Monday, September 30, 2013

Sick Diet Quick Diet

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Last night I was at our street-corner medical shop. And there was this customer asking for a thermometer. 

Santosh, our efficient shopkeeper, immediately fetched 4 brands of the thing out of his rack. Ranging from the good old eminently breakable glass instrument to the latest digital one with a watch battery inside it. And the customer was confused and at a loss...the perils of choice. I am sure he would have liked to be shown only one feverish specimen. And he haggled...the price ranged between Rs 100 and Rs 200. And he finally left the shop empty-handed to the chagrin of Santosh...he must have gone home to consult his sick wife.

This threw me back to my school years at Muthukur when Father had his prize possession of the only brand in the market...maybe Hicks. And he would guard it like his gold ring (dowry). 

It took many months for me to get to know how to read it. Father would ask me to turn the thing round and round till I saw the silver thread of mercury. Fever was less of a punishment.

When I was delirious, Father didn't dare insert the damn thing into my mouth lest I should bite it and die of mercury poisoning. He would lift my arm and insert the bulb into my armpit and close it and watch his wrist watch till it was all of one minute. And one minute is a long while when you are sick as well as healthy. And he would announce: 99 deg F (F for Fahrenheit). And before I rejoiced that it was nothing, he would announce that one should add a whole degree to the reading in the armpit to get the correct mouth-reading. 

And the sick diet would take over.

Once when my MD Uncle was visiting us and I fell ill, he asked Father to fetch his thermometer. And Father looked contrite since he broke it a week ago...good for me that it didn't break in my hands. And asked my didi to go to the neighbor's house and fetch theirs. And Uncle looked at it and laughed saying:

"Oh, this is a rectal thermometer...it has a round bulb instead of a long one"

And asked me if I would turn turtle...which I refused to do. He let it go at that and took my pulse and said I had a high enough fever. And let it out that one has to subtract one degree to get the correct reading from the rectal one...I guess the rectal thing is used for cows.

As long as the temperature stayed above normal, there was no hope of any solid diet.They gave me barley water to drink thrice a day. When I complained that I was sick of barley water, they gave me sago water...you know the insipid saboo daanaa thing. And when I asked for a little sugar, they said sugar is not good for digestion and gave me a bite of black molasses (gud) as an afterthought. 

Gud...my foot!

When at last the temperature touched normal (98.4 deg F), shown by an arrow on the glass, they gave me what was called 'puna:paakam'. It means literally 'twice-boiled' rice. That is, they would all have nicely cooked rice and would reboil the leftovers for my exclusive consumption...it looked like tooth paste and tasted worse. 

And to go with it, they gave me rasam...a ghastly concoction that had nothing but boiled tamarind (imli) water with super-added rasam powder that was home made and had some dhaniya, jeera, pepper and half a sliver of galic. It tasted awful and, when I cried, they gave me a piece of lemon pickle. Lemon pickle comes in three varieties:

1. Pure sun-dried lemon lobes without any masala (this is the sickly thing)

2. Lemon with masala (this is for healthy adults)

3. Thick bitter lime pickle (fit for goats and convalescents)

I would look at my didi's plate full of dal, sabji and sambar and cry...she took pity on me and, on the sly, would hand me a couple of bits of ladyfingers that tasted like heaven.

Much later when I was in my school final and fell ill, our Muthukur market had loaves of bread imported from Nellore...they looked ghastly.

Not the sliced Milk Bread nor the Sandwich Bread nor the Whole Wheat Bread nor the Brown Bread...just Bread...stop.

And there were no toasters, and frying was unhealthy for a sick kid. So I was asked to pick pieces from the raw thing and dip them in watered sugar-free milk and chew. 

No wonder I grew up grumpy as the devil as Indra put it...  

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Sunday, September 29, 2013

Yoga for Dumbies

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I don't have to talk to you about Yoga. Just type 'yoga' in Google and go. And you will find about 30,000,000 sites.

That is a curious number: it happens to be precisely the number of gods in Hinduism at the last count when I was a kid. I used to hear a song about "mukkoti devatalu" (3 crores of gods).

Don't ask me to name them all. I can't. I can at best manage about 50. And that includes local deities like Batukamma and Maisamma.

That is what I like about Hinduism. It is so laissez faire. You have ample multiple choice...or freedom not to choose...like the latest Supreme Court directive to include in the voting machine: "None of the above"

If I am asked to be reborn...and why not...and given a choice, I will choose Hinduism. Which, in spite of our ardent Raambhaktas, is no 'ism' at all. The idea is freedom and the ultimate goal seems to be Freedom (aka Liberation, Mukti). Suits a born-lazy chap like me.

Take for instance my own extended family:

Father was an ardent devotee of Lord Raam. After his retirement he lived for 25 years and everyday he used to recite the Daasharathi Shatakam. Mother is a devotee of Lalita...she must have recited the Lalita Sahasra Namam ten thousand times by now...and still going strong. My didi's hubby was an atheist, till he had a heart attack, after which he turned turtle and became a staunch devotee of Satya Sai Baba of Puttaparti. Being an IAS Officer he had a special visa into the sanctum, topped by a personal interview. Indeed he offered to take me there but I declined politely...I am too undisciplined.

This reminds me of a campus lady of about 35 at IIT KGP who, when invited to join a bhajan party, said:

"Not yet...I haven't committed sins enough"

My next sister lives in Tirupati and regularly travels uphill with her hubby once a month to visit and pray to Lord Balajee...her hubby declines to recognize any other god. My next sister, after marriage, became a devotee of Shankaracharya of Sarada Peeth at scenic Sringeri in Karnataka. My next sister is a quiet devotee, I think, of Hanumanjee...she recites the Sanskrit equivalent of Hanuman Chalisa. My next sister is a follower of her mother. My last sister is inscrutable...I don't know her enough.

My F-i-L lived in Maharashtra and turned a devotee of Shirdi Sai Baba. My wife inherited it from her father and it was a treat to watch her unobtrusive faith. My M-i-L was too much with herself to betray her propensities...but I, surely, was not one of her gods...although it is said in our culture that the son-in-law has to be propitiated as the tenth planet after Rahu and Ketu..."Jaamaata Dasama Graha:"

Coming to myself, I was too lazy to be a devotee of anyone till I found a man lazier than I. And it was a pleasure. His name is (Late) Ramana Maharshi and he not only didn't go on vacations from his place...not even for a single day...but he refused to speak even. 

So that is the sort of panorama of our homely pantheon.

Coming to yoga proper, I didn't hear the word till I was 19 when I got my M Sc Degree. In our convocation they distributed, for free, a copy of the Holy Bible and a copy of Gita. I read both of them desultorily.

And found that every one of the 18 chapters of the Gita was titled this or that yoga. And I liked the variety as usual.

But there was no hint of much bodily contortions anywhere in the Gita...it was all about work, worship, knowledge and liberation.

Father used to get up early in the morning when I was a kid of 6 and perform some exercises and force me to follow him. The one I remember is the Surya Namaskar. It was a breeze for me then since I was supple. I can't do it now without breaking a bone or two.

We didn't have yoga in our school. We had PT which consisted in jumping like monkeys with legs stretched and hands up and about. I was looking to the end of the class to go forth and play kabadi.

But when I was about 45 and my son was into the Kendriya Vidyalaya I heard of yoga at school and some asanas (postures) which they had to practice.

About asanas I heard in my childhood. Ours was a floor-sitting culture and occasionally we were a dozen kids cramped in a line along the wall side by side each with a leaf-plate for food in front of us. And we were asked to sit tight in what was called the Padmasana (lotus seat) which called for doubling up our legs and folding them into knots. I guess it was to save space and also to prevent upsetting our glasses of water with our dangling feet and make a mess. I was an expert in 'double padmasana' (folding both legs on to the opposite thighs). I can't fold even one now.

About this padmasana there is this cute story:

There was one very old woman (like me) called Avvaiyyar in Tamilnadu. She was too old to sit on the floor without lounging her feet in front of her...arthritis maybe.

But she was a mighty devotee of Lord Shivjee. She was once transported to Mount Kailas (now in Nepal), the abode of Shivjee and Parvati (who conjoined into one piece). And she squatted on the floor facing Shivjee with her legs extended and feet pointing towards Shivjee. And Shivjee was pleased with her for undertaking such an arduous journey in her old age.

But Parvati was not..she felt insulted that this old hag was stretching her legs pointing her feet towards her Lord (and herself, naturally). And protested to Shivjee who asked her to keep quiet. But, women being women (sorry!), Parvati scolded Avviyyar for pointing her feet towards her. And Avviyyar said, sorry, and shifted her legs south...and lo and behold...Shivjee (along with his ardhangi, nee Parvati) was rigid-rotated South, intact along with his throne. And Avvaiyyar said, sorry, and shifted her legs East...and Shivjee turned East. And so on and so forth till Parvati got tired of her giddy spins and said, sorry, to Avvaiyyar saying:

"Now I know there is no place nor direction in which Shivjee is not there!"

Beware! You, Raambhaktas!
 

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