Victims of monetary system

Just came back from a trip to Kolkata and the Sunderbans. In the station was a huge line of labourers waiting for more than 12 hours, sleeping and eating in the station. When asked I came to know they are waiting for trains to go to bangalore, hyderabad etc to do labour work as the wage rate in west bengal is almost half that of these states. People in lakhs are moving out in search of a living. As soon as a train arrives there is a mad rush to get into the general compartment and the police screams and pushes them. They looked no more than cows, buffaloes or the poultry chicken. I was fortunate to go for a great ride on a private bpat across the river in the Sunderbans, the home of the Bengal Tiger. Chatting to an NGO came to know that 2 islands there had got submerged due to the effects of global warming. Something I had heard of only in theory but here was reality. The boatman worked very hard and was very skilled but earned only 3000 rupees a month and had to support a wife and two kids. He said no one studies beyond 10th due to lack of money. The island in which they lived though visited by foreigners and Indian tourista and having posh cottages had no doctor to treat the people. Someone from the city came twice a month and checked the waiting 100-150 people and gave medicines until he came again. if someone was serious they had to be taken on boat to the city and many died on the way including women during childbirth. It was a sad story. Money is so important in todays world that humans have no value.

Some facts about the commercial milk we drink

Ever wondered what happens to milk when it is pasteurized and homogenised and how it affects our body? being a health conscious person I like to find out the truth about the foods we eat on a regular basis and how it affects our health. Since we drink milk almost everyday in various forms and living in a city cannot get pure fresh milk we have to rely on commercial dairy milk. In the dairy milk is pasteurized and homogenised before we get it. So what exactly this means and is it good for us?
 First of all let's look at what pasteurization is! In simple terms it is a process in which the milk is heated to high temperatures to kill any bacteria present. Fair enough... but the heating kills all the enzymes as well and these are vital components of milk! In fact, the 'death' of the enzymes is how they determine that the process is successful. When all the enzymes are dead, the pasteurization process is considered to be complete!
This process not only kills the enzymes and any bad bacteria but also friendly bacteria such as Lactobacillus. This means that the digestion of the various nutrients such as proteins, fats and sugars then has to be carried out by the body without any assistance from the naturally occurring enzymes and bacteria in the milk, and because of their absence additional undue stress is placed on the pancreas.
 Raw unadulterated, unprocessed milk which is hard to find these days but our grandparents probably drank everyday was a 'living' food full of enzymes, beneficial bacteria, vitamins, minerals, fats, proteins and lactose, (a sugar). Leave a glass of this sitting at normal room temperature and the bacteria within the milk will ferment the sugars into lactic acid producing sour milk, which ironically is even more nutritious than the fresh milk because it is partly digested. 
Bad hygiene?
So, why is the milk pasteurized in the first place? The answer to that one as you probably know is to make milk safer by killing any contaminants present. This is correct but it is not the true reason. The reality is that pasteurized milk is just as susceptible to contamination as raw milk.
Pasteurization has only come into 'vogue' in the last few decades as the commercialization of the dairy industry evolved. It is a cheap substitute for effective sanitization. If cows, dairies and workers were scrupulously clean, pasteurization would not be necessary... but that's too expensive and so the simple way is to 'kill' everything in the milk. There are some parallels to the increasing practice of irradiating meat... it's a lot cheaper to 'zap' it rather than avoid the contamination in the first place.
Milk which is pasteurized is an 'empty' food like so many other processed foods and people are unwittingly drinking it thinking that it is good for you, when the opposite is true!
But it gets worse...
What about milk which is pasteurized AND homogenized? This is the type of milk that is most prevalent in supermarkets today and people are unwittingly ingesting a lot of undesirable fat.
Our younger readers won't realize this but the good 'ole' milk always had a layer of cream which settled on the top of the milk. Homogenization is a technique used to make milk uniform in texture. It breaks up the fat in the cream fraction into very small particles. The tiny globules of fat which result from this process allows a deadly enzyme called xanthine oxidase to get into the body.
This enzyme can damage artery walls by causing lesions to occur on the lining. All milk fat excluding that from humans have this enzyme... but, it is not normally a problem as the fat globules that contain the enzyme are too large to pass through the intestinal wall and into the bloodstream. So, in non homogenized milk the enzyme will pass through the body without doing any damage. Not so however, after the milk has been homogenized because the particles are then small enough to squeeze through the intestinal linings!
Enough said!
Oop's... what about the growth hormones and antibiotics that are given to cows and present in the milk? No... I think that I'll give this issue a miss... have said enough!
 

A happy world

If the world was borderless there would be so much more land and resources for the world population to share. The shortages, poverty, wars, domination of one country over another for power is because of these boundaries which have created the same kings which we had in the past who wanted to just conquer and destroy and widen their territory. if you look at some of the nations who are the happiest you will find nations like Gautemala where 56% live in poverty but they have enough coffee, sugar and bananas to share,Luxembourg which has an army of 800 people and dont have a navy or airforce or Sweden where national taxes are most effectively used for peoples welfare and among other things the state provides universal tax-funded childcare, parental leave, health care, education (including university), retirement pensions and sick leave. In fact, most of the services for the public are free, so people dont crib about paying taxes or Iceland which makes very good use of its natural resource of volcanoes and geysers and makes electricity so cheap from geothermal power that countries like Africa and Australia send steel to be processed there. The country is a favorite stamping ground of artists and cultivates a creative spirit; the government supports writers with generous subsidies. Switzerland , one of the top garbage recyclers in the world (66% to 96% recyclable materials recycled). They achieve this by keeping recycling free, but asking money for regular garbage – thus giving people a financial incentive to recycle.they have high level of social tolerance and liberal values. teir streets, air and tap water are clean. But a country like US does not rank well in the happiness sclale and you need just loads to MONEY to be happy there. The people are 3 times richer than what they were in the 1950s there but happiness hasn't increased in this decade. Materialism is not the way to be happy. Optimum use and sharing and distribution of resources which nature has given to the borderless Earth in plenty and living sustainably while providing quality life to the population is the key to live healthy and happier lives. Living in RBE has to be designed around this because money cannot buy happiness. What is the ultimate goal of human life? Everyone wants to be happy, and happiness is certainly a missing factor in economic measurements like GDP and GNP. These well-established measurements are unable to define the level of happiness we attain through our economic growth and development.

Why are parents killing their children

Today I was taking my dog out for a walk when I saw some kids waiting for their school bus and some parents with them. Among them was a couple with their two kids. The son  must have been around 8-9 years old and the daughter maybe 3 or 4. From their accent I could tell they had returned from the US and now settled in this affluent township and happily sending their children to the best international school in the city. The son was overweight for reasons I do not know but I guessed it could be due to sedentary habits and bad diet which most well off kids have these days.
The reason I wanted to write this post today is that I saw the mother carrying a stethescope in her hand which said she was in the medical field and yet she was feeding her little daughter instant noodles for breakfast robbing her of the vital nutrients that a growing child needs. Have parents become so busy or lazy that they do not even think anymore about what inputs they are giving to their children. Most working couples do not exercise anyway which makes their children also not know the importance of living a healthy, disease free life and on top of them they give them fast food which makes them fat and unhealthy.
It’s not something we, as parents, like to hear and yet it’s precisely what we need to realize: if our children are fat, the chances are we bear a big load of the blame. Kids aren’t the ones pulling the car into the drive-through lane at McDonald’s for dinner between dance lessons and karate practice. Again. They aren’t the ones zipping past the fruits and veggies section in favor of high-fat, calorie-dense convenience meals that promise to be ready after five minutes or less in the microwave. They don’t keep diaries crammed with the take-out menus for nearby restaurants, nor program the phone number of the pizza joint on their cell phones. Parents do.
So when it comes to wondering why our children are overweight, we need to spend a little less time looking at their chubby arms and legs and more time looking in our own mirrors. After all, we’re presumably the grown-ups. To us falls the task of saying “no.” Of making short-term decisions — like what’s for dinner — based on long-term health consequences. Of exercising the self-discipline and time management needed to prepare meals that don’t harm our kids That is our job.

Is table salt good for you?

Did you know this about the salt you consume everyday?

A great video- 300 Years of FOSSIL FUELS in 300 Seconds

Indian public's taste of music

When I see programs like music awards or go to friends houses and see their kids swaying to bollywood music it makes me feel this country's taste of music and lyrics is going downhill. Songs like Sheela ki jawani. Munni badnam hui bag most awards and you see them topping the charts and kids loving it and dancing to them. Though I believe my thinking is quite modern I still prefer old music because of the melody and poetic beauty that they had and somehow cannot relate to the junk music of today. Some of the remixes are so pathetic that you wonder what has happened to the creative abilities of the modern day composers for them to take beautiful songs of the past and tweak them horribly. Why do they need to copy at all? Maybe, as I wrote in my previous post, children with poetic abilities are being pushed to become engineers and doctors so we lose them and therefore unable to produce anymore Tagores.

A child is not an assemblyline product. He is unique and special in his own way.

I feel very sad when I see the way kids are being brought up by parents. How many understand that every child has some unique capabilities and is beautiful in his/her own way and that uniqueness needs to be nurtured for that child to be successful and happy. When I go to schools I see boards with names of children who have got ranks in board exams or entrances displayed with pride. While those intelligent children have indeed done hard work and brought laurels to their school and pride to their parents( who can now walk with their head held high in society) what about those who have excelled in art or music or martial art or sports? Is topping in exams the only thing that brings pride to parents and schools? Are those other kids who may not be very good at Maths or science but gifted with abilities that can make them great in other fields not important enough to be praised? Why do their names not appear in most school adverts? I know schools that make the children study and study and just study with no play. They do not even have the space for children to run around and grow into healthy individuals. But who cares? These children will come out of such schools with ranks and then do great jobs, have big salaries and then become fat and stressed and sick.
School and college education is like a factory churning out engineers and doctors and MBAs just like products on the assembly line with same specifications.
Children forget what they are passionate about, their interests, their talent in other areas in the process of becoming successful as the society defines it.
This beautiful poem by Kahlil Gibran is perhaps the finest words written on this subject.

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.

Beware of money minded doctors and hospitals