What’s in your child’s tiffin box?

 

The inspiration to write this piece came from a recent chat with my friendly neighbourhood grocer. I was asking him about the rapid proliferation of piles of ‘bakery items’ on his shop counter. Bread, buns, biscuits etc., - the sweeter, the better. He explained that he was only catering to market forces because increasingly the standard fare inside kids’ school tiffin boxes went something like this. White bread slathered with butter and a ghastly, maroon-coloured gooey substance that is euphemistically marketed as mixed fruit jam. (Hah!) And in case the whole thing isn’t sweet enough for your little darling, sugar is also sprinkled liberally inside!  The World Health Organization politely describes such hideous concoctions as ‘energy-dense, nutrient-poor foods with high levels of sugar and saturated fats, (which) combined with reduced physical activity have led to obesity rates that have risen three-fold or more since 1980’. My less polite definition is “junk food”.

Or even more appropriately “poison”.

Childhood obesity is no longer something that we can look at fat American kids and sneer about. It’s a monster that is making itself very, very comfortable on the drawing sofa right next to your kids as they sit glued watching Cartoon Network or even worse, a saas-bahu serial. And in case you aren’t worried as yet, this should do the trick.
One in every 10 children in urban India is overweight. Recent studies at the All-India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) have confirmed that childhood obesity leads to cardiovascular disease, Type 2 diabetes, liver and gall bladder diseases and reproductive disorders, only to name a few. And as much as we’d like to blame it on all those “kurkure” ads needling our kids as to whether they’re “hungry, kya?” or peer pressure (“if Arjun’s mom can put chips in his tiffin box, why can’t you?”), the fault, my dear mummies and daddies lies squarely with us. For example, many times have you taken the easy way out and filled your kid’s school tiffin box  that jam sandwich or other such 2-minute nutritional horrors ? How much time do you spend getting your kids to eat healthy compared to what you spend on their  homework? Okay, don’t answer the question but  consider these facts.
1. A fat kid is a fat adult and an unhealthy adult.
What your kids eat today will determine what they will eat as adults because dietary habits and food preferences - which naturally determine nutrition - are generally developed in early childhood and particularly during adolescence.  80% of fat kids end up as adult fatties.
2. Kids have small stomachs…..
Look at your kid’s stomach. Just to remind yourself that they need to eat more often than you do. So snacks and school tiffin boxes are very important sources of nutrition
3. …..but big nutritional needs
It’s common sense, really. Growth needs extra nourishment. So children need extra of all nutrients but especially extra helpings of energy, protein, calcium, iron, vitamins A, B, C and folate. 
4. Malnutritioned children aren’t necessarily poor and thin.
A study found that approximately 50% middle-income school children suffer from multiple micronutrient deficiency. So more important than how much your kids eat is what they eat.
Starting August 1st is World Breastfeeding Week - to impress upon us that this very first act of a mother is so important for the child that a recent New York Times article (‘Breast Feed or else… ‘)quoted a US Health department spokesperson as saying that just like it's risky to smoke during pregnancy, it's risky not to breast-feed afterwards! Because children who are exclusively breastfed for the first 6 months of their life grow up to be smarter, happier, healthier adults, protected not only from heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure and some cancers but also obesity.
But what does breastfeeding have to do with my our kids’ tiffin boxes? Well, for one thing, the words  ‘nutritious’, ‘nutrition’ etc., all have the same etymological mother which is the Latin word nutrire which means ‘to suckle’ or breast feed.  So, nourishment is the very first gift that we give our children. And what Nature begins so beautifully in breast milk, we must continue. Into each mealtime. And into every lunch and tiffin box. Because what we feed our children will determine their future as much as what kind of education we give them. And it is really quite simple. Nature has already done most of the work for us by providing us a limitless cornucopia of wonderfully nutritious and delicious foods. We just need to stir in a few teaspoons of imagination, simmer gently in a few cups of love and garnish with a few pinches of cunning to make good health go down.
So today, I present 2 simple recipes for kids’ tiffin boxes. They are simple, delicious and keep in mind that school day mornings are always a crazy rush, that it often ain’t easy making palak and milk go down…
Bon Appetit !
 

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RECIPES
Scrambled Paneer Rolls
Calcium is a very important nutrient for children, especially for teenagers and girls because it builds healthy teeth and bones. Did you know that about 45% of the adult skeleton is formed during adolescence? Green leafy vegetables, potaoes, lentils like mung and channa dal and sesame seeds are excellent sources….and of course milk. Now, many kids hate milk, so milk products are good alternatives. Like paneer. Nutritious, delicious and very versatile – works as stuffing inside anything from parathas to sandwiches, as bhaji or curry or if you make the paneer at home from skimmed cow’s milk, just by itself, dipped in sauce or chutney. The bonus? Kids love it!
To make 4 rolls
4 thin rotis (you can use leftover ones)
1 cup of fresh paneer (aboiout 200gms) crumbled coarsely
1 small onion diced finely
Pinch of turmeric
Pinch of aesfotida
1 green chili (optional), finely chopped
1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh coriander
¼ piece of ginger finely diced
1 tablespoon oil
Salt to taste
Heat the oil and fry onions, ginger, chili, turmeric, salt till onions are just transparent and crunchy. Add panner and fry for another 30 seconds or so till the paneer turns slightly soft. Add corainder, stir and take off heat. Allow to cool. Warm the rotis slightly, apply a little butter. Place about a tablespoon of the scrambled paneer in the centre. Carefully make into rolls, tucking in both ends well so that the filling doesn’t fall out. Serve with tomato sauce or pudina chutney.

Popeye Dosas
Green leafy vegetables. Perhaps the only things as nutritious as fruits and excellent sources of antioxidants and micronutrients – especialy iron. Which kids need for healthy blood and muscle development and did you know that almost two-thirds of Indian children suffer from iron deficiency ? the way to get kids to eat them is to combine with other foods – add to dals, chapati dough, other vegetables like carrot, potato etc. Or then as these lickety-split quick and delicious dosas
To make 6-8 dosas
½ cup each of rice, wheat, chickpea and ragi flour
1 small bunch palak, wsahed cleaned and finely chopped
1 green chili finely chopped (optional)
Pinch of aesfotida
1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh coriander
¼ piece of ginger finely diced
Salt to taste
Mix all the ingredients with water to make dosa batter. Make dosas. Delicious with just butter or tomato sauce or coconut chutney

Top 5 snacking habits to develop in your kids

1. Fruit – if you can get your kids to love fruit, more than half your battle is won. They are perhaps the most nutritious foods on earth. And it doesn’t have to be apples to keep the doctor away – mango, banana, papaya, pomegranates all do equally well.
2. Nuts – raw or just lightly roasted (peanuts)and without salt. Great sources of protein, the B vitamins, Omega-3 fatty acids and antioxidants.
3. Curds – a great home snack. One of the best sources of calcium, potassium and phosphorus, many of the vitamins B. But most of all, curd is a probiotic food which means lots of good, friendly bacteria to keep your little darlings’ digestive system happy and healthy! Jazz it up with mashed banana, boiled potato or even cornflakes or puffed rice and a dash of chat masala or pudina chutney. Or then, just serve plain…
4. Idlis, dhoklas and other such fermented and steamed snacks. Also probiotic food, but the cereal and lentil content make them excellent sources of protein, carbohydrates and micronutrients like the B vitamins, folate, calcium copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorous and zinc etc
5. Buttermilk – fruit juices are great but cumbersome to make and often expensive. Buttermilk on the other hand is cheap,easy to whip up and like curd, fabulously nutritious.

The Magical Oil Bath!

You’d think that the prerequisite for an “oil bath” would be…well, oil, right? Well, that too, but the way it was in my maternal grandfather’s house, oil (lots of it, naturally) was only one of the ingredients. Indispensable were also at least one able-bodied minion with strong, sure hands and lots of stamina, gallons and gallons of hot water bubbling away in a copper cauldron a little smaller than an average Mumbai flat and chickpea flour (besan ka atta). More about the chickpea flour later. First the oil bath…
There were so many members in the joint family that lived in our ancestral home (my mother says at least about 30-35) of which my grandfather was yajamana (head) that the weekly oil bath had to happen in batches. Naturally, the women were in a separate batch and the men and the chilte-pilte (Kannada slang for bunch of kids) were in the privileged lot. Which meant that other than taking their clothes off (the men retained just a skimpy cotton langoti), everything else was done by the minions. Naturally, as the yajamana, my grandfather went first. My mother says that he made an impressive sight. He was a short, bald man and but stripped down to his almost-altogether, what hit the eye was the gold – in his ears, around his neck, circling his wrists and on his fingers and even around his rather substantial belly.
But even the gold had to step aside for the oil….
It was a magnum opus that lasted at least an hour. First, his entire body was vigorously massaged with warm oil. Of course the only thing that my grandfather did was to occasionally proffer a limb or make a body part more accessible. The actual massaging was done by the minion. Who, I’ll have you know, was often a woman called Monti! Yeah, I gasped too when my mother told me this but at the time, nobody thought that it was the slightest bit “odd”, just the most natural thing. Anyway, once the oil massage was done to everyone’s satisfaction (my grandfather’s and the minion’s), it was time for that chickpea flour. Yup, no new fangled stuff like soap to take the oil off. It had to be lashings of chickpea flour, which was rubbed – naturally by the minion – into the skin almost as vigorously and lavishly as the oil. Remember, these were days when probably the word “face scrub” and “exfoliate” hadn’t even entered the average Western beautician’s dictionary but in my grandfather’s house, they knew a thing or two about skincare. Because when the whole enchilada was finally washed off with the almost boiling hot water from the copper cauldron, the skin emerged beautifully soft, moist and tender as a baby’s bottom, glowing and ever so slightly flushed and tingling, wearing the faintest, gentlest patina of oil that lingered the whole day like a sweet memory. Which was, you could say, also roughly the state of the mind.
So what’s the big deal about these “oil baths” and why do the Southies get so glassy-eyed with ecstasy about it? Well, technically the term is a misnomer and only a dye-in-blood South Indian will understand what it means. Namely that we don’t bath in oil, as the term might suggest to the uninitiated (and how sorry I feel for them!). But that we first anoint, slather, soak and massage every known body part accessible within the bounds of decency with warm oil, mostly in full public view in a sort of Sunday morning family event. When we can lug ourselves out of the euphoric, dreamy haze that it induces, we wash it all off with oceans of hot water and then often totter off to a hot lunch, finished off by cool buttermilk only slightly less in quantity than the hot water that we bathed in. Finally, to a crescendo of gutsy, blissful sighs, we finally sink into a Kumbhakarna siesta from which we awake ready to face anything. World War 3 or a Rakhi Sawant video.

But please don’t be misled by my jocular tone because an oil bath is actually some very serious business of therapy and healing. You see, it all goes back to the ancient wisdom of Ayurveda. And Ayurveda, like yoga, is not just a system of medicine but a way of life. So, it prescribes not only for the sick to heal, but also for the healthy to stay healthy. In Ayurveda, health is a state where the body is in harmony not only with its own nature but also with the nature outside. And since everything including life itself is constantly changing, this is considered as a dynamic state of being, a balancing act where you have to constantly adjust and fine tune your body not just by its doshas, not just by the season but even on a daily basis. So dinacharya is the daily morning ritual that Ayurveda prescribes that readies you both in body and spirit to face the day. And an “oil bath” or rather massaging yourself with oil before your bath is the integral part of it. So, once upon a time, an “oil bath” was a daily event. With time, it became a weekly thing and now, it’s almost a forgotten thing, remembered perhaps once a year on Diwali day, when a little oil is ritualistically applied on the head.
So why is this “oil bath” so important and what does it do, therapeutically speaking? Naturally it all begins with the skin, the body’s largest organ and the main organ of our sense of touch. Touch has been used since time immemorial as an important method of healing, especially in the world’s two most ancient systems of medicine, Ayurveda and Chinese medicine and massage or abhyanaga is one of them. When the body is massaged, the very first thing that happens is almost instant and complete relaxation. because the human skin is loaded with nerve endings, the receptors that receive and transmit all sensation to the brain. There are roughly 350 such nerve endings in each square millimeter of human skin, the hands being supersensitive with each fingertip having more than 3,000 touch receptors.
So, in an oil massage, skin first meets skin, introduced by warm, silky oil. It has been said that the effects of an oil massage are similar to being intensely loved. And love it has to be because in Ayurveda, oil is called sneha, which also means love. So skin begins to love skin, one surrendering and allowing the fingertips to caress and press, rub and probe gently, even gently pinch; the palms to knead and press and smooth. According to Ayurveda, for the sneha – and we could well be referring both oil and love! - to reach the deepest layers, it must be massaged for 800 matras or roughly 5 minutes. Naturally because as we all know, you can’t hurry love. And thus loved and pampered, the blissed out skin begins to send a flood of messages to the brain to relax, wind down, let go. Now these messages get stored forever in the memory of the skin so that with every repetition of a massage, the skin remembers and the relaxation is quicker and easier. Massaging also generates body heat, which stimulates the millions of blood vessels located just below the surface of the skin. The act of rubbing the skin’s surface with oil also knocks off the build of layers of dead skin cells, leaving your skin soft and glowing. Incidentally, did you know that the skin sheds 500 million dead cells every day?!.
Okay, so that’s the obvious stuff. But what if I tell you that the daily oil massage also stimulates almost every critical body part or system - the muscles, the nervous system, even the respiratory system because as the body relaxes, your breathing slows and calms down, improving the oxygenation of the cells. It kick starts vital organs and gets the prana energy flowing, all of which results in a general feeling of being rejuvenated and energized. It’s like waking up the inside of you just the way you do every morning!
And we’ve only just begun.
Because the oil massage is also a great way to detoxify. Toxins accumulate in the body for a lot of reasons – stress, food, environmental pollution, lack of exercise, the effect of seasons and according Ayurveda, the imbalance of our own doshas, etc., etc. Their accumulation is the cause of much that ails us; in fact Ayurveda considers this the root of all disease – from arthritis to diabetes to urinary disorders. So, the act of massaging activates the body to start getting rid of its waste and toxins in different ways. By making you sweat gently. By getting that circulation up and running and most importantly, by waking up sluggish intestines and bowels!
Last but most importantly, an oil massage is a bit like your TV remote control. There is a sloka in Ayurveda which says,
“Shirah shravana padeshu
Tam visheshena sheelayet.“
Roughly translated it means that 3 areas of the body must be massaged are the head, the ears and the feet. Because you see, with these 3 areas, we can access the deepest interiors of our body to almost every organ and gland to retune and reset them. You’re thinking, the head makes sense because that’s where the brain as well important endocrine glands like the pituitary and the pineal glands are located. But the feet? And even curiouser, the ears? Ah, according to Ayurveda, these two areas (along with others like the hands) are considered vital junction boxes connected to the entire body. For example, points all over the outer ear or the visible portion of the ear are considered connected to almost all the major organs and glands in the body including heart, lungs, spleen, kidneys, liver, pancreas, gall bladder reproductive organs, the thyroid, prostrate and pituitary glands. The ear lobes are connected to the eyes and teeth.
The feet are no less important. The big toe gives us access the brain and helps vision. The index toe releases energy into the lungs. The third toe gets us access to the intestines, the fourth to the kidney and the little toe to …..believe it or not, the heart. And on the sole of each foot are 4 of the 107 marma points, vital points of the body, so vital that hitting them can grievously injure, even kill - as is done in Kerala’s ancient art of Kalaripayyat.
And these are only some of the physical benefits of an “oil bath”. Did I mention that it also helps improve vitality, strength, stamina, concentration, flexibility, youthfulness, makes you sleep like a baby, feel good about yourself …..oh, what the heck, let me just quote the wise sage Charaka himself,
"The body of one who uses oil massage regularly is affected much even if subjected to injury or strenuous work. By using oil massage daily, a person is endowed with pleasant touch, trimmed body parts and becomes strong, charming and least affected by old age." Charaka Samhita Vol. 1, V: 88-89
Isn’t it breathtaking how exquisitely simple it all is? How far just a few cupfuls of warm, sweet sneha and a pair of sure, loving hands can take you down the happy road to health and well being? I have this sneaking suspicion that my passionate and life long affair with music began because as a baby, every morning before a bath, my ayah would give me an oil massage so thorough and so delightful that like my grandfather’s elder sister-in-law, I’d fall into a deep, ecstatic exhausted slumber afterwards. While massaging me, she’d sing a song. It was concieved when Guru Dutt and Johnny Walker went to Calcutta and one morning watched a local maalish-wala show off his talents. Guru Dutt asked Johnny Walker to remember the scene. He did and it appeared as this song in the classic 1957 film Pyaasa and became so famous that a song with Johnny Walker became mandatory in the formula Hindi film box office hit. The lyricist Sahir Ludhianvi puts it a little differently but is as eloquent as the sage Charaka on the benefits of an oil massage…..
Sar jo tera chakraaye, ya dil dooba jaaye
Aaja pyaare paas hamaare, kaahe ghabraaye.. kaahe ghabraaye
Sun sun sun, are beta sun, is champi mein bade bade gun
Laakh dukhon ki ek dava hai kyoon na aazmaaye
Kaahe ghabraaye, kaahe ghabraaye

(In consultation with Dr. C. S. Anil Kumar – B.A.M.S., M.D., (Ay) D.N.Y., Physician Consultant in Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy and Professor at JSS Ayurvedic Medical College, Mysore.)

A Mother's Blessing For Life

A Mother’s Blessing for Life


We were "celebrating" Breast Feeding week from August 1 till yesterday....and India

“A newborn baby has only three demands. They are warmth in the arms of its mother, food from her breasts, and security in the knowledge of her presence. Breastfeeding satisfies all three." - Dr. Grantly Dick-Read

The word mammal is from the Latin “mammālis”, meaning “of the breast” and so a mammal – which includes us humans - is characterized by milk-producing mammary glands in the female for nourishing its young. You’re thinking – is this really the place for a piece on breastfeeding? I’m saying – in a country a baby is born almost every 2 seconds, everybody is either having a baby or knows someone who is about to. So, getting your breastfeeding primer updated is going to come handy, one way or another.
Now we all have a vague idea that breastfeeding is somehow good for the baby. But UNICEF is a tad more specific about it. “ If every baby were exclusively breastfed from birth for 6 months, an estimated 1.5 million lives would be saved each year. Not just saved but enhanced, because breast milk is the perfect food for a baby"s first 6 months of life - no manufactured product can equal it.”
Really? Nothing but breast milk for the first six months of a baby’s life?

Mummy knows best…
This is how all other mammals rear their young and so why should we humans be any different. And to underscore that point, the experts recommend that breastfeeding should start within the first hour of the baby being born, preferably in the first 30 minutes. Mainly because in the first 2-3 days after birth, the mother’s breast produces colostrum, Nature’s most wonderful gift to the life that’s just begun. Colostrum is the perfect first food for the newborn, low in fat, and high in carbohydrates, protein and easy to digest. Besides, it has a laxative effect, helping the baby to pass early stools and excrete excess bilirubin which can cause jaundice. Colostrum is also the baby"s first immunization because it is loaded with leukocytes, disease fighting protective white cells and IgA, a major antibody. Finally, it protects the baby’s extremely fragile and vulnerable digestive tract, “painting” it with a barrier that seals it against infections.
No wonder then that doctors insist that nothing should be given before that all-important first breastfeed.
And till the baby is 6 months old, breast milk is the perfect and only food that the baby needs. For many reasons.
Nutritionally, breast milk is the perfect formula - the right kind of proteins, fats, lactose, vitamins, minerals, water and all other nutrients in the right mix.
Breast milk is Nature’s ready-to-eat food – available whenever the baby wants it. And you don’t even have to “heat and serve because the temperature is perfect for the baby’s delicate mouth. The IBFAN (International Baby Food Action Network) poster promoting breastfeeding in Canada shows a pair of beautiful breasts with the slogan “Fast food outlets”!
Breast milk is not just free; it’s also free from any kind of contamination.
Breastfeeding protects the child against several childhood infections, many of them life-threatening. In the first 2 months of life, an infant who is not exclusively breastfed is up to 25 times more likely to die from diarrhoea and 4 times more likely to die from pneumonia than a breastfed baby.
Breastfeeding ensures a better immune system, making the baby respond better to vaccination
Most of all, breast milk is more than just baby food. It is also that other immeasurably wonderful nutrient – mother’s love. There is nothing more tender and loving than the act of a mother gently cuddling her baby to her warm, soft body. And the baby cannot but respond. So, a breastfed baby is not only a healthy baby but a blissfully happy one too!

“But what if Mummy doesn’t have enough?”
"Breastfeeding is an unsentimental metaphor for how love works, in a way. You don"t decide how much and how deeply to love--you respond to the beloved, and give with joy exactly as much as they want." - Marni Jackson, columnist and author of The Mother Zone
This the most prevalent and unfortunate myth about breast feeding and the constant worry is that maybe the baby is not getting enough milk when it is breast fed. And even more unfortunately, one of the single biggest stumbling block to the adequate production of breast milk is the mother’s own anxiety that she is not producing enough milk for her baby. And that is the ultimate irony. Because, breast feeding itself promotes the production of breast milk. It is the sucking action of the baby’s mouth that causes the production of the hormone prolactin which in turn produces the milk. So, the more a baby suckles, the more milk is produced. Which is the other reason why experts insist that the baby should be breast fed within 30-60 minutes of being born. This is when the baby"s suckling reflex is strongest, and the baby is more alert.
Now about “enough”. Barring conditions like severe maternal malnutrition and anemia, too many pregnancies, almost every mother can exclusively breast feed. And there are 2 very simple and easy indicators to show that your baby is well fed. First, if it urinates at least 7-10 in 24 hrs. And second, if it is putting on weight - at the rate of an average of ½ kg per month in the first 6-7 months.
Oh, there is no other thing that inhibits the production of breast milk – the use of pacifiers or bottles. The sucking action required for these is very different from suckling at the breast. So, the baby gets confused, doesn’t suckle the breast properly causing the mother to produce less breastmilk.
If that hasn’t already answered that often asked question of why not combine breast feeding with bottle feeding, let me elaborate…..
Hitting the bottle
We humans are a strange bunch. We throw away what is natural and free and healthy and pay money for unhealthy substitutes. The global annual sales baby food amounts to 16.5 billion dollars. (Coke and associated brands sell 15 billion dollars annually) The negative effects of bottle feeding and/or feeding a baby anything other than breast milk (including malnutrition and exposure to life-threatening infections) for the first 6 months of its life are so many and so serious that the World Health Assembly passed the International Code of Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes in 1981. The attempt was to stop the damage to breastfeeding through the promotion of substitute products. The Indian government passed the Infant Milk Substitute Act in 1992 and further amended it in 2003 so that it prohibits the marketing of all kinds of foods for babies younger than 2 years of age.
Now you know why I said, “hitting the bottle…”
Blessed for life
The blessings that we always seek and crave for is that of our mother’s – unconditional, pure, complete and lifelong. Like breast milk. Because its effects are life long. Research now shows that children who have been breastfed grow up to be adults that:
Are Smarter – The longer you breast feed, the more it increases your child’s IQ, reading comprehension, mathematical ability, and scholastic ability – a result of the special “fatty acids" in breast milk. Remember, by age 6, which is when children generally start school, most of the brain"s neural connections are already made
Can see better – again, it’s those special “fatty acids" that make the eyes bright, the eyesight sharp.
Are healthier - Children who are breastfed for 1 year or longer have 50% less risk of being diabetic compared to children fed less than one year. Breast fed children also have significantly lower rates of heart disease, high blood pressure and some cancers in adult life
Are thinner Breastfeeding reduces the incidence of adult obesity.

We are politely called a “developing” country. Put in harsher language, many of us are poor, some barely managing two proper meals in a day and never you mind what they are saying about our GDP being the 3rd largest in the world. With poverty comes disease and deprivation. And the most cruelly affected are little children - 50% of Indian children under the age of 3 are malnourished and of the 27 million children born every year, 16 % will die before they are 5. But, as long as a mother can breast feed, developing country or not, she can never be poor, capable of showering her feed her child the wealth of love and health that will last a lifetime. (Valued at the cost of fresh animal milk (Rs. 15 per liter), annual market value of realistic production of breastmilk in India would be about Rs 5916 crores or roughly the 2005-2006 budget allocation for Agriculture!)
But sadly, today, 54.2% of Indian mothers exclusively breast feed their babies till the age of 3 months and that figure drops to 19.4 % for babies aged 4-6 months.
Breastfeeding is an ancient tradition in our land. It’s time we went back to it. To protect our greatest, most precious and yet most vulnerable national treasure – our children.

(Grateful thanks to Dr. Shobha Banapurmath who not only sugge0sted the idea for this article and provided support and material. She is a pediatrician, representing BPNI or the Breast Promotion Network of India, “a national network of organizations and individuals dedicated to promote mother and child health through protection, promotion and support of breastfeeding.”

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Breast feeding primer

* Till your baby is 6 months old, ONLY breast feed. No other food or drink, not even water, is usually needed during this period
* Breastfeed immediately after birth preferably within 30-60 of birth to give your baby the all-important colostrum. Nothing should be given before the first breastfeed
* Breastfeed unrestrictedly and on demand.
* There is no substitute to breast milk
* Bottle-feeding is unnecessary and even harmful, being the leading cause of loose stools in babies
* Pacifiers and bottle confuse the baby’s sucking action and reduce the production of breastmilk.
* Continue breastfeeding for two years or beyond, introducing solid foods only after 6 months of age.
* Homemade, family food is the best solid food for your baby.


And Mummy is happier and healthier too….
If breastfeeding makes healthy, happy babies, it isn’t too bad for the mummies either. It

* Reduces post-delivery bleeding and chances of maternal anemia.
* Obesity is less common among breastfeeding mothers.
* Has a contraceptive effect.
* Lowers the risk of breast and ovarian cancers.
* Builds bone strength and protects against osteoporosis


Did you know?

* That malnutrition amongst children happens in the first two years of life and is virtually IRREVERSIBLE after that?
* That a baby’s crying can make breast milk flow? A hormone called oxytocin causes the "let-down" reflex – when the mother hears the baby cry, milk is “let down” or ejected.
* That anthropologist Katherine Dettwyler estimates that if culture did not tell us to do otherwise, we would breast feed our children somewhere till between 2.5 and 7 years of age

Ode to a Well

Can't help it but i have water on my mind these days..

Ode to a Well


Imagine trying to break open an orange with a sledgehammer.
Ridiculous idea?
Of course it is. But that is how we treat Nature. We battle with it, savage and plunder it for things that it will yield so readily and generously – if we ask the right way.
Look at water, for example. There is so much talk about scarcity of water when in actual fact there is all the water that we need and more but we have forgotten how to catch, store and manage it. And that’s because we don’t understand Nature anymore. For example, did you know 75% of the earth’s freshwater lies frozen in polar regions? Of the rest, only 10% is surface water in rivers, lakes etc. The balance 90% lies underground in innumerable caches called aquifers. And not so very long ago, if you dug the right spot, water would gush out to become the thing whose cool, sweet waters sustained the life of every Indian. A well.

Ancient wells of wisdom
Along roads I have had wells dug and trees planted for the benefit of humans and animals. Emperor Ashoka’s rock inscription at Girnar

You mean those holes in the ground from which people once laboriously lugged up water? What good are those in this age of hydrogeology and taps? Ah, but we underestimate these wells, which is quite in contrast to our ancestors.

Mohenjodaro alone had 700 wells and one of the most remarkable thing about the Harappan civilization was its water management. You see, our ancients understood that managing water was key not just to the future of civilization but to survival itself. And so water was sacred, precious. Our rivers were goddesses that they didn’t just pray to, but also revered by not using them as garbage dumps and sewers.

They also figured that rain is something you save not for but on a rainy day! So, rainwater harvesting may be today’s latest buzzword, but water harvesting systems figure in Kautilya’s Arthasatra, written in 3rd century B.C. And Koopa Shastram (koopa is well in Sanskrit) is the ancient science of constructing wells.

Kuans, kuis, baavis, surangams, baolis, baoris, vavs, virdas. All over the country, our ancestors dug wells – as varied as India’s people, the most innovative and the greatest variety found in the most water starved areas like Thar desert!
Little wells just 15-20 feet deep.
Massive wells, the vision of wise rulers, plunging a 100 feet into the ground; where entire communities not just drew water but also chatted, rested and generally cooled off.
12 centuries ago, the kings of Rajasthan and Gujarat began the tradition of the famed, fabulous step-wells of which the most spectacular is Rani ki Vav or Queen’s Step Well in Patan, Gujarat. Five storeys into the ground and 90 feet wide, decorated with over 800 stone sculptures in the Khujarao style, built by Udayamati, consort of the 11th century Chalukiya king, Bhimadeva.
And since water was sacred, our temples had wells too. The famous Rameswaram temple complex has 22 wells, each with different tasting water, each dedicated to a different deity. Bathing in the waters of these wells is supposed to have such beneficial effects that they are called theerthams (holy waters)!

Wells of sweetness

So, why were these wells so important? First of all, for centuries, (in India they go back 9000 years or more) they have been a perennial source of the sweetest, coolest, freshest water. You see, as rainwater slowly seeps through the earth, the porous layers of rock, limestone, sand etc., act as filters, filtering out the impurities and cooling the water. In fact, well water was once considered pure enough not only to drink but also the only water used for puja.
Alas, today, in many parts of India, it’s a different story and the fault is entirely ours. Well water is getting contaminated and unfit for drinking because we are what conservationists call “fouling the nest”; a bit like using our kitchens as toilets. So our waste waters go where they shouldn’t, the soil is dumped full of chemicals and pesticides…it’s a familiar, sorry tale.

But even in such conditions, these wells survive. In Bangladesh, where arsenic poisoning of wells became a worrying trend, studies showed that while the water from tube wells had high amounts of arsenic, nearby traditional open wells had very low levels. One theory suggests that the open wells allowed the air to oxidize the arsenic into harmless compounds and rainwater to regularly flush out the arsenic. Which is exactly how they are rescuing contaminated wells in Kerala – by feeding in harvested rainwater.
But, even when the water isn’t potable, wells are powerful tools of social empowerment, making communities, especially women self-sufficient and independent. How? Very simple. A well in the backyard, provides all water you need, all year round - totally free! For the average Indian who spends much of his/her day, even nights, shackled to mulishly dry taps and never-ending, irate water queques, this is the ultimate freedom. Provided of course, there is water in the well…..

Recharging India’s batteries…..

Which is only possible if there is enough groundwater to feed it.
Today, India’s water woes are largely because its groundwater lies most grievously plundered. According to Fred Pearce in the New Scientist magazine, 50 years ago in northern Gujarat, you could get water from open wells just 10 metres deep. Today tube wells run dry even 400 metres down. It’s the same story everywhere. Water tables under Punjab and Haryana fall by a metre every year and half the hand-dug wells in western India, two-thirds in Tamil Nadu have run dry.
But the amazing thing is that these very same wells, dried up and abandoned, are now becoming one of the most important methods of rainwater harvesting, of recharging our plundered groundwater. It’s a people’s movement spreading slowly but surely all over the country, especially in the most parched regions of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat. And even in those water guzzlers, the metropolises,. Bangalore already has 300 recharge wells. In Delhi, there is a call to marshal its 26 ancient baolis, some dating to Iltutmish and Timur Lane, to recharge Delhi’s groundwater, which provides 30-40% of the city’s water!
That so serious a problem could have so simple a solution is staggering. Just channeling rainwater back into a single well has seen to cause the waters to rise in neighbouring wells and turn undrinkable saline or brackish water into fresh water. And so, the old-fashioned well has become one of the most effective weapons in the armoury of the countless “Jal Yodhas” who are crusading to give us back our birthright of water. It’s like making a patchwork quilt. You start with one tiny scrap of cloth. Or one little well. Then you add another, then another till finally, all over India, millions of open wells like millions of brave little batteries will recharge our country’s most precious resource – water

A fish called Madanji

Which makes it time for me to tell you about a fish called Madanji. Not really his (her?) name but the local Tulu name of this particular species of fish in coastal South Karnataka. When my maternal grandfather built his house there more than 80 years ago, naturally he also built a well. And he put in Madanji into it. Because according to local wisdom, these fish are specialists in keeping the water clean by feeding on all organic matter that would otherwise pollute it, especially mosquito larvae!

Apparently Madanji did a great job because the water from that well was the sweetest, freshest water that I have ever tasted and all my grandmother did was to strain it through a clean cloth. And Madanji-watching was a favourite pastime of the kids. Sometimes, he’d lie low, meditating in the well’s dark, cool depths. Other times, he’d swim up in slightly frantic but always elegant circles, snapping up the morsels that we dropped.
And as far as my mother can remember, even as a little child, there was always madandji in her father’s well…...

And there will always be wells in India. Open, generous and filled with sweetness. To remind us that our relationship with Nature should be like recurring deposit schemes. Feed only off the interest and every now and then, add back to the capital. Otherwise the deposit will lapse. And that wells are like knowledge. They remain fresh and of value only when we constantly use them.
So, if you know of an abandoned well, adopt it. Or better still, even dig a new one…

Grateful thanks to Mr. Sree Padre, Mr. S. Vishwanath of www.rainwaterclub.org and Dr. V Sankaran Nair, Kampan Foundation For Oriental Studies, Trivandrum

Palakkad and wells

How did water diviners of yore know the presence of water? In Karnataka and Kerala, they’d look for a plant called Pala. And Palakkad (Palghat) in Kerala gets its name from “pala” “kaddu” meaning a forest of pala trees. No wonder then that Kerala has the highest density of wells in the world – 250 open wells per square km or one well for every 3 persons!

Lessons in A Graden

Healing gardens
By Ratna Rajaiah
Let me first tell you what they are calling it in all those high-falutin’ places where doctors and researchers and scientists with degrees as long as your herbaceous border huddle together to give serious sounding names to these things. They are calling it therapeutic horticulture. You and I know it as gardening. Therapeutic, did I say? When, for many of us, gardening is a thing that gets you all hot and sweaty and dirty and something that maalis do for a living? I mean, as long as you can just pop into a shop and buy that bunch of dewy fresh roses or crunchy green spinach, why would you want to muck about knee deep in worms and compost?
Good question because that’s where I start explaining the “therapeutic horticulture”. Because gardening apart making things grow and bloom, also helps you grow and bloom. How so? Well, first of all, it’s one of the nicest ways to get fresh air, sunlight and exercise. Think about it – if you had a choice of getting your daily dose of exercise by walking 10 boring circles around that park or by spending half an hour helping your brinjals to fatten or coaxing that particularly stubborn button rose to break into bud, what would it be?
10 boring circles, did you say? Really?
Okay, fine. Then consider this.
Nature’s potted pick-me-up.
Gardening is long been considered one of the more pleasurable not to mention effective ways to de-stress, unwind and relax. There is something about pottering around in a garden or even just around the pots in your apartment verandah which is known to soothe and loosen up all those tense knotted muscles and thoughts. And that’s not all - gardening is the ultimate rejuvenator because there’s something in it to tickle and please each one of your senses – a lush symphony of sights and sounds, textures and smells, even tastes, all coming together to draw you gently to nestle into Mother Nature’s ample, comforting, forgiving bosom. So, the next time you’re at the end – or beginning - of one of those days specially designed to turn you into a gibbering nervous wreck, take a slow walk around that garden.
A garden teaches you that some of the most exhilarating things in life come not packaged in a bottle or a pill but as a that patch of marigolds arguing with the sun about whose orange is brighter.
Patience is watching a little yellow flower turn into a tomato.
Slow down, they’re all telling us, as we shrink everything to become sleeker, slimmer and faster, even the seconds on our digital timers. Slow down or you’ll have a blowout, they say. But I don’t know how to, you wail, as you pop another antacid and frantically punch the buttons which should have delivered instant success, instant fame and instant coffee but is 3 whole seconds late. Ah, but here’s a place you can learn ….to slow down. Get a tomato plant. And when it decks itself up in little yellow flowers, remember that they are a bunch of promises that it’s making to you that soon there will be your own plump juicy, homegrown tomatoes. But notice that it’s just saying soon - no date, no ETA. Because those tomatoes are going to ripen at their own pace, no turbo-charged ripener to speed up the process. And there’s nothing you can do about it but wait, taking long, deep breaths, listening to the music of those tomatoes ripening in the sun…
A garden teaches you that in life, things happen at their own pace which often may not match yours. All you can do is wait and in the meantime, enjoy the scenery …
Hope is a papaya seed
Ever thought that a seed can teach you how to hope? You pop into your friendly neighbourhood nursery and buy a little flowerpot and some papaya seeds. You plant some, following the instructions carefully. And then you wait, because there’s nothing more to do. But as you do, you also hope – that maybe, just maybe when you wake up one morning, and blearily peer at that unrelenting patch of mud, there will be a little, frail green shoot struggling out of it. And that maybe, just maybe the shoot will become a little sapling. And then a tree in your backyard and then one day, you’ll look up and see it festooned with fat green papayas. And one morning, there on your breakfast plate will be a bowl full of juicy, glistening, pinky-orange chunks of ….papaya!
Gardening teaches you that even if today’s been a write-off, there’s always tomorrow.

Humility and a fat green pea
Think about this. Let’s say for a moment that you are a rocket scientist, part of the crack team that’s designing of that whatisit that’s going to get us to Mars. (And we better hurry, because at the rate that we are polluting and depleting our water sources, we may soon need to tap into those traces of moisture that they’ve found there!). Or then maybe you’re the chappie who with a flicker of his eyelid can make the Sensex soar or plummet. What I mean to say is - you are the cat’s meow and you know it. Now consider this. It’s just a silly little pea plant, is it not? A few leaves on a puny little vine that came out of a pile of dirt, right? Then how does it know when it is winter and time to fill those pods bursting with fat, juicy green peas? And how does that night queen know that the sun has set and it’s time to burst into riotous blossom? Then think how every cell of every plant and every flower knows when exactly to thrive and when to die? Consider the hugely sophisti
cated and complex systems of programming implanted in every living cell which we have only dimly begun to comprehend. And then look at who you really are…
A garden teaches you that no matter who you are and what you have achieved, you are but a miniscule speck in the macrocosm of Life.

The bare necessities of life
In the garden you learn that the recipe to make another being happy, be that a snapdragon or a human being, is actually the world’s simplest thing. Food, water, a patch of sunlight and love. Mix well and serve. And watch your spouse or that chrysanthemum shake off that chronic droop. The garden is also a great place to learn about love. You see, plants are like children. They do not care if you are young or old, fat or thin, black or white, rich or poor, good looking or ugly. If you love them and care for them, they will love you right back by happily growing and blooming and loading their branches with all kinds of goodies just for your pleasure!
The garden teaches you that it takes very little to be happy.
I think we’ve covered the basic stuff. The rest will come as you dig and water or just walk around your plants. Wait a minute, you say. This is all goody-goody fluffy stuff for aspiring Pollyannas. Give us the hardware, facts and figures, things that have been put into a test tube and researched. Okay. So here goes. The reason why they have begun to call gardening “therapeutic horticulture” is because that is exactly what it is increasingly being used for. As a therapeutic aid in the treatment of a whole host of things from dementia and Alzheimer's Disease to addiction, the rehabilitation of the mentally and physically disabled, geriatric care and even in helping rehabilitate convicts to get back into mainstream life. The introduction of a garden of a park in the otherwise stark and ugly inner city areas where people can participate in tending it has known to have a significant impact on things like teenage crime. It has been seen that gardening gives people in these circu
mstances a sense of purpose, a feeling of hope and when they see their effort literally blossom and take fruit, a sense of being useful instead of useless.
One more thing. Therapeutic horticulture is a broad term that encompasses anything from actual cultivation of plants to just standing around and enjoying the experience of being surrounded by a beautiful garden or landscape. Research now shows that just a view of trees may reduce the recovery time in the hospital after surgery by almost an entire day!
So get acquainted with a garden and you may be surprised to find that what grows in that cabbage patch is much more than just cabbages!

How to ride a tiger

How to ride a tiger

"A city is both a territory and an attitude."

Let me get the heretical part of this piece out of the way. Between you and me, I’m rather glad that the Fab City project didn’t come Karnataka's way. Going by the past history of many other such “fab” projects (I’m assuming “fab” is an abbreviation for fabulous because $2 billion investment and 1,50,000 jobs is just that, isn’t it), the “fab” part remains with the promoters of the project, everything else goes speedily down the drain. I also shudder every time somebody talks about Mysore being the next IT destination of Karnataka. Look what they did to Bangalore, ma. And since I’m pouring my heretical heart out to you, I am also glad that the connectivity between Mysore and Bangalore continues to suck. If it’s a toss up between spending a bone-crushingly exhausting 4 and a half hour bus journey from Mysore to Bangalore and Mysore becoming what Bangalore has, give me the ride to hell and back any day. And if you’re still reading this and haven’t rushed off to write an outraged letter to the editor, I also find it very difficult to stomach how what happens to us every time a project of this nature is in the offing. Just “dollar” does the trick, but 2 billion of them. And 1,50,000 jobs! It is huge, but it still does not warrant the frantic tizzy that we whip ourselves into, first to net it, then afterwards if we don’t, the end of the world would be a less traumatic event. The only time we behave worse is when the existing gods of similar “fab” projects threaten to pull out and go elsewhere with their fab millions. We managed before IT, didn’t we, so did progress and development.
You are thinking - it’s easy for her to talk. She’s neither a young person desperately seeking a job nor a parent of one. I mean, there are no free lunches in life. so choking on a few extra gallons of smog, fighting our way through a few more hours of traffic jam is a small price for a job that pays 30,000 instead of 3000, isn’t it? Actually, though it may not seem so, I’m all for development and these fab projects. It saddens me, for example, to see Mysore become a city of the very old and the very young. (More than it saddens me to see what has happened to Bangalore.) House after house tells the same story of an empty nest in which lonely old people rattle around like dry old bones because their children have left to become NRIs. Dollars in the bank but nobody at home. It saddens me to see fresh engineering graduates wanting to work in Mysore are often forced to accept jobs that pay less than what a peon makes.
But, that still doesn’t mean that the solution to is to become a chota Bangalore.
Or worse still, like the dhobi’s donkey, to fall between two stools. Which, right now, Mysore is in real danger of, as we wait, all dressed up in our “we-have-what-it-takes-to-be-a-Fab-city” best. We have more glittering two-wheeler showrooms than Nanjagud bananas and a hip young population of two-wheeler riders who have one ear instead of two – the other has mutated into a cell phone. (I’m told that the next generation of cutting edge technology is a hands-free two-wheeler.) Beautiful old bungalows have given way to ghastly shopping arcades. And the real estate prices - an obscene joke if they weren’t true – continue to rise dizzily like an item bomb’s miniskirt in readiness for …. what else, a Fab City project.
But, our young folks are still leaving town to look for jobs. Something doesn’t quite add up, does it?
It will, it will, you cry. All we need is a Fab city or two and two plus and we will be in heaven, if not become heaven itself. (And we certainly don’t need a spoilsport Cassandra like you wailing doom!)
So, pardon my ignorance, but why isn’t Bangalore one already? Paradise, I mean.

I know – it’s all “their” fault – the city planners, authorities, politicians, anyone but we the people. But, may I suggest that progress is a tiger, a beast that if ridden right, will make it a great ride to the top (not to mention the bank!). If not, it will gobble us up. The question is, are we willing to learn to ride it?
Before we answer that question, may I remind everybody that we Kannadigas are no strangers to tigers. Or to riding them, our great maharajahs being our most illustrious “riding instructors”! Mysore became the model state (Mahatma Gandhi called it Rama Rajya in Krishnaraja Wodeyar’s reign!) because there was unstinting royal patronage of technology, science and modernization. True, no IT, but even without it, we didn’t do too badly. Building India’s very first irrigation dam was achievement enough, but a decade before the KRS dam went up in 1912, we already had a hydro-electric power plant at in Shivanasamudra (Asia’s very first and oldest) and Bangalore was the first city in India to become electrified in 1905. The common vision of Krishnaraja Wodeyar and Jamshedji Tata resulted in the Indian Institute of Science in 1909. By the time India achieved independence and his nephew, Jayachamaraja Wodeyar was not maharajah anymore but the Governor of the State of Mysore, we had a steel plant, one of India’s oldest and most reputed medical colleges, an aircraft manufacturing factory (HAL), all 9 nine districts connected by rail, telecommunications, polytechnic and engineering colleges. We were the first Indian state to have a Representative Assembly, we had a public health policy, hospitals, good roads and education till middle school was free. And the farmers didn’t have to commit suicide to get taken care of. Even the toymakers of Channapatna got wood at subsidized rates.
If that’s impressive, equally impressive is the fact the maharajahs never lost sight of other things which we now have either completely forgotten about or think is the domain of airy-fairy-activist NGO’s. Wildlife was considered important, Sanskrit warranted Mysore to have one of India’s oldest and best Sanskrit colleges in India. (President S Radhakrishnan studied philosophy here.) And the 3 yoga masters – BKS Iyengar, Pattabhi Jois and TVK Desikachar – who have made Mysore an international yoga destination were disciples of Krishnamacharya for whom Krishnaraja Wodeyar opened a yogashala inside the palace premises! The maharajahs knew that music, art, literature and dance contribute as much towards nurturing great minds as formal education. There is a lovely story told by the late Dr. Raja Ramanna who said that Krishnaraja Wodeyar would invite him to play the piano and was so pleased by his playing that he paid him 200 rupees every time – a princely sum, both literally and figuratively speaking! They knew that gardens and parks (and zoos!) and fresh air and beautiful architecture were as important for the health of a state as jobs and factories and modernization. We have not one but two “Garden Cities” as proof of that.
Now, a tale of 2 other cities that rode that tiger….
Tirupur, 50 kilometres away from Coimbatore. Population 7 lakhs. In 1985, the export turnover of knitwear from this little back-of-beyond town was 15 crores. Last year, it was over Rs. 5,000 crores. It is one of the largest foreign exchange earning towns in India, the textile industry employing workers equal to almost 50% of its population. In other words, a Fab City, right? (Or "Dollar City”, as it is also known!) Maybe. Let me complete the picture. Tirupur has almost no good roads to speak of, equally bad sewage systems, rising incidence of chronic health problems, especially respiratory diseases among children. Water is so scarce that even for the dyeing units of the garment industry that brought in all this prosperity and development, it is fetched in tankers from as far as 20 kilometres. Naturally, everyone, including the textile barons are now screaming a familiar cry, “Infrastructure! Infrastucture!”
The second city is Curitiba. Curi-who? Curitiba in Brazil. Population 17 lakhs. Almost 40 years ago, the mayor, worried about his fast-growing city, invited proposals for urban design. An architect called Jaime Lerner presented a plan which was soon implemented. First, the public transport system of buses was made so good and so intensive that 85% of Curitiba's population travelled exclusively by it. (There wasn’t much space for the cars anyway because the city centres were made pedestrian exclusive zones and several key highways were bus-only areas!) Then, apart from the mandatory trees and artificial ponds, Lerner’s solution to the garbage problem was really unique - he roped in the city’s poor to recycle the garbage, offering groceries and bus pases in exchange for every 2 bags of rubbish brought in! Curitiba has 54 square meters of green space per citizen - the WHO’s minimum requirement is 10. Today, Curitiba is considered not just the world’s greenest city but also one of the best examples of urban planning.
Cities all over the world are taking matter into their own hands to make posible both development and quality of life. Toronto has “walking school buses”, where children are organised to walk to school, Sacramento demands that all parking lots have 50% tree shade, London charges a “congestion” fee to all vehicles entering the ity centre, thereby reducing traffic and pollution. Berlin’s new parliament building keeps itself warm and cuts carbon emissions by 94% by running its boilers on vegetable oil. And closer home, Sheila Dixit got Delhi’s huge fleet of private buses and auto rickshaws to run on CNG and Mumbai recently successfully phased out its its taxis and commercial vehicles that were more than 15 years old.
So, Fab Cities are made up of people who ride the tiger, not the other way around. Because true development and progress is not just about jobs. It’s also about a better quality of life and that means better air to breathe, water to drink, parks to play and walk in etc., etc. It also means that the common man has as right to it as somebody who brings in 2 million dollars of investment. Apparently, Karnataka lost the Fab City project because SemIndia wasn’t confident of our ability to provide facilities like land, water, electricity and other “infrastructure”! The irony is that in many parts of Karnataka - including Mysore - the common man does not these very same facilities. Just think – if that is so without the Fab Cities of the world, what will happen when we get them and divert huge portions of our already poorly distributed resources to them?
Another thing. Development is a two way street. Which means that it is a joint effort, where each one of us has a sense of ownership of the society we live in as much as we do of our cars, houses, even spouses! Which means that we have to live a little less selfishly. We have to obey laws, pay taxes and empower public offices to do their job. We have to be willing to say “no” to things that will serve a favoured few and harm the majority, do stuff that might make life uncomfortable in the short term but improve it in the long haul. Curitiba was possible only because the citizens wanted their town to be what it is today…
Recently, at the weekly meditation session in my yogashala, despite repeated requests, somebody decided to keep his cell phone on in the vibratory mode. And he was obviously a popular guy, because his phone rang…er, vibrated every 5 minutes or so. In the silence of a mediation session, that was like a bomb going off every 5 minutes. Afterwards, I waited eagerly for our yogacharya’s expected ticking off. But none came. Instead, without singling out the offender, he said just this. It is natural for all of us to seek pleasure, fulfill desires and therefore acquire the necessary things to do that. But, every time you use your object of desire, just pause to think if your pleasure has been funded by another’s discomfort or pain. If you keep that in mind constantly, the appropriateness of anything will become automatically and crystal clear.
I think it’s a lovely rule. So simple and applies to anything – cell phones in public places and Fab Cities!

Buttermilk Rhapsody

Nobody who visited my grandmother would ever think of drinking anything other than her famous buttermilk. Which flowed literally like water and was always on tap no matter what time of the day it was. My grandmother’s kitchen was one of wood fires and clay cooking pots. No gas stove, no fridge. So, every day, she’d put a pot of milk to slowly simmer through the day on one of those fires. And in the evening, when the milk was beautifully reduced and thickened and infused with the most wonderful aroma of the wood smoke, she’d cool it and set it to become curd. The next morning, the curd would be whipped to give up all its glistening, fat globs of butter. And what was left became a never-emptying lake of thick, faintly smoky, cool buttermilk, just tart enough to perk you up and flavoured with nothing but its own deliciousness. Buttermilk that soothed and cooled and refreshed every part of you, like nothing else could have. That remained cool and placid in its pot, without refrigeration, no matter how hot a day it was or how late in it you quaffed it.


So, my love affair with buttermilk began very long ago and we are childhood sweethearts really, inextricably linked with my happiest memories – summer holidays in my grandmother’s house. And since this is also one of the most healthful ways to make your summer a holiday, let me play you today my buttermilk rhapsody…


Buttermilk is…

Let’s get this out of the way first. True buttermilk is not curd or yogurt churned or whipped with water. Buttermilk is…let me give you no other than the wise sage of Ayurveda, Sushrutha himself on this. Who has said that it is a concoction made of curd and water, churned so that the cream and butter is completely skimmed off. Leaving behind the ambrosia that is “Takara” or "Takaoka" in Sanskrit, "chase" or "math" in Hindi, "moor" in Tamale and "majjige" in Kannada and which has been eulogized as “what ambrosia is to the gods, buttermilk is to human beings”. And so, naturally, in Ayurveda, buttermilk’s astringent, light, cooling and appetizing nature makes it somewhat of a star as both a healer and a food. And its most impressive arena of action is the digestive system, where it is used in a myriad of different ways. Firstly, many Ayurvedic medicines, even some not meant for digestive ailments, are administered with or in buttermilk. Secondly, by itself, buttermilk’s most well known use is in the treatment diarrhoea and dysentery, where Ayurveda believes that it “quenches the fire of diarrhoea”. So much so that even current day pediatricians recommend buttermilk as an excellent means of oral rehydration in children’s diarrhea. It is also used in the treatment of colitis, piles, jaundice, nausea and other liver dysfunction, especially sluggish digestions.

Buttermilk is also used to treat skin disorders like psoriasis and eczema. Buttermilk is the main ingredient in two famous Ayurvedic treatments, both of which are named after it. Takradhara – where medicated buttermilk is released in a stream or dhara over the patient’s forehead to calm and treat conditions like insomnia, depression and other stress related problems. And Takrarishta – a classic Ayurvedic formulation used not only to treat diarrhoea and dysentery but even obesity.

Aaj ka buttermilk – probiotic extraordinaire!
But Ayurveda apart, buttermilk is wonderfully nutritive even from the modern nutritionist point of view. Like curd, it’s one of the best sources of calcium, potassium and phosphorus. Like curd, it’s swimming in the vitamins B12 and riboflavin. But most of all, like curd, it is one of the best probiotic foods. Just to refresh our memories, probiotic foods are foods that are residential quarters for good, friendly bacteria - foods like idli, dosa, appams, pickles, curds, paneer and of course – buttermilk!

Now we call these bacteria “friendly” for many reasons. Firstly because they are kinda fussy about the company they keep. On the one hand, they protect the body’s own colonies of good intestinal bacteria that aid digestion and without which we become susceptible to ailments like diarraheoa. On the other hand, they secrete substances that kill bad, disease-causing microbes. A study published in 2004 in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition suggested that Helicobater pylori, the bacterium responsible for most ulcers, can be shut down by yogurt. Naturally, if yogurt can do this, can buttermilk be far behind?

Secondly, the bacteria in probiotic foods are great digestive aids, crumbling down difficult-to-digest complex carbohydrates and proteins in cereals to the more easily digestible sugars and amino acids, making buttermilk a great digestive. Lastly, the probiotic bacteria heighten the nutritional value of the food by boosting the levels of vitamins in it - especially the critical vitamin B family - and by releasing locked up micronutrients like minerals into more soluble forms.

And with all these impeccable healthy food credentials, buttermilk has one other big bonus point. Since it has all the butter skimmed out of it, it is also oh-so-low on calories. So – picker-upper, tonic, digestive, infection fighter, nutrition booster, weight watcher. And yummy to boot. Could you ask for anything more?

Beautiful buttermilk
Buttermilk, like curd, is great for your skin. Rinsing your face daily with plain buttermilk is a wonderful skin care regimen because it contains lactic acid, which is one of the most popular ingredients in skin care products. For many reasons. Firstly, lactic acid acts as a mild exfoliant, removing dead-skin buildup and making your complexion glow. Secondly, its acidic, astringent nature both lightens and tightens the skin which is why buttermilk is also a popular traditional remedy to lighten freckles, age spots and to treat sunburn. By the way, a good way to lighten suntan is to dip and cover your face, neck, arms etc., with a piece of muslin dipped in slightly sour buttermilk. Wait for about 15 minutes, then wash thoroughly with water.

You’re thinking – I suppose this is the part where she’s going to say that Cleopatra bathed in buttermilk, Well, some say she did and so also did Marie Antoinette – to keep away wrinkles!


Blessed buttermilk…

It’s only natural that one so delicious and healthful will be blessed by the gods. So, the buttermilk gets the nod as good, healthy food by many religions. The Chinese traveller I Ching who travelled extensively in India during the 7th century and visited Buddhists monasteries, noted that in the meals served there, all prepared according to the strict food habits of the Buddhists monks, buttermilk was a favoured beverage. Along with dates, honey, figs, olives and milk, the Koran recommends buttermilk, especially during the fasting month of Ramzan. (Perhaps the reason for this is buttermilk’s nurturing and soothing action on the digestive system, stretched at this time due to fasting!) Buttermilk is also often served at the Sikh gurudwaras and to mark the martyrdom of Guru Arjan Dev, stalls of sweetened buttermilk called Chhabil are set up all over Punjab.

And apart from the many references to buttermilk in Vedic mantras, Lord Krishna’s most endearing and delightful avatar is as the little Maakhan Chor, the Divine Purloiner of Butter. So, the exquisite idol of the child Krishna in the famous Udipi Sri Krishna temple holds the buttermilk churn (manthan) in his right hand and the rope used to turn the churn in his left. It is said that churning butter from buttermilk symbolizes the Lord's role in helping the devotee churn his own soul through devotion to realize the Divine. And in South India, buttermilk is an integral part of Ram Navami celebrations, served as prasadam at temples along with kosambri, panaka and panchamrutham.


And so it is only befitting that I end my buttermilk rhapsody with one of Purandaradasa’s most famous and beautiful composition – “Bhagyada Lakshmi Baaramma”. In which he begs for a visitation by the Goddess Lakhshmi. A composition ass simple, unpretentious, fresh and utterly satisfying as a glass of my grandmother’s buttermilk…..


“Sowbhayda Lakshmi baaramma

Namamma Ni….

Gejjekaalgala dhwaniya torutha

Hejje mele hejjeya nikkuta

Sajjana sadhu poojeya velege

Majjige volagina benne yante

Bhagyalakshmi baramma”


“O Goddess of Good Fortune, come

O Our Mother, come…

To the sound the anklets on Your feet

As You walk

As the good people get ready to pray

As butter emerges from buttermilk

O Lakhshmi of Good Fortune, O Mother

Come….”


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“Manasollasa” (meaning Happy State of Mind in Sanskrit) written by King Sovadeva III, son of the Chalukyan emperor Vikramaditya, is a vast encyclopedia describing in great detail the society at the time. It talks of royal feasts where buttermilk was sipped during meals and the last course consisted of rice and buttermilk with a little salt – just as it is eaten, centuries later till this very day all over South India.


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No-Cook Buttermilk Kadhi


½ litre buttermilk

¼ fresh coconut

2-3 dried chilies

½ piece of ginger

Salt to taste


For seasoning

2 teaspoons oil

1 teaspoon mustard seeds

½ a dried red chili

5-7 curry leaves

Pinch of asafetida


Grind together all ingredients except the buttermilk to a smooth chutney-like paste, adding the ginger last. Add to the buttermilk along with the salt. Heat the oil; add mustard seeds and red chili. When the mustard stops spluttering, add the curry leaves and asafetida. Take off the fire and add to the kadhi. Stir well. Delicious with plain steamed rice and a salad.


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Sankranti

Photo : http://www.flickr.com/photos/mamathasriv athsa/86770762/13.01.2003

Somehow, I always thought the meaning of the word “sankranti” was something to do with sweetness. Perhaps because the sound of it tinkles and falls so sweetly on the ears. Like drops of water merrily bouncing off a steel vessel. Or if they could speak, like the sound of a million spangles of sunlight trembling ecstatically on the gently breathing skin of a river. Or maybe because the word for sugar in Kannada sounds so similar. “Sakkare”. But apparently the origin of the word “sankranti” is from the Sanskrit word “sankrama” which means journey or change. So the festival of “Sankranti” is thus named because it marks the auspicious moment when the sun moves into its northern sphere and so inaugurates a new solar year.
And to mark this blessed journey, in my part of the world, we have a very special tradition called “yellu beerudu”. Which loosely translated means to “fill with til” or sesame seeds. What happens is that in the evening, after everyone is done with the poojas and the feasting, the women and children toodle off to visit friends and relatives. Where, after the niceties are done, you open your “yellu beerudu” bag and whip out the goodies which you proceed to place in a convenient tray or plate that your hostess has thoughtfully provided. First, you put the “yellu” (Kannada for sesame), which is actually a wonderful mixture of til, roasted gram, peanuts, candied til popcorn and tiny chopped bits of jaggery and desiccated coconut. (These days it’s fashionable to pack your “yellu” in trendy, just-like-Tupperware-but-40-times-cheaper, reusable plastic boxes.) You have now “filled with til” by which, I think, you’ve wished your hostess prosperity and other such nice things. Because til is an ancient symbol of goodness and purity, which is why it is til oil that is always used in pooja lamps and the Sanskrit word “taila” for oil comesfrom “til”. Then come a few sticks of sugar cane – I guess to sweeten things up a little more. And, finally, what for me as a kid was the highlight of the whole til-fill business. You open a box and carefully take out and place along side the til mixture and the sugarcane, a set of “sakkare acchus”. Literal translation – sugar moulds. Which doesn’t do justice to what they actually are. Tiny, perfect replicas of all kinds of things made by pouring hot sugar syrup into specially carved wooden moulds and left to harden. Parrots, horses, elephants, bananas bunches, gopurams, shankh-chakrams; many joyously lurid green and pink, some just left a creamy sugar-white, the sugar crystals winking softly at you every now and then. My favourite was the miniature traditional tulsi plant pot.
The first task of an avid sakkare acchu aficionado is of course to try and amass as vast a variety of shapes as possible, passing on the boring, the damaged or the triplicates to whiny younger cousins or indiscriminating adults. Once the collection of sakkare acchus is sufficiently impressive in variety, size and dotted with rare shapes, you can now proceed to actually consume some, starting with what you consider to be the most dispensable. The boorish way of the sakkare acchu Philistine is to just scrunch off bits and gobble the whole thing up in a matter of seconds. But a true acchu connoisseur is more leisurely, unhurried, savouring sugary each moment…
You start by gently licking at the acchu, making sure never to disturb the basic shape. Occasionally, and only if you are a brave and skillful practitioner many Sankrantis old, you may even shave off a layer now and then by gently grating the acchu against your lower canines. And thus you carry on till finally, when the acchu has shrunk enough to fit comfortably into you mouth, you gently pop it in. And sink into a sweet, sticky bliss as the acchu disintegrates and the grainy-sugary flood swills around in your mouth.
So, Happy Sankranti dear reader, as I symbolically fill your tray with much prosperity, happiness and joy. But since it is a festival dedicated to the glorious sun without whom neither the til nor the sugarcane nor you or me would be, I also wish you this beautiful suryanamaskara to bless your days and life.

Om Saptaashwarudham, nakshatra malam,
Chaya lolam, chandra palam,
Gagana sanchari
Om Bhaskaraya namaha
He who rides a chariot driven by seven horses,
Garlanded by stars, beloved of Chaya (shadow)
He who rules the moon and rides across the sky
To This Sun, I bow.

The wonderous thing about growing flowers

“I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers.” Claude Monet
We all have had flowers around us at some time or the other. In gorgeous bouquets to greet us for this, that or the other occasion, reposing in a vase and brightening up the drabbest room, wearing it in our hair, even around our neck especially politicians and then at the feet of the deities. We use flowers all the time to speak for us when words fail us, to wriggle out of sticky situations, to woo and seduce, to pray, supplicate and propitiate (the gods, the boss or the wife!), to beautify and even to grieve and remember. We extract their essences and oils and use them to perfume our worlds, heal our bodies and minds and in the protective embrace of their fragrance, we offload our worries and stress and relax.
But, we leave the growing of flowers to other people. That’s bit like asking someone else to bear and bring up our children and give back them to us when all the difficult bringing-them-up bits are over and they are now self-sufficient, healthy, successful adults. And in doing so, we miss the indescribable experience of watching a flower grow. I know, I should have said, “growing a flower”. But, as in the case of children, we think we “grow” them, but actually all that we do (and can do) is provide the right conditions – sun, food, water, love, protection - and they grow themselves to become whatever they become. A rose, a biochemist, a jasmine, a dancer, a hibiscus, a football player.
So, what am I saying? Two things, actually
First, grow some flowers.
Second, it’s not easy.
Let me tackle the second thing first. Naturally, the question being, if it is not easy, then why do it at all? I’ll answer that in many ways. First, because the best things in life are also the most difficult. A happy marriage, the round chappati, a perfect. All of them take perseverance, practice and patience. Last week, I watched the Olympian girl gymnasts perform what is called rhythmic gymnastics. Each routine lasted for all of a little over a couple of minutes. But as each wisp of a girl wafted and whirled and swirled as if they were spools of gossamer silk thread being woven by a hidden hand or then the daughters of fairies, only we couldn’t see their wings, I knew that in every instant of those incredibly difficult, breathtakingly beautiful few minutes was an entire lifetime of hard, grueling, dedicated work, perhaps to the exclusion of all else. Because, if you think about it, the more effortless a thing seems, the more tireless effort has gone into it.
But, in our delusion that we’ve learnt to shrink time and the universe, we want the shortcut, the easy, the instant and as far as possible, the certain. We want guarantees, a result-oriented race for whom there must be an assured return output for whatever we put in - dahlia seeds or the down payment for those expensive computer animation classes. When in fact there are none. Nothing is certain, not that you will be alive the next minute or become a trillionaire next year. Or that you won’t. Bill Gates didn’t know it when he dropped out of college or the man who just died in a motorcycle accident.
So, grow some flowers. Because you learn that the best things in life don’t come that easy. And because you learn that often the things that give you the greatest satisfaction is stuff that you do just for the heck of it. If anybody were to ask me, I’d add three things to every school curriculum. Music, gardening and a craft - anything that teaches you to make things with your hands, like carpentry or cooking or pottery. So that the children learn not just the power of science but also of art. But more on that later….

Which brings me back an entire circle to point number one. Grow some flowers. Because when the flowers bloom – yup, if it is a labour of love and patience, they will - there might just be all kinds of nice things happening inside you. Even if it’s just one brave, bright marigold gently flaming its globed orangeness against a drab city skyline, the sight of it will be soul food. First, joyful disbelief (especially if you are a first time gardener) that you played a part in making something so utterly beautiful happen. Then, as the disbelief fades, your back will straighten up and your chest puff out just a little in the knowledge that somewhere inside you, maybe in the palms of your hands, tingeing the end of your fingertips is something of the Divine, the Magic that created everything and that created you.
And when they’ve done their blooming, don’t pick the flowers as yet. Let them be, breathing gently on their mother plant and every now and then, in a spare moment, go and look at them and allow yourself to marvel, something that as life turns us into jaded cynics and skeptics, we lose the habit of. Because only when you marvel and wonder can there be joy. I’ll end by borrowing words from a man who loved to watch all kinds of things – snow, apples, spiders, birches - and it turned him into one of the greatest English poets of our time. Robert Frost. “Earth’s the right place for love, I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.” he says in his poem, “Birches”. I couldn’t agree with him more but it’s the last line of that poem that kinda sticks in the head:

“One could do worse that be a swinger of birches.”

One could do worse that be a grower of flowers.

The Belle of India

“Out in the lonely woods the jasmine burns
Its fragrant lamps, and turns
Into a royal court with green festoons
The banks of dark lagoons.” HernyTimrod, American poet
That Nature is a never ending source of wonderment and joy is nothing new, but as marvelous as its creatures and creations is also the fact that it can be so thoughtful. As all mothers are and I guess that is why we say “Mother Nature”. Look, for example, how she takes care of us in the hot, exhausting months of summer. Stocking us with all kinds of fruits and vegetables swollen with water and bursting with nutrients to combat the heat. And as if that is not enough, a whole array of summer flowers, exquisitely scented to soothe and refresh our hot, distraught bodies and spirits. Today, we visit this enchanting summer garden to acquaint ourselves with what has been rightly dubbed the queen of flowers – the jasmine…..
A jasmine by any other name…..
Mogra, motia, chameli, malli poo, jaati, mallige, juhi, mogra or moonlight in the grove…. Even I, being a native of the place where the famous Mysore mallige grows, did not know that there are an astonishing 300 varieties of jasmine. Mostly summer flowers that bloom in the evening or at night, scenting the air their delightful fragrance, to gently and sweetly lull the long, hot, exhausting day out of us. All tracing their ancestry to several centuries back to the Old World - China, Egypt, Persia, Afghanistan and all over the Far East. And it makes me proud to say that many varieties of jasmines are natives of our beloved land including the gorgeously fragrant Mysore mallige, also appropriately called “Belle of India”.
Naturally, you can’t bottle up such a beautiful fragrance for long and the jasmine soon crossed the seas. From Asia to Europe, landing first along the Mediterranean Sea, conquering Greece and Turkey, reaching Western Europe through Spain, then France and Italy and finally landing in England in the latter part of the 17th century. (By the 18th century, jasmine scented gloves became popular in Britain!)

Today, much of modern day perfumery is unthinkable without the jasmine, which is one of the key scents in some of the most celebrated perfumes in the world. Chanel No. 5, created by the legendary Coco Chanel and the famous “Joy” perfume, created by the French designer Jean Patou. A single ounce of Joy, still known as the 'costliest perfume in the world”, contains 10,600 jasmine flowers!

So delectable, so cool, so calm, so uplifting…
There is a reason for those 10,600 jasmines. As the story goes, “Joy” was created in 1930 to chase away the Depression blues that West was in the grip of. So, jasmine was a natural selection because both in Ayurveda and aromatherapy, the jasmine and its essential oil have powerful mood uplifting and antidepressant properties. Aromatherapists prescribe jasmine as a calming agent, to soothe stress, pain, and anxiety. Naturally, for the disbelievers who pooh-pooh all this herbal mumbo-jumbo, there is some research data. Dr. Alan Hirsch, a researcher on the effects of smell and taste on physiology, published a research report in which he has stated that inhaling jasmine scent increases beta waves in the brain. Beta waves are associated with increased states of alertness.
Now tell me, what more can you ask of a flower to do for your drooping self on a hard, hot, sweaty hot summer’s day?
But, though its relaxing, soothing qualities make it something of a summer specialist, the jasmine is also a flower for other seasons, therapeutically speaking. In Ayurveda, the jasmine essential oil is an important one, used in nourishing, warming sadhanas for vatta types in autumn and winter and to calm the mind and the stomach of Pitta types in the rainy season. It is also used as an anti nausea treatment during purgation therapy and for respiratory problems and uterine disorders. And its soothing, cooling, rejuvenating qualities make it the key ingredient in the famous “chameli ka tel” popular all over North India to both scent the hair and cool the brain…

and oh so sexy….

"Perfume is the unseen but unforgettable and ultimate fashion accessory. It heralds a woman's arrival and prolongs her departure." Coco Chanel
Naturally, a flower with a scent so exhilarating cannot but also be…. yup, an aphrodisiac! Its reputation as an intoxicant is ancient and formidable, and while researching it, I came across a whole clutch of stories ranging from the possible to the bizarre. Naturally, Cleopatra figured prominently in most of them and according to one story, she used jasmine in her hair when she wanted to distract Marc Antony during “business” meetings! But my favourite story features not the gorgeous Queen of the Nile but elephants. Apparently when elephants need some help to reproduce, it is said that the owners put jasmine oil on them to excite them. True or false – dunno. But on a more serious note, the jasmine used as an aphrodisiac by many ancient civilizations - the Chinese, Indians, the Arabians, the Egyptians (and possibly Cleopatra!). Even today, aroma therapists recommend it. And you can try it any which way – from dabbing your pillow with a drop or two of the oil to even wearing the flowers in your hair. So now, you know why Malli poo is so popular with us South Indian women!!!

Whither jasmine?
Like the rose, the essential oil of the jasmine is one of the most coveted and expensive in the world. Naturally, since it takes over 8 million jasmine flowers to produce 1 kilo or 2750 kgs to make about 12 drop of Jasmine oil! And you would think that the best jasmine oil in the world would come from the country where it originated and has grown for centuries - India. Sadly, the story of the Indian jasmine is the same as Indian saffron. The best jasmine oil comes not from India but from countries like France, Italy, Morocco, Egypt, China, Japan and Turkey. In France, growing jasmine and distilling its perfume is a billion-dollar industry and the town of Grasse in the French Rivera is so famous for jasmine flowers that the best jasmine is often referred to as “Grasse jasmine”.
But, as I bemoan the current status of the Indian jasmine, I rejoice because in the course of writing this piece, I found something else. In my garden, there are 3 beautiful creepers planted by my father that trail their beautiful, delicate dark green feathery selves to the ground like girls drying their hair in the sun. Every year, for just 2 to 3 months, to coincide with the monsoons, they stud themselves with the most exquisitely scented star-shaped white flowers that start as blush-pink-dipped buds in the evening and bloom to pure white virginal stars the next morning. They are my mother’s favourite flower and their perfume is like no other, heady but with an intoxication that is delicate and utterly enchanting. I only knew it by the local Kannada name by which it is popular all over Karnataka. Jaji. Till I researched for this article and found its botanical name - Jasminum officinale grandiflorum. Which is the very same jasmine that grows in Grasse and finds its way to the most fabulous perfumes in the world! Its English name is Poet’s jasmine.
And so, I end this article with Rabindranath Tagore’s paean to this exquisite denizen of India….

AH, these jasmines, these white jasmines!
I seem to remember the first day when I filled my hands
with these jasmines, these white jasmines.have loved the sunlight, the sky and the green earth;
I have heard the liquid murmur of the riverthrough the darkness of midnight;
Autumn sunsets have come to me at the bend of the road
in the lonely waste, like a bride raising her veil
to accept her lover.Yet my memory is still sweet with the first white jasmines
that I held in my hands when I was a child…..

Tel Maalaish!

You’d think that the prerequisite for an “oil bath” would be…well, oil, right? Well, that too, but the way it was in my maternal grandfather’s house, oil (lots of it, naturally) was only one of the ingredients. Indispensable were also at least one able-bodied minion with strong, sure hands and lots of stamina, gallons and gallons of hot water bubbling away in a copper cauldron a little smaller than an average Mumbai flat and chickpea flour (besan ka atta). More about the chickpea flour later. First the oil bath…
There were so many members in the joint family that lived in our ancestral home (my mother says at least about 30-35) of which my grandfather was yajamana (head) that the weekly oil bath had to happen in batches. Naturally, the women were in a separate batch and the men and the chilte-pilte (Kannada slang for bunch of kids) were in the privileged lot. Which meant that other than taking their clothes off (the men retained just a skimpy cotton langoti), everything else was done by the minions. Naturally, as the yajamana, my grandfather went first. My mother says that he made an impressive sight. He was a short, bald man and but stripped down to his almost-altogether, what hit the eye was the gold – in his ears, around his neck, circling his wrists and on his fingers and even around his rather substantial belly.
But even the gold had to step aside for the oil….
It was a magnum opus that lasted at least an hour. First, his entire body was vigorously massaged with warm oil. Of course the only thing that my grandfather did was to occasionally proffer a limb or make a body part more accessible. The actual massaging was done by the minion. Who, I’ll have you know, was often a woman called Monti! Yeah, I gasped too when my mother told me this but at the time, nobody thought that it was the slightest bit “odd”, just the most natural thing. Anyway, once the oil massage was done to everyone’s satisfaction (my grandfather’s and the minion’s), it was time for that chickpea flour. Yup, no new fangled stuff like soap to take the oil off. It had to be lashings of chickpea flour, which was rubbed – naturally by the minion – into the skin almost as vigorously and lavishly as the oil. Remember, these were days when probably the word “face scrub” and “exfoliate” hadn’t even entered the average Western beautician’s dictionary but in my grandfather’s house, they knew a thing or two about skincare. Because when the whole enchilada was finally washed off with the almost boiling hot water from the copper cauldron, the skin emerged beautifully soft, moist and tender as a baby’s bottom, glowing and ever so slightly flushed and tingling, wearing the faintest, gentlest patina of oil that lingered the whole day like a sweet memory. Which was, you could say, also roughly the state of the mind.
So what’s the big deal about these “oil baths” and why do the Southies get so glassy-eyed with ecstasy about it? Well, technically the term is a misnomer and only a dye-in-blood South Indian will understand what it means. Namely that we don’t bath in oil, as the term might suggest to the uninitiated (and how sorry I feel for them!). But that we first anoint, slather, soak and massage every known body part accessible within the bounds of decency with warm oil, mostly in full public view in a sort of Sunday morning family event. When we can lug ourselves out of the euphoric, dreamy haze that it induces, we wash it all off with oceans of hot water and then often totter off to a hot lunch, finished off by cool buttermilk only slightly less in quantity than the hot water that we bathed in. Finally, to a crescendo of gutsy, blissful sighs, we finally sink into a Kumbhakarna siesta from which we awake ready to face anything. World War 3 or a Rakhi Sawant video.

But please don’t be misled by my jocular tone because an oil bath is actually some very serious business of therapy and healing. You see, it all goes back to the ancient wisdom of Ayurveda. And Ayurveda, like yoga, is not just a system of medicine but a way of life. So, it prescribes not only for the sick to heal, but also for the healthy to stay healthy. In Ayurveda, health is a state where the body is in harmony not only with its own nature but also with the nature outside. And since everything including life itself is constantly changing, this is considered as a dynamic state of being, a balancing act where you have to constantly adjust and fine tune your body not just by its doshas, not just by the season but even on a daily basis. So dinacharya is the daily morning ritual that Ayurveda prescribes that readies you both in body and spirit to face the day. And an “oil bath” or rather massaging yourself with oil before your bath is the integral part of it. So, once upon a time, an “oil bath” was a daily event. With time, it became a weekly thing and now, it’s almost a forgotten thing, remembered perhaps once a year on Diwali day, when a little oil is ritualistically applied on the head.
So why is this “oil bath” so important and what does it do, therapeutically speaking? Naturally it all begins with the skin, the body’s largest organ and the main organ of our sense of touch. Touch has been used since time immemorial as an important method of healing, especially in the world’s two most ancient systems of medicine, Ayurveda and Chinese medicine and massage or abhyanaga is one of them. When the body is massaged, the very first thing that happens is almost instant and complete relaxation. because the human skin is loaded with nerve endings, the receptors that receive and transmit all sensation to the brain. There are roughly 350 such nerve endings in each square millimeter of human skin, the hands being supersensitive with each fingertip having more than 3,000 touch receptors.
So, in an oil massage, skin first meets skin, introduced by warm, silky oil. It has been said that the effects of an oil massage are similar to being intensely loved. And love it has to be because in Ayurveda, oil is called sneha, which also means love. So skin begins to love skin, one surrendering and allowing the fingertips to caress and press, rub and probe gently, even gently pinch; the palms to knead and press and smooth. According to Ayurveda, for the sneha – and we could well be referring both oil and love! - to reach the deepest layers, it must be massaged for 800 matras or roughly 5 minutes. Naturally because as we all know, you can’t hurry love. And thus loved and pampered, the blissed out skin begins to send a flood of messages to the brain to relax, wind down, let go. Now these messages get stored forever in the memory of the skin so that with every repetition of a massage, the skin remembers and the relaxation is quicker and easier. Massaging also generates body heat, which stimulates the millions of blood vessels located just below the surface of the skin. The act of rubbing the skin’s surface with oil also knocks off the build of layers of dead skin cells, leaving your skin soft and glowing. Incidentally, did you know that the skin sheds 500 million dead cells every day?!.
Okay, so that’s the obvious stuff. But what if I tell you that the daily oil massage also stimulates almost every critical body part or system - the muscles, the nervous system, even the respiratory system because as the body relaxes, your breathing slows and calms down, improving the oxygenation of the cells. It kick starts vital organs and gets the prana energy flowing, all of which results in a general feeling of being rejuvenated and energized. It’s like waking up the inside of you just the way you do every morning!
And we’ve only just begun.
Because the oil massage is also a great way to detoxify. Toxins accumulate in the body for a lot of reasons – stress, food, environmental pollution, lack of exercise, the effect of seasons and according Ayurveda, the imbalance of our own doshas, etc., etc. Their accumulation is the cause of much that ails us; in fact Ayurveda considers this the root of all disease – from arthritis to diabetes to urinary disorders. So, the act of massaging activates the body to start getting rid of its waste and toxins in different ways. By making you sweat gently. By getting that circulation up and running and most importantly, by waking up sluggish intestines and bowels!
Last but most importantly, an oil massage is a bit like your TV remote control. There is a sloka in Ayurveda which says,
“Shirah shravana padeshu
Tam visheshena sheelayet.“
Roughly translated it means that 3 areas of the body must be massaged are the head, the ears and the feet. Because you see, with these 3 areas, we can access the deepest interiors of our body to almost every organ and gland to retune and reset them. You’re thinking, the head makes sense because that’s where the brain as well important endocrine glands like the pituitary and the pineal glands are located. But the feet? And even curiouser, the ears? Ah, according to Ayurveda, these two areas (along with others like the hands) are considered vital junction boxes connected to the entire body. For example, points all over the outer ear or the visible portion of the ear are considered connected to almost all the major organs and glands in the body including heart, lungs, spleen, kidneys, liver, pancreas, gall bladder reproductive organs, the thyroid, prostrate and pituitary glands. The ear lobes are connected to the eyes and teeth.
The feet are no less important. The big toe gives us access the brain and helps vision. The index toe releases energy into the lungs. The third toe gets us access to the intestines, the fourth to the kidney and the little toe to …..believe it or not, the heart. And on the sole of each foot are 4 of the 107 marma points, vital points of the body, so vital that hitting them can grievously injure, even kill - as is done in Kerala’s ancient art of Kalaripayyat.
And these are only some of the physical benefits of an “oil bath”. Did I mention that it also helps improve vitality, strength, stamina, concentration, flexibility, youthfulness, makes you sleep like a baby, feel good about yourself …..oh, what the heck, let me just quote the wise sage Charaka himself,
"The body of one who uses oil massage regularly is affected much even if subjected to injury or strenuous work. By using oil massage daily, a person is endowed with pleasant touch, trimmed body parts and becomes strong, charming and least affected by old age." Charaka Samhita Vol. 1, V: 88-89
Isn’t it breathtaking how exquisitely simple it all is? How far just a few cupfuls of warm, sweet sneha and a pair of sure, loving hands can take you down the happy road to health and well being? I have this sneaking suspicion that my passionate and life long affair with music began because as a baby, every morning before a bath, my ayah would give me an oil massage so thorough and so delightful that like my grandfather’s elder sister-in-law, I’d fall into a deep, ecstatic exhausted slumber afterwards. While massaging me, she’d sing a song. It was concieved when Guru Dutt and Johnny Walker went to Calcutta and one morning watched a local maalish-wala show off his talents. Guru Dutt asked Johnny Walker to remember the scene. He did and it appeared as this song in the classic 1957 film Pyaasa and became so famous that a song with Johnny Walker became mandatory in the formula Hindi film box office hit. The lyricist Sahir Ludhianvi puts it a little differently but is as eloquent as the sage Charaka on the benefits of an oil massage…..
Sar jo tera chakraaye, ya dil dooba jaaye
Aaja pyaare paas hamaare, kaahe ghabraaye.. kaahe ghabraaye
Sun sun sun, are beta sun, is champi mein bade bade gun
Laakh dukhon ki ek dava hai kyoon na aazmaaye
Kaahe ghabraaye, kaahe ghabraaye

In consultation with Dr. C. S. Anil Kumar – B.A.M.S., M.D., (Ay) D.N.Y., Physician Consultant in Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy and Professor at JSS Ayurvedic Medical College, Mysore.
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