difference between self reliance and self-sufficiency comes. That’s the topic of our next article. Don’t miss reading.

This is the first article in our series of complete guide to self-sufficiency. I would glad to hear from you on how you found the post.

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The author Robijyoti Bhattacharjee is an avid blogger, permaculture practitioner, new media enthusiast and a member of Varanasi Estate, who believes there’s a life beyond economic shakeout, social dogmas and mental stress. Here to share his views, learning achievements and observation on how to lead a happy, healthy and deliberate life.

Finding Happiness

The problem with happiness is that it is ‘uncertain’, ‘temporary’, ‘untimely’, ‘irregular’ and ‘unpredictable’. You don’t have it easily and even if you have it, there’s no guarantee how long it will last. Ignoring this basic truth is the cause of most of our problems. We tend to expect too much when we should not and once we are done with nothing, we think this the end of the road. What can happiness do then? 

Happiness is a state of mind, the definition of which differs from one person to the other. However, one thing most of we will agree is that happiness is hard to earn today. Reasons are simple. Life is fast-paced and time is limited. To put it differently, life is money and opportunities are limited. To meet the requirements, we work hard and then die one day, unsung and unnoticed after finding very little scope to get happy in the lifetime.  While being busy and earning money are unavoidable, we can certainly do a few things to be happy. Here are the five ways I find practical. 

•  The first thing is try to find happiness in little things, as simple as watching a cartoon or as easy as planting a tree. 

•  Focus today, or even ‘now’. Nobody knows about certain ‘tomorrow’ and thinking about it worriedly is just wasting our ‘today’.

• Laugh out loud as beautiful as you can. It is a healthy habit that keeps you mentally and physically fit

• Sleep sufficiently, not just properly. A fresh mind and fit body is less likely to be sad than a dull and stressed one.

• Start loving flowers, baby and books (the positive ones). They liven up moods, helping one think positively and brining smile to the senses. 

How do you define happiness and what are your ways of finding happiness? 

Smile it naturally!

People seldom notice old clothes if you wear a big smile - Lee Mildon

The world is populated with so many people who search big things to wear a natural smile, myself included. :( But for that we are not to blame. Life is so fast, tensed and competitive today that doing this natural exercise never gets a priority. There’s a deadline to meet at work, someone in the family is stressed out, debt collection companies are knocking the door and the utility bills are mounting up while the source of income is hitting all time low. So, what is the point in smiling? While this is a good point in defense, we can’t actually blame everything on situations. There’re thousands of reasons available for us to smile, if we take the point seriously. 

Here come a few reasons I find useful: 

• Watch a comedy flick you loved once.
• Revisit good old days in your photo album
• Club the group of happy people rather than those who are hard to know
• Call a friend whose humour and sense of wit never failed to earn you happiness
•  Listen to your favourite songs, not necessarily the romantic or sad ones
•  Play with kids and see them play
• View your diary to go back to the days when you made mistakes and achieved something

There’re many more. The point is search reasons from shortest things that can keep you happy. When it comes to smiling, it is said that women smile more than men do. But this is a debatable topic which I leave to you to answer. 

Did you know smile is of many types, some of which necessarily include ‘Most Beautiful smile’, ‘I’m in Love smile’, ‘Proud smile’, ‘I’m the Boss smile’ and etc? Will talk about such wonderful smiles types in the next post. :)

Varanasi Estate – Spreading Words for A Better Tomorrow

Varanasi Estate is spreading its words for development of a better tomorrow at global level. In addition to their website, Varanasi Estate is making its presence on several online platforms and social networks dedicated to specific causes. They are joining hands with several organizations and people having similar goals. Many of their partners are a regular contributor at VaranasiEstate.com. They are sharing their work, activities and experience through Varanasi Estate's website.

Varanasi Estate was founded with a mission for developing a better tomorrow for mankind. The true goal of Varanasi Estate is to help improve the World, at a local and global level. Some of the focused areas are, from alleviating poverty to health to permaculture, to self-sufficiency and opposition of activities that see the destruction of our natural world.

Varanasi Estate encourages everyone to share their work and experience in areas of green living, organic agriculture, self-sufficiency, permaculture, healthy living, global warming, or any other areas dedicated for the development of a better tomorrow. Visit http://www.varanasiestate.com/submissions if you want to spread your words through Varanasi Estate.

Effective Anger Management

Control Anger - Enjoy Life

Anger is among one of our worst enemies. Almost everybody gets angry at some point (of often) in life. The result of anger is never fruitful. We end up getting hurt or hurting others from our anger and we come to realize the harms of anger later and regret it either openly or secretly. When in anger, we don't think about right or wrong, we lose the ability to take decisions and end up in mess. To get rid of unusual anger, we look for the right anger management tips. Any motivation or preaching come to rescue only when we are aware with the end results or prepared well in advance to control our anger. The article Anger Management Tips on Varanasi Estate Website can be really helpful for people who want to control their anger.

Kindness – A Personality Trait Redefining Your Identity

People often aim to develop an identity for themselves which is adorable and easy to be noticed by others. It's something that everybody wants, but very few are able to develop their personality in aforementioned way. Well, there is no shortcut for self-development, but there are a few things which help instantly in developing a unique identity.

Kindness is among one of those personality traits which can truly redefine the identity of a person. A majority of people are slave of emotions and it is very easy for them to influence with real kindness. However, it is something which you can develop easily. Daniel Bowd (a notable blogger) wonderfully describes "How To Be Kind", in his blog. If you want to learn the quickest and the easiest way to be kind and help others with your kindness, it’s a must read: http://www.varanasiestate.com/how-to-be-kind