Pashuprash

The extreme weather conditions this winter were harsher on the animals than humans.
At village Maniyarpur, my father was a worried man. Someone who would save his pennies was seen spending heavily on his cattle, usually on medicine. Three cows had delivered within a short span, in the middle of sub zero temperature, and as expected had fallen prey to the cold.
Cattle, in this part of the world are treated like god. We worship them in the day, and leave them out as the night falls. As we sleep cuddled in our thick quilts, drink warm water and burn tons of wood to maintain temperature. The cattle gets a worn-torn sack to cover its back, and possibly some burnt leftover of hay to possibly give an impression of a heater.
We had been producing tons of Chyavnprash, a two thousand year old ayurvedic recipe full of Indian herbs, of course for humans, as this is an expensive formulations and not everyone can afford this.
Perceived to be extremely useful human body during winters, to fight cold and improve metabolism, vigor and vitality.

Much out of seeing the plight of the animals and some for commercial sense, there is this unique formulation that has been tried.
The recipe is as follows.
Amla (Indian gooseberry) : 80 kg
Ghee - clarified butter : 6 kg
Gud – Jaggery : 70 kg
Heapto safe forte : 200 gm
(pittapapat,arjun,kakmasi,mandur bhasma,kasmarda,
Bhumi amla,kalmegha,punarnava,guguchi,daruhira,amalki,vidigo.haritki and bhringraj)
Ruchina : 200 gm
(chitrak mool,harrey,sathey,kalimirch,pipal,ajwain,vidrikand,sariva,rakt,
Ponarnava,bhringraj,saindhalavan, kalanamak,yavaksar,saunf, vidang)
Bootisa : 500 gm
Prakshep : 500 gm
Satavar : 5 kg
Ghritkumari (aloe Vera juice) : 2 lts
Til oil (sesame seed oil) : 3 lts
Mangraila : 5 kg
Ajwain : 500 gm
Sodium benzoate : 80 gm

Process: steam cook Amla – deseed – pulp – fry in clarified butter and til oil to retain minimum moisture, fried Pisthi will be 35 kg – make a paste of Satavar – mix Jaggery well in water to form a solution – add Pisthi to Jaggery solution and mix well, cooking at 80 degrees– add Satavar - add all additives and preservatives – cook till paste – pour immediately in final pack or else it will solidify.

Different herbs have different utility, to give it a commercial sense, Satavar, mangraila and Jaggery has been used to enhance lactation.
In fact, it’s quite good enough for human consumption.

Chyavanpraash

According to Ayurveda, Chyawanprash comes under the category of 'Rasayana' which aims at maintaining youthfulness, vigor, vitality of the body and keeping away aging process, senility and debility. It maintains the proper functioning of the cells and rejuvenates the cells. As such it also keeps away diseases.

The Rasayanas are mean to impart long, healthy, disease free life, intelligence, power of memory, youth and luster. Among all the Rasayanas, Chyawanprash is most useful and famous. It is the most popular rejuvenating Ayurvedic tonic in India having a consistency of Jam and consisting of about 35 natural herbs including Amla (Embellica Officinalis) the richest natural source of vitamin C. It works on the immune system of the body protecting body against everyday infections like cough cold and fever. Thus it is very useful in children, old persons, tubercular patients and debilitated persons."

I clipped the above quote from an Indian web site. Obsessing a little here. Those of you who have listened to the Kitchen Doctor tapes have heard this story:

Long, long ago, there was a sage in India named Chyawan who lived in a forest. His hair was matted and he was covered with tree growth after years of meditating in the same place. A young princess was blindfolded and dancing in the forest when her hands touched the hair of the sage. Her father, the king, explained to the sage that it was the custom in his country that a woman could only touch one man in her lifetime. He thus requested the sage to marry to daughter. Chyawan asked if he could have two months to prepare for the wedding for he wished to be young again so as to afford his wife conjugal bliss. Thereupon, he developed the recipe for longevity that has remained India's most popular remedy, some say for 2000 years, others since the times of the Vedas.

Today, there are many recipes for Chyawanprash, ranging in ingredients from a mere 20 or so herbs and spices to 70 or 80 ingredients. However, the main ingredient, regardless of the exact formula is always amla or amalaki, a tropical gooseberry that is the world's richest source of vitamin C. It is, moreover, a source that remains stable in storage for years. The rest of the ingredients vary from regenerative herbs for the reproductive system such as ashwagandha and shatavari to spices that aid assimilation and digestion.

In Ayurveda, it is believed that most disease stems from problems in the digestive system. The Iroquois and many others share this belief. Ayurveda breaks digestion into three stages: the stomach, the small intestine, and the large intestines. Food that is assimilated in the stomach is used very quickly for the building of fluids, blood and lymph. What is assimilated in the small intestine affects mainly muscles and fat; and what is assimilated in the colon is used to regenerate the skin, bones, hair, nerve sheaths, reproductive fluids, and brain. Fragility of the bones and senility are thus colon problems and they are "vata" conditions, derangements of the air and ether. All proper maintenance requires good digestion and assimilation; otherwise, worn out tissues will not be regenerated, i.e. replaced by healthy new tissues.

A "rasayana" is a formula for just such tissue rejuvenation, and Chyawanprash is the most famous, and in my opinion, the most effective of these highly esoteric remedies. Moreover, it has been so thoroughly studied that it is legal to market Chyawanprash as an antioxidant, the best that has ever been researched in modern laboratories.
Sounding too good to be true? Little by little, all systems of the body work better, but most especially those that relate to the lower chakras.

In India, those with the means to afford Chyawanprash take it every day, usually at least from age 40 onwards. They generally use about 1-3 teaspoons a day.

As one might expect, in India, many people take Chyawanprash in warm milk, but I suggest that most people just eat some straight from the bottle. The taste is interesting, a bit sweet-sour in flavor. Most people are surprised that Chyawanprash tastes as good as it does. My dogs fight over the almost empty containers and all the dogs I've had for the last 20 years prefer Chyawanprash to bones.

Copyright by Ingrid Naiman 2002

Mystique Smile

You were the same as I have seen you last,
Last night and all the last nights,

In a motion so involuntary,
My hand moved to touch your smile,
Like ripples in still water,
A new dimension opened to my effort,
Though the tips felt a cold of the screen,
The soul got stirred,

I was at the Louvre it seemed,
All by myself among those columns and arches,
And the lady with the mystique smile,
Dwarfed me with her magnificence,

An era rewound,
In a flash of a moment
A dozen years and a zillion memories passed thru my eyes,
Within the closed lids,
Filled an ocean of droplets,
Making a slight pass dropped the most beautiful pearl.
The smile on my face was better than yours.
Yes I did see you smile, in a similar curve.
Reality could never be this romantic.
No, I do not wish anything more than this.
A sight as close as this,
After a prolonged forbidden aura,

Virtual bliss,
Thanks for being around,
Now, how do I close the screen?

Prerna- a real inspiration

It used to be small class of 25 odd students in our sales and marketing class.
Prerna had handled it well, quiet by the book.
The case studies, the project works and role rehearsals.
As outspoken I was outside the class, the more I found myself dumbfound, in front of her.

We had known that she had done some real sales work at Blue-dart and thus had a command in performance sales, something that was only theory for us.
Later, as we moved on and faced numerous sales calls, we remembered all that she had preached.

All of us, of that batch have moved on in life.
and Prerna still has some inspiring stories for us.

It is only after a gap of 14 years, that some of us got together to know of what had gone through Prerna’s life in these years.
Having been diagnosed with breast cancer, some 11 years ago, she has been fighting the disease even though it spread to almost all parts of her anatomy. Hip, spine, thigh and even eye and brain.
For a woman to having survived 11 years of grueling pain is an accomplishment. She even had a baby in the course.
Managed the household and was never a burden on anyone, Vivek enlightens us.
Her husband Vivek finds inspiration in his wife and so it was him who’d nomenclature her.

Prerna, just published a book, by her name, being launched by Dia Mirza, with the help of Cancer society.
Some people surely live worth their name.
I wish her the best in life and beyond.
It is nice having known you Prerna.

homan err..aah!

Is it worth this effort?
Have I lost an inspiration?
Have I hurt my silly little ego?
Am I looking for a hundred lame excuses?
Why am I not looking for one to forget it all?
Do we need a reason for all?
Could it not be like before?
Why don’t those faces reach my dreams anymore?
That perpetual smile is no more
Why is there so much of distance?
Why were all the imperfections admired then?
Why do they seem like folly now?
Why do I feel like existing in virtuosity?
Just a number, a digital face and a crackled voice,
Why do feel like an electronic pulse on some memory chip,
Wasn’t I just an admirer?
Why do I seek some stupid truth now?
Why does my fickle mind wish to control others?
Is it that we have found a utility in each of us?
That’s what had bothered you then and it bothers me now,
It was so good when we were useless,
When it was so human to err.

Tilling a Society

The recent carnage in khagaria district of Bihar has more to it than meets the eye.
Over 3 dozen armed criminals in Icharua village dragged 21 men, mostly youths, from their homes and after taking them to an isolated area, shot and killed 16 of them. Others managed to escape in the cover of the darkness.
There have been blame game and soon the story will be a forgotten one, like many other such incidents.
Incidents like this though just keep adding up for further events which will happen in the future. Issues related to land do not get forgotten in this part of the world. The rest of the world might forget it, but the classes here, take cue from this one to form the next bend for the society. It might not affect the rest of the world directly, but a flutter of a butterfly effect would surely bring rain in the rest of the country.
This issue sure looks like a law and order problem to begin with. Of course it is, but it is deep rooted in the concept of property rights.
The cast war, the Maoist or Naxal problems, the land mafia’s, the criminal-politician-bureaucrat nexus, in Bihar, the roots of all lay here. In fact, my bet is the recent debacle of the ruling JDU-BJP combine in Bihar also has roots here. The suspicion over implementation of Bandopadhya committee report did not get unnoticed in the core of the Bihar’s society.
Land reforms and revenue based models on land, right from the days of mughal period till date, have added pages of history to form what the lands and people of Bihar are today.
It’s a fact that, the last survey that is acknowledged by the courts still is that of the British; all frivolous efforts of the Indian government still do not stand on the courts of law. To complicate issues they have the survey of the 1953 still unfinished, the land consolidation- a closed chapter, the land ceiling act, the bataidari act, the laws for the riverine areas, the bhoodan movement, and once in a five year term, they pass a land reforms act.
Every government that is in power distributes thousands of acres of land to lakhs of people every year. Of course reasons are the same as NREGA or Rs. 2 per kg of rice. Whether the land really belongs to the government and if it is in their possession is not important. People settle scores buy distributing parchas of someone else’s land too.
It would be an impossible task to have a single remedy or a quick solution to all this.
However, we need to think beyond just a law and order problem.
Is there a liberal solution to it? I propose to have a panel discussion on the issue and prepare a recommendation for all interested in a near solution, if possible.
Please do put in your suggestions.

The End of Socialism?

"The FDP has had the great good luck that they aren't currently part of the federal government and they haven't been associated with the crisis," Dietmar Herz, a professor of political science at Erfurt University, told SPIEGEL ONLINE. "Partially as a result, the party has been able to develop an image of economic expertise."

It couldn’t be clearer: No new taxes. Germany has decisively rejected the tired nostrums of the Social Democratic Party, which campaigned on raising taxes on the wealthy and was the junior partner of the Christian Democrats in a grand coalition during the past four years. The Social Democrats turned in their worst performance in the history of the Federal Republic, winning a mere 23 percent, while the Free Democratic Party (FDP) polled a record 14.6 percent. The Christian Democrats crawled across the finish line with 33.9 percent.
The 47-year old from Bonn will become Germany's first openly homosexual vice-chancellor and could win more than the normal three cabinet positions traditionally reserved for the junior partner in a coalition government.
The FDP leader is best known at home for his espousal of Thatcherite economic reforms. But it is his position on Afghanistan that will make him the welcome face of Germany's foreign policy among the country's allies.

“To the point where they’ve consigned one of the political cornerstones of modern Germany, the Social Democrats, a party founded in 1869, to the trash can of history, or close enough. The S.P.D. collapse to 23 percent of the vote, not the strong showing of the F.D.P., was the seismic shift of the election.” ROGER COHEN NY times.

It is to be seen now, how it effects the other European nations in policy change, if there is some indication from the German results, change in Europe will mark global depression for socialism.
Is it not time for Indian liberals and free market sympathizers to rethink their strategies for a liberal political alternative?