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A guide to good health

Book Review Title: Weightless: Unburden Author: Dr Mickey Mehta Publisher: Popular Prakashan, Mumbai, 2023 Pages: 240 This is not a book to be read. It is a set of instructions that are to be put into practice if you wish to have long life with good health. Let me tell you at the outset that practising what the author is asking you to is going to be tough, as tough as becoming a genuine yogi. If you want to enjoy some of the simple delights of life like a weekend drink, then you’d better forget this book and go ahead with a wellness programme of your choice. This book can make you a saint. In fact, it intends to do precisely that. In one of the last pages, introducing the author to the readers, the book says that Dr Mickey Mehta’s vision is “Connecting with 8 billion hearts to make wellness the religion no. 1.” Wellness is indeed a religion in Dr Mehta’s vision. The book starts with a theoretical framework which is founded entirely on Indian philosophy, essentially Yoga a...
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The Patriot

Fiction India's new Lady of Justice Raju is shocked out of his deep sleep early in the morning by the doorbell that rings rather imperiously. His mobile phone shows the time: 4.04 am. Who can come visiting at this unearthly hour? Raju looks out through the window and sees a saffron-robed man with a saffron shawl wrapped around his torso standing outside. An alarm bell rings in Raju’s heart. As soon as Raju opens the door, the saffron man hands him a sealed envelope and walks away into the darkness without uttering a single word. The letter is addressed to Mr Rajashekharan, LD Clerk, Shantigram. It is written in extremely formal language. The letter charges Raju of being antinational and orders him to prove his patriotism to concerned authorities at the earliest failing which he will have to face severe consequences under some section of the Naya Nyaya Samhita, New Penal Code. Raju sits with a tremor in his heart on the sofa in his small living room. He doesn’t want to dis...

Feelings are Snowballs

Illustrations by Copilot Designer Feelings are like snowballs. They make a small start as minor emotions or subtle reactions. Unless they are brought under the control of rational thought, they are likely to intensify as we dwell on them or as new experiences amplify them. It’s just like the snowball picking up more snow on the way and growing bigger. And bigger. That big snowball gathers greater momentum as it hurtles down the hill. Soon it will acquire an unstoppable energy. Quite the same thing happens to feelings. They become powerful enough to control our thoughts and actions. It should be the other way around: our reason should control our emotions. Let us consider an example. Nationalism is a feeling. Contrast it with rational truths. A simple rational truth is 2 + 2 = 4. Indisputable. We all learnt at school that water boils at 100 degrees Celsius. That is another indisputable truth. Unless you’re living on Kilimanjaro where water boils at about 80 degrees Celsius. On the...

A Journey

Illustration by Copilot Designer The weekend carried me far. I travelled by Kerala’s state-run buses to a place 250 kilometres from home on Saturday and back home on Sunday. I was going to attend the wedding of the daughter of an old friend. A few other friends were coming too. It was going to be an old pals’ meet in a way. We, the pals, lived under the same roof from 1975 to 1978. We were teenage students then. Now we are all in our mid-sixties. How much has life changed us? I was curious to know that. Life had transformed me in ways I wouldn’t have imagined back then. What about them? The bus journey became quite bumpy and rough as I crossed Trissur and moved towards Kozhikode. The highway was being broadened. A lot of work was going on all along and the dust rushed into the bus prompting me to cover my nostrils with my handkerchief which became a mask. I closed my eyes too. The bus moved on and my mind moved inward. I have already reached the last stage of personal developme...

Survival on Planet Earth

Book Review Title: Survival at Stake Author: Poorva Joshipura Publisher: HarperCollins India, 2023 Pages: 317 (including over 100 pages of Notes) E verything on planet earth is interconnected. The survival of one depends on the survival of another. That is the fundamental message of Poorva Joshipura’s book, Survival at Stake . An example from the book for that interconnectedness: “Phytoplankton are eaten by small zooplankton, who are consumed by larger zooplankton, who are consumed by fish, who are consumed by sharks – you get the picture.” The phytoplankton, in turn, requires the whales for oxygen supply. The relative pronoun ‘who’ is used by the author for the animals intentionally. She believes that humans are just another species of animals and the undue importance given to this species has been immensely detrimental to the other species as well as the planet. We, humans, have misused the animals in many ways: for food, sports (hunting as well as games like cockfigh...