Provoked...a good film...

I went for a film today after nearly three month. I went to see ‘Provoked’. My first disappointment was that the movie was dubbed in Hindi. I would have preferred to watch it in English. Anyway, my disappointed soon wearied off when I got engrossed in the movie. I really enjoyed it very much. Aishwarya Rai is a good actress and she has proved it once again that she can make you identify with the social problems and make you react to it. The movie makes you sympathizes with women, who leave their families and go in a distant land to live with a strange man. If the husband is abusive then life become hell, and she lives in fear in her husband’s prison. She gets her freedom in jail, where she is able to change her outlook and learns to express herself freely. In 'Provoked' Aishwarya Rai plays the real-life role of battered wife Kiranjeet Ahluwalia who was compelled to kill her husband Unable to bear the brutality and repeated rapes by her alcoholic husband, Punjabi housewife based in UK, Kiranjit Ahluwalia (Aishwarya Rai) sets fire to her abusive husband, Deepak Ahluwalia (Naveen Andrews) and kills him unintentionally. She is sentenced to life imprisonment where she befriends her cellmate, a wealthy white woman named Veronica Scott (Miranda Richardson), from whom she learns English. Her cell mate is so moved by her story that she asks her step-brother, Edward Foster (Robbie Coltrane), a respected Queen’s Counsel, to file her appeal. Her case comes to the notice of a group of social workers running the Southall Black Sisters organisation. They bring her plight to the attention of the media by organizing rallies. She is ultimately freed by the judicial system in the landmark case called Regina vs Ahluwalia that redefined the word ‘provocation’ in the case of a battered woman.

Cricket fever!

Hey you naughty boy! Stop bawling now! I know, I know, it hurts. I shouldn’t have wriggled your ears thus. I admit it. More than ninety degrees hurts. But you deserved it. Isn’t it? I expected you to do well. Imagine you go all the way to a strange land to play cricket and you come back so soon? You couldn’t even reach super eight! Yesterday, the media people called me. They want their money back…all their endorsement…I will never again be able to see you smiling and eating those fancy chocolates on those hoarding again. Now those film stars are smiling! Okay, calm down now. Let me think. So, what do you plan to do? I have a brilliant idea. Come, now you must learn to help me in the kitchen. You must learn to keep yourself busy. Isn’t it? Now that your cricket career is over, you must seriously think of new profession. There is lot of money in food business too. If you display your culinary skills well, the media will follow you there too; they may give you a slot in TV channels. You might even get many endorsement there too, don’t you worry about that. Eh? I will teach you basics first, then, you can enroll in the catering college. Here take this bowl, wash it for me. No! Don’t hold it like that. It’s just a steel bowl. It’s not a world cup! You dropped that cup already. Now, now! Don’t start bawling again. I told you there is an alternate profession for you. Let me teach you to make a salad first. Remember the first step to cooking is to make good salads. Hey! What are you doing? Don’t rub that against your thigh! Oh, Oh! You don’t shine that. Look carefully, that’s a potato! See that? Give me that! I said GIVE IT TO ME. Ouch! You didn’t have to swing it at me like that! You naughty boy! When will you learn! Huh? Okay, now let’s start cutting the vegetables. Here, take this knife. Uuufff! You don’t hold the knife with both hands! Just fingers man. Just fingers of hand only. Understand! Okay, never mind, leave this to me. Here, you take this carrot. What are you DOING? Why are you swinging your arms like that? You don’t need warming exercises here! Just swing your wrist. Take this grater, hold the carrot and swing it with your wrist. See! How easy it is to grate a carrot. Oh my Gawd! You cannot keep these three cucumbers in the plate like that. I understand! I understand! They remind you of those wickets. But it’s over! IT IS OVER! Now chop those and arrange it on this plate. Hmmm! The salad looks good. Perfectly oval-shaped arrangement! Now let’s boil some lentils. Lentils are easy to cook too. We just wash, rinse and pressure cook. Here, help me with this cooker. Wokaaay! When you hear four whistling sounds, you must put off the gas. No, you don’t whistle, the pressure cooker will. You wait here while I go and take a bath. BOOM! SIXER! What the HELL! OH MY GOODNESS! NOW, SEE WHAT YOU HAVE DONE! WHY DIDN’T YOU PUT OFF THAT GAS? HUH? Come now; help me clean this lentil from the ceiling and the walls. You are good not nothing! Hey! You naughty boy! You start bawling again?

I am stressed!

Whenever, I go visiting, I am offered tea or coffee.. array baba.. I don’t want na. These drinks affect my nervous system and they deplete available supply of vitamins and minerals which are my body’s main resource. But you don’t understand. You spoilt your health and mine too. Whenever I am sick, you offer your sound advice, and then you go to your medicine box and pluck a medicine for me…array baba try to understand I don’t want drugs to cure me…. Chemical remedies cannot ‘cure’ any problems, they merely defer their effects. Do you want me to become addicted to drugs? huh? Give me herbal teas like Camomile, passion flower or lime-blossom tea this will help me to relieve stress and tension. You don’t understand my body like I do. You offer me out of good will and I can’t refuse and then I get stressed. Ok.. When ever I feel stress, I allow my body to relax a bit. I am going to sleep.

Pills don’t cure us….. they make us more sick! uufff!

Many of us just keep popping food into our mouth without thinking. We cut vegetable, in goes a piece of carrot into our mouth. We cook the meal, in goes the spoonful of broth for taste. Food left over on the table, not charitable enough to share with a helper, we stuff it in our over full stomach. And then, we complain of overweight, discomfort, or pain. The problem arises when we don’t understand our body. It is very important to understand that health is the harmony between our physical, mental, social and spiritual states and each one of us has the power to heal ourselves. The only important thing to remember is to understand what our body indicates and act accordingly. Whenever we eat, we must be aware of what we are eating. We must be in a relaxed state of mind and we should do breathing exercise before eating for the body to have enough oxygen for doing its work We must remember that our body needs time, space and energy to function properly. It has three main important things to do: Digestion, assimilation and distribution of energy and cleaning. When we eat food, the priority is first give to the brain. Therefore all the nutrients first go to the brain for a complete refill and then other parts of the body get their nutrients. If the mind is not relaxed then lot of energy is wasted and other parts are deprived of its nutrients. The enzymes that are used for digestion make the food alkaline to be distributed to different parts of the body and the toxic is discarded by the body. On eating the wrong food, there is much toxic produced and the body starts to send signals with symptoms like high fever, cold, etc. Then, what do we do? We take medicines. To kill the discomfort, we take pills, not realizing that we are interfering with body’s way of removing the toxic from the body. By taking too many pills, we suppress the discomfort from one point but we destroy the good cells that are surrounding the sick cells. Thus with weak cell wall, there is no control and the cells start multiplying leading to many more disease and that put us in bad health. There is really no need to take pills. Just control your diet and allow body to fight with the bad germs. By eating proper food we can remain healthy. When we eat fruits, they help our body to do the safaie.(cleaning) when we eat salad, we help our body to produce enzymes that are required for digestion. When we eat sprouts and nuts, we help our body in its construction task of building of its cells. When you are sick or weak, don’t touch pills. Just take rest, or better still, go to sleep and let body go to war with those naughty germs.

I like cooked food!

Human beings are the only species who cook food. Even when they eat raw food, they cannot eat without garnishing the salad. Now my nutritionist is saying that eating cooked food is wrong. She says that cooking destroys vitamins. The application of heat is destructive to vitamins, and higher the temperature, the more destructive heat will be to vitamins. Not only are these vitamins destroyed but their residue is unstable and toxic when ingested. During cooking there is mineral loss. Minerals are essential for all metabolic activities. Their presence sustains the alkalinity of body fluids. Minerals are required for structure, in healing and repair. People who lack the mineral in their diet feel the fatigue and lack of endurance and strength. When we choose mineral-rich foods and then eat them uncooked, masticating the food well, we then will provide our body with best raw materials to produce healthy cells and tissues. Cooking destroys food enzymes that are required for the digestion of the food. Enzymes activate and control all the chemical actions and reactions within the cells and regulate the energy output for all physical and mental activity. Cooking alters the proteins and they become less digestible and toxic. It is not possible for our body to build its own proteins from food if the proteins have been coagulated and amino acids de-ammonized. Cooking fat containing foods renders the fat and the foods less digestible and highly toxic. The National Academy of science has noted that. in countries where the consumption is high of food like sausages, fish, ham, etc, cancer of the digestive track is common. All these products are high in fat content and all are eaten after being subjected to heat. So I ask my nutritionist, what do I eat? I can’t possibly eat raw veggies all the time. My forefathers have introduced us to cooked meals, you don’t expect us to go back to that raw vegetable diet? And she replies, “Eat what you are used to but eat salads. Very important! Understand! Eat salad. Eat cooked vegetables to please your tongue and eat raw veggies to please your body”. So now, I eat the tasty meal and chomp it down with salad, washed and grated. Hence forth I will eat fresh veggies with cooked food so that I get enough nutrients and not worry about the nutrients that I have already destroyed while cooking!