Jungle diaries

[Been in draft for quite long. Not sure how to improve it further, hence publishing]

Having had thought through the idea of penning my jungle diaries umpteen times, I am not sure which way would sound best without unnecessary details. I now think I should try the narration style rather than the diary style.

The tale begins with me leaving for Mysore a day ahead of the scheduled date. I recall to date, how I forced myself to sleep extra as rest of my room mates left for their respective offices. I checked and rechecked my To-Do list and mentally made calculations for acquisitions. I had still many items pending in the list, and my plans were rather loose in nature (as it usually is) .

With no one to discuss with or consult, I just went about with whatever came to mind, hoping it would suffice, and set out for Mysore. Reaching there by evening, by a friend's grace, I set out with my acquisition plan. It involved going half way around the city and meeting other friends who had agreed to lend their equipments. Thanks to my pals who were into wildlife and travel, I received a sleeping bag and a pair of binoculars. With it, I felt I had enough stuff in my arsenal to survive in the jungle without too much trouble. I slept peacefully at my friend's place that night, content with the acquisitions.

Early next morning, I caught a bus to Ooty. The route to Ooty runs through the Bandipur forest and the conductor informed me that I could get down at some certain point and walk rest of the way to the gates. In the bus, I noticed many others who were dressed and carrying equipments like me. So I kept my eyes and ears tuned to catch any mention of the census. I had begun to feel nervous and excited at the same time as I had no idea where I was headed to, and what I ought to be doing there. A bit of spying helped to quell that stress a bit :)

Outside the gates, I met a few guys who had come in from various parts of Karnataka to participate in the census. These guys were excited and loaded with information about the entire process. I was able to quell much of my nervousness just by chatting with these guys. My lack of experience, company and language barriers did annoy me a bit, but I was just enjoying the moment, anticipating the unknown.

Soon enough, the inauguration was underway and the officials came forward to explain various aspects of the procedure of the National Tiger census. Coupling that with the chit-chat we were having amongst ourselves, I was able to build a rather decent image of what lie ahead.

After lunch, we were to be allotted our respective ranges. These ranges would be where we would be stationed for the entire period of the census. There was a considerable amount of excitement and apprehensions among the volunteers, as it seems the nature of experience varied across ranges. There were supposedly some camps deep in the jungle which provided excellent chances of spotting tigers and/or other highly sought after animals. These camps were also mostly inaccessible, provided with only bare necessities and in practice meant a real hard life in the jungle, fraught with danger of wildlife. On the other extreme of the scale, lie ranges which were on the outskirts, buffer areas and near the offices of the department, offering fewer or no wildlife, but overall a more comfortable stay. Needless to say, no one preferred the latter.

With the excitement rising, and many groups already talking about using their contacts and influence to get desired camps, I felt completely stranded. I had never even considered such a situation, and with no knowledge of which camps are good or whom to ask, I just sat quietly. Soon, the names of people allocated to various camps were called out, followed by varied responses and frantic requests for exchanges and adjustments. I could see that not all such requests were granted.

In the next one hour, I was allocated to some camp's name which I couldn't make out, and after following several instructions to change camps based on someone else's requests, I was finally asked to board a jeep. I silently did that, and found 5 others for company. We quickly got introduced to each other by the time the jeep reached our destination camp. Having completely lost sense of whatever was going on, I slowly recovered now and listened carefully to one of the fellows who seemed to know certain things. It was heart wrenching to realize from his words that we had been sent to probably one of the worst camps. Even worse than the fact that I was completely clueless was that I couldn't react to what was gonna happen next..

It starts with a crushing feeling

Edit: I put a stupid title as I couldn't find anything more truthful

Considering the enormous pressure of tasks, responsibilities ,and things in general that I get to deal with of late, I thought I should write about them.

The key events are : the Crushing feeling, the sinking feeling,... (more to be added whenever I realize it )

A crushing feeling of sorts is what exhibits itself at these points in life at first.
And that crushing tons of forces turns into a sinking feeling only when one's ground isn't hard enough to hold it up.

So, at the crushing stage, you know that you have mismanaged either schedules, promises or priorities to let that happen. But then, that is the point to re-align priorities, find spare willpower and exert all forces against the crushing forces. This action, when done well at this stage with focus, gives tremendous boost to productivity, and results too are generally good. The reason for talking about results too early is because it is an observation. An observation which has a confirmation bias that when shit happens and you manage to get out without falling into the pit, you generally would have done better than the average lot who avoid shit altogether.

So there it is;how to handle a crushing feeling. If not handled, what could happen, you ask?

Well, some of them lead to a sinking feeling if the crushing lasts for a while and you haven't really done anything to alleviate it. I would first be concerned why you didn't do anything. Are you incapacitated due to multiple crushing issues, or is the sheer intensity of some of them so high as to blow your defensive fuses, or did some of them trick you using a bias and made you fall quicker than usual?

There are specific solutions to each of these types, and more to be found for any new types that do come up. Anyway, we are only concerned with the ones you can't handle at this stage.

This brings us to the sinking feeling. Now if this is in spite of all your efforts at the early stage, then boy, you have something to deal with. If not, go back to those steps (I know, I didn't write any steps) and try all of them until you get over the sinking feeling. Well, for trying well you might even cut down the sinking feeling to a crushing one, which you already know how to deal with. Voila.

Now for the ones that haven't reduced significantly, or haven't at all. I would now apply all cognitive tricks rather than try to face it emotionally, as most of the emotional tricks would already have failed. Now cognitive tricks are neat little lies that you tell yourself( quite like those you tell yourself everyday anyway), to deal with nasty truths( or lies that are hard to disprove ). I won't be able to give a generic trick here until I figure out how to write about them in that fashion.

Tips? Be smart, think wacky. Question the improbable and impossible ones, without worrying about consequences of unraveling even the most closely held beliefs. After all, most of the pain comes from closely held beliefs on ideas, people, things, and sometimes yourselves. Just be careful on what you are unraveling. So how to be careful without worrying about what it leads to? Well, in my software mindset, I can ask you to keep a separate namespace, or virtual environment to do the experiments with the hazardous material. If it doesn't work, you should have rollback stacks which allow you to forget what you saw inside. What is said,seen and done inside your namespace, remains there. You commit it to main DB..ahem neurological system only after a period of trials,contemplation and building enough checkpoints and identifying potential symptoms of early disasters.

Now, some of you might think: "I get the problem, but what did you say did for it?" or "Damn, how do I do that mumbo-jumbo?". Some of you may not even catch what is being talked about all through out. If you are in the first group with questions, which I assume might be the case with most of you who have read it till this point, I can help. For the others, well, not time yet for you to grasp this. Skip.

How to build yourself a nice HAZMAT(exciting term) area or sandbox(meh) environment?
Well, you do that simply by allowing generally toxic ideas to be formulated in your mind without judgement, and extract useful, positive information/messages out from it. Now, if you haven't tried it before, or have a fragile and emotional mind, I would tread carefully with these suggestions. What works for me may not work for someone else. Same way, what works for a serial killer's mind doesn't work for me. So take my advice with that in mind. I am not asking you to think of murdering someone you dislike, or doing something nasty beyond your normal range of aggression (God save me, if my reader turns out to be a psychopath, and doesn't read beyond this step).
Now, in order do that activity without damaging your own conscience( though I do admit that I haven't been able to make 100% leak-proof HAZMAT area, often poisoning my mind for a short period at times with that activity ), you need tools and belief systems adaptations.

In terms of tools, I can throw some terms like meditation, deep visualization, keenly observing own responses, reactions of people around, and general changes in mood/tone of yourself and people you interact with. Also being able to visualize your mind as being outside yourself helps you see yourself objectively and then on questioning provide subjective inputs which help you in diagnosis. It helps if you are generally suspicious or curious about anything in the nature, people, yourself, and all mumbo jumbo without judgement on sensibilities and external validation. Just play cool.

Belief system adaptations would be a major one if you have beliefs which disallow such practices. Moral codes, fear of judgement, believing in external validations, stereotypes etc. obstruct your ability to lift heavy mental weights with different and opposing ideas. So I have observed that people who are shunned from certain sections of society due to whatever conditions of non-compliance often have a very high mental resiliency, and if applied correctly they usually have a huge mileage in life.
But, don't try to force it. It is the non-compliance part that is important, not the getting kicked out part. If you are willing to not force a compliance just to stay put, then it also means you believe in your own methods, without which there is no way for you to go ahead. These paths seldom have guides or gurus to lead you.

Of late, I have felt that the path of certain religious orders, mystical sects and a multitude of non-compliant groups that defy definitions are similar in that sense. The availability of a teacher/guide is a boon as well as a bane. If not chosen or acquainted with the right person with the right level of independence given to the individual, its all a waste. Most of the frauds happen because people choose for compliance even in the exotic wings of life which are meant for non-compliance.

What a comedy. hu ha ha

Reflections and Refractions - Part 2

With the ink flowing, one must quickly commit the thoughts to paper.
Otherwise the ability to think and judge would catch up with those words and dry up the ink as well.

1st June 2019:

In movies, before we jump into the new frame, new location and start the action, we need a break.
So did I and my family. So we set out to the very old frame, my hometown.

One might imagine a visit to ones hometown as a regular affair. But if the house is locked for almost a year, and visits are only 2-3 days long every year, one generates quite a lot of yearning for the old, dusted and capped memories and emotions.

Boooring...

Anyway, to not lose the focus of the story, I will just cut short by adding that it was a welcome break for my family. For me it was nothing but pure oxygen after surfacing from a deep dive. I needed it badly because I knew I had to go for another deep dive soon after.

With the razor sharp schedules of professional commitments and the house shifting, I didn't waste whatever time I got to recreate my life, one day at a time.

Once back to Bangalore, it took a couple of days filled with 12hrs of meetings at office, followed by packing to actually shift out. It actually took another month for some sort of relaxation and sense of settlement to arrive at our new doorsteps. In spite of such fluctuations, the new house gave a lot of joy due to the cleaner locality, better safety, conveniences, and presence of lots of open soil to work upon.

Maybe it is in the genes, but there is nothing like a walk among greenery to climb over any adversities in life. What else could one ask, if there was also a piece of soil to give life to? We all enjoyed the activities involved in cleaning up the yard and setting up a working garden in a matter of couple of months. Most hard at work was my father who saw this as a replacement for our now neglected garden back home, which he severely missed while being at Bangalore.

Before

 

Once the new schedules, routines and rigours were set in place, accompanied by crazy timings at the office, .. short pause.. there was still no time to relax. It was time to take life to the next level, and preparations were afoot at office and home on the professional and personal fronts respectively.

Soon with the crab having its tummy filled with one victim and having decided to let go of another for the time being, we started having more bright days. This was in spite of the wet and bone-chilling season. We too having been hardened by the events, decided to move on. Some very old support roles were withdrawn and it was time for the real responsibles to take over without dependencies. It was time to grow up, spread the wings and jump out of the tall tree nest.

So far, so good. That's what I can say about things which are in progress, and can take years to get a proper hind sight. Rays are still in the process getting bounced around like crazy, creating reflections,refraction, mirages and sometimes even hallucinations. One shouldn't take a judgemental view at this stage of life.

I badly want to squeeze some more events in here, but the paragraph above filters out most of the content. But let me cryptically add my appreciation for myself for taking some right decisions based on some random whims, and keeping those habits alive to date.

Now I should be allowed to shift my focus to more abstract expectations for the upcoming year based on reflections of this year.

First of all, the hard events have hardened the expectations and one only needs to guide the mind into accepting new responsibilities. So those should be relatively easy to accept if pushed upon.

The next thing is that events have shown that whatever happens, there are certain things in my primary responsibility. I cannot hold any one or any event accountable for not doing what I myself expect of me. So clearly, I need to spare quite a lot of time, passion, efforts and attention to do my best in the upcoming year.

There might be some boomerangs for short cuts taken this year, but as long as the mind is ready to accept it and walk over, there is no use crying over a swollen temple.

Gonna be a fun year ahead.
15th Dec 2019

Have a couple of weeks ahead, but for me the year is actually over for some weird reason :)

Living under a rock

It is when you are involved in a task that usually your mind conjures up strange stuff, the shower thoughts being immensely popular already.

It was during one such moment that I thought of someone who might have been living under a rock for the last one year. If that person( here its myself ) comes out and gets back into civilized life,certain aspects would need a detailed explanation by those around.

Credits:http://activerain.com

I would definitely be surprised by the lowered rates at which I'd be getting mobile internet in India, thanks to Jio whose weird-one-year free packs would take me equally long to understand.

Thinking of getting cleaned up and buy a few groceries if I head to the nearest shopping mall, I would have the surprise of my life when they wouldn't accept the currency notes from my wallet. I would even have a terrible time if I were to be incarcerated for owning money!!

Supposing I didn't get arrested and managed to buy from my card ( whose pin I surprisingly remembered ) and head to the petrol pump with my vehicle, I'd be surprised to face the pink notes and the daily changing rates concept.

Faced with a currency shortage, I would walk to my bank's nearest ATM and find that all ATMs in the vicinity are either super crowded or out of cash. After half an hour of waiting in the queue for another bank's ATM when I manage to get in and swipe my card, I would be horrified to see it complaining that I need to visit my bank before I can do this.

Infuriated I walk into my bank's crowded branch, wait the queue out and finally talk to the personnel, who informs me that I can't get any cash out without my Aadhar card being linked. Drat!

I visit a friend, beg him to withdraw cash from his account and he informs me that the bank now charges withdrawals too. Having seen so much, I find it surprisingly easy to digest and get my purchases done and go into a deep sleep.

Within a week, I stumble upon these significant and complex changes:-
a) The cow has replaced the tiger as the national animal and it is easier to kill a tiger claiming that it is a threat to the cattle population.

b) Secularism has become sickularism and the thought of being equal is highly despicable in society
c) There is a clown leading America into disaster

d) Trolls are the best source of online humour
e) A monopolistic power rules over entire India, almost
f) All news is fake

g) The newborn state of Telangana has taken flight, and there are many more in gestation and conception stages
h) People are talking about metros, highspeed trains, hyperloop and what not..
i) There are more things being banned than being invented
j) Exchange deals seem to look like a thing of the past as GST( its the Indian Area-55) kicks in
k) America isn't everyone's blue-eyed boy anymore
l) Europe has turned into a refugee camp
m) Britain is no longer part of Europe!

n) Govt jobs are the fad now
o) We have more entrepreneurs and religious zealots per sq.km to compensate for the decline in large private enterprise

 p) Yo-yo Honey Singh isn't composing anymore, but his inspired versions do!

q) There are more really innovative new Indian startups and individuals making a difference out there
r) More people have become sensitive to balancing development with ecological health
s) The railways have become much neater but long long distances to go

What I am glad (or not so ) hasn't changed:-
a) Prices of things are still increasing

b) The crowd and heat of the cities keep increasing
c) More farmers keep sacrificing their lives and livelihood
d) Number of super rich Indians keep rising
e) Super rich and powerful criminals stay out of reach of law and stay in vogue

Phew!

I think I should return to my rock and shut this mad world out before it floods me with the idiosyncrasies and paradoxes.

What went unsaid

Life, as I had only read before in places, never takes the turns we wish it to. It never follows the waypoints we lay in our dreams. Sitting atop a hill, I could very well look back now and reflect on these sparkling words, and relate well to it.

Completely aware that this realization, however solid and significant it is to me and my near ones, doesn't change the reality, I still wish to meditate upon the beauty of active living against wishful living on a different occasion.

As a matter of fact, today's reflections captured a lot of old memories and opened them up in present context. Exactly like dusting a old library and finding remnants whose superlative significance has been reduced to dust over time.

In this particular bit, I meditate on why particular commitments overshadow the larger scheme of life, and at times we tend to lose ourselves in them. I, being a peculiar kind of person, however fond of planning, also have a high tendency to take leaps of faith. Such leaps, bounds, patchy planning, inspired actions, compelled decisions, postponed decisions, shortcuts and so on is what I see when I look backwards to just the last two years of my life.

At a time when I was already at a conflict point with my hobbies, career and health, I found myself flowing into a larger conflict with career, passion and personal life. Conflicts followed, some won, some given up and a few still going on in various forms.

In between all these "life" stories, there were several amusing stories, incidents, ideas and experiences, which I forgot to pen down. I realize that was a big mistake, because I now know that I can't expect life to repeat the good parts or any parts for that matter.

With me joining the leagues of young people turning their lives into 'busy' schedules, assisted by gadgets, a part of keeps struggling to juggle the old way against it.

From today onwards, my effort is on to try to keep the conduit open and let those come straight out in various forms.

And a nice piece from Rumi to add some food for thought:-

Jungle Diaries - A prologue

Memories of those days start from the initial impressions received about the entire activity from a friend. After hearing about the stories and the possibilities of volunteering for the wildlife cause, my imagination was triggered. Though I was somewhat skeptical and unsure about the whole thing at first, I decided to send in my application. At the time of submission, I was unsure if I would be selected, owing to my lack of prior experience, and I also had my tight schedules at work to deal with.

Within a few days, I was fully focused on matters at work and had forgotten all about this. Only when I received a mail notifying me to report to the Bannerghatta range, did I realize that I have been selected. But I was disappointed at having been allocated a semi urban reserve and tried hard to get in touch with the officials to get to know more about the reserve. The range officer in charge was rather welcoming and wished me to come over and have a 'nice' time. On my question as to whether any serious wildlife spotting could be done, his response was negative. I also realized that re-allocation wasn't possible without connections. So I let that idea rest.

Now, I was in a real fix. Being the first time I was attempting such an activity, I didn't want to spoil it over my higher expectations. On the other side was my manager whom I had to convince to get a week's leave from my responsibilities. After a bit of reflection, I decided to go ahead, as I knew I would enjoy it to whatever extent possible. Fortunately, my manager was supportive of the cause and asked me to prepare well and get back alive :)

Upbeat with this, and with support from friends, I started preparing for the one week stay in the earnest. It was during this time, that I noticed an NGO calling for volunteers for the same census to Bandipur National Park. I decided to try my luck and dropped my name into this list too, and to my fortune got selected through this list. Excited to be able to enter the famed tiger reserve on foot with official backing, my preparations went on with renewed vigour.

The clock ticked and finally the day was near. I had just finished 2 years at work, and after a memorable team lunch, I waved goodbye for the longest leave I had taken till then in my career.
With my bag packed with essential camouflage and equipment, I set off to Mysore, my old base for last minute acquisitions. With the help of some good friends, I got the much needed sleeping bag and binoculars as well.

Counting my lucky stars, and motivated by all the support, I set out alone early next morning, towards the jungle with high spirits, not fully knowing how my life would never be the same again.

To be continued..

back to the school

I have been taking some distance courses and recently our exams were conducted in the Delhi Public School.

During one such exam, I managed to finish a couple of hours ahead of schedule and had to wait for my friends. Without enough battery backup on my phone, I had nothing else to do than roam around.

The school has 3 or 4 buildings each consisting of 3-4 floors for the classrooms and other specialized activities. Having nothing else to do, I decided to poke my nose into anything and everything around.
And so I kept going on rounds, clockwise and anti-clockwise, up and down various stairs for a good part of a couple of hours. I read all the tiny articles, class posters and charts made by the students of primary school, stuck on bulletin boards, blackboards and there were also these pieces of art stored in some rooms.

Needless to say, most of the contents were regular and the kind you get from net. But most of the small articles were cutely decorated, written in squiggly handwriting of a new writer. I wondered how many of them enjoyed it and how many just wanted to get over with it.

There are couple of these articles that really got my attention. One was a poem written by a sixth grader on bullying (that was the theme in the entire building). I wish I could share it here, but even kids have copyrights, so I am not. But it had an innate sense of pride in rejecting bullies and standing up for oneself. I wished someone had written such stuff in my school days. It was such a strong spirit. I hope the tiny hands had written her own words and if so she would definitely write more.

There were couple of articles on festivals by even younger kids which reflected their love for playful Krishna or their traditional rituals which put in simple language of kids sounds very cute.

And there were some which shocked me. No student of 4th Std would be able to write articles using words like "sunkissed beaches", "Rugby is good for cardiovascular health" and all. This was clearly the work of parents, elder siblings etc that is so proudly posted there. This upset me because not only were the parents creating an unnatural balance among peers, they were also doing a disservice to their own wards.

In my school days, taking credit for work done by parents or even asking them do such a thing would almost always result in scolding and a round of beating. :) Memories of running around the house to avoid being beaten always accompany a bitter-sweet feeling.

Anyway schools are fun. With or without exam :)

writing travelogues

When I look back at my five years of self reliance, I must have visited many places in my free time.  Many short and long trips, many silly and many life changing memories fill my mind when I walk down the memory lane.

And often I think of writing them alongside the various travelogues that I have penned here. But I don't think I am such a good travel writer as those I see out there for some reasons. Maybe I can't really get out of the sphere that each trip creates around me and write about it in a manner that new travellers might want to read.

Something sticks around from all these experiences in some corners of my mind and comes out at various unexpected moments, and makes me behave in ways that set me apart. So when someone recently said that experiences stretch our minds to a new level, and once you are there, there is no real coming back, I couldn't agree more. You can of course act and try to put up with the world as if you are getting along completely. But being someone else to be part of the world, however attached you are to its members, is a crime. And I am pretty sure that almost everyone is guilty of it.  While the world doesn't allow one to be what one wants to be, it does allow one to know what one wants to  be. Believe me, knowing it can make huge differences in the way one lives his/her life.

In tat manner, travelogues are a personal and spiritual guide to understanding myself and my reactions to the wonderful experiences that travel provides. I often crave to be able to sit down and note the passing thoughts and conversations in my head and those had with fellow travellers. That , according to me is a satisfactory piece of travel writing. Providing a guide to other travellers or a piece of well placed words to sooth connoisseurs comes later to my mind..

a very productive day

whoever thought that a day of power cut could be so productive. There was no supply from 9 Am to 5PM. After frantic efforts to do other things, I managed to get myself to sit down and write. Yes, write without electronic devices.  Even my phone got switched off, and hence it was just me, sitting alone in my room with just my pen and a book, scribbling away.

Usually I get stuck and think and struggle to get to write fictional stuff. Today words were flowing after a short initial impasse and I could barely keep my mind up to speed with my pen, as it it drove me ahead and over distant lands and across a multitude of characters.

I managed to pen 6 short stories with slightly different plots, but quite similar styles. The latter half of the fast writing was helped by a idea that was partially inspired by a friend of mine. I went out and found batteries for the radio and had the music blaring as I wrote hypnotically. But my hands hurt :)

A day well written :) hope readers enjoy

Health is Wealth

Health is wealth. I grew up hearing these words from my father. I saw this being put to practice by my grandparents too.

But I never knew how valuable that wealth was, until I saw the pains that people had to go through when they lose it. Every time a friend or a relative falls sick or gets hospitalized, I had to witness the agony and the distress that they suffered. The worst happened when I myself get hospitalized. It feels horrible to have to lie on a bed for as long as the disease persists.Obviously, a sick person in the family affects everyone detrimentally in some or the other manner. Many such disturbed families leads subsequently to a weak nation and society.

Thinking about it, why do people fall sick? And there too why do some people frequently fall sick, whereas some rarely do? The answer lies in one word - Immunity. The dictionary meaning of this word is "the ability of an organism to resist a particular infection or toxin by the action of specific antibodies or sensitized white blood cells." It fairly translates to "your natural capacity to resist diseases". Though various other factors also contribute to the onset and spreading of diseases, from a personal point of view, immunity is what makes the most difference between a life of receiving help and sympathy from others, and a life where you can help and support the needy. And immunity is not something you can gain by any drug that you get over the counter, or by switching to healthy food and habits once the diseases start swamping you.

Immunity is a natural property of your body and your genealogy has a lot to contribute to this. But there is a major portion that can be gained purely by practising some time tested habits from childhood. Though they do work on adults as well, its most effective when inducted from childhood, when the body and mind are at the weakest and the most flexible state alike.

Hence, when I saw that Dabur has started a campaign for "Immune India" in Indiblogger, I marked in my mind to sit down and write what I think is required from parents to nurture their kids with good immunity.

Here are a few things that I learnt by observing my elders and a few by my own experiences which I believe helps in maintaining a healthy body and mind. I have tried to acquire sources to substantiate my claims that I put together from what I know. Please check those too for more information.

1) Take bath in cold water every day
I found this as one of the most refreshing tip when I was in Kochi, where temperatures rise upto 35 degrees in the summer and the constant humidity makes it a very pleasurable activity to take a cold water bath every day. But after moving to Mysore and subsequently to Bangalore, I found it absurdly difficult to follow and had switched to hot water. It was only three months back that I finally got back to the habit of taking bath only in cold water. Needless to say, the effect was obvious. The constant colds, headaches, tiredness and lethargy that plagued me for the last four years were instantly replaced with highly energetic days where I can concentrate of tasks more easily and overall I found myself disease free and happy.

2) Drink lots of water
Again, something I didn't realize while living in the hot and humid climate of Kochi. You needn't be poked in such a climate to drink enough water. But in the colder climates, I forgot to keep this up and effect was very bad. Acne, hair loss, dry skin, improper metabolism, tiredness and even kidney stones plagued me until I went on a water crusade to regain what was lost, only partially succeeding though. Every health article talks about drinking a lot of water, but not many people follow it. I paid for the ignorance, and I wish my readers don't have to.

3) Play hard
Play hard under the sun, sweat and get dirty. Its fun, its healthy and its mandatory. Make sure kids get enough time outside and are not stuck inside with homework or video games instead. The psychological and physical benefits of playing outside is immense. I can't stress enough on this.

4) Watch what you eat
These days, a bag of chips, burgers from big names and other fast food items are the main highlights of every kid's diet. Make sure these things are limited, if not absent in your child's diet. Such foods are known to be high in saturated fat, sugar, artificial colours and so on which can affect all functions of the body ranging from the heart, liver, brain, skin etc to the functioning of the taste buds even. A cue for identifying such foods is to not purchase any food item that has a TV advertisement for it.

5) Meditate everyday for 10 minutes
The benefits of meditation to memory power, concentration, creativity, patience and stress handling is very well studied and documented by science.

As kids rarely like to sit still, it would take a lot of effort from parents to instill this practice in them. Many households insist that the entire family sit for a prayer together. This is the time to teach your kid some hymns and make him/her sit still for a while chanting those. My mother did the same with me until the age of 9 when I was initiated to the Vedas which gives ample practice for a lifetime if followed strictly.

one more reason

6) Get adequate sleep
Make sure kids get to bed at regular times and they get enough sleep. These days even young kids get to spend time outside watching movies late night or going for parties. Such activities, while being fun and in line with modern lifestyle should not hamper the need to get enough sleep. Especially for kids, when the brain is the growing stage, sleep is what makes it grow faster and stronger. It can make a huge difference in the overall immunity level of kids.

couldn't resist this one :-)

7) Enjoy vacations and time with family
These days, even young kids are bombarded with loads of homework, tuition, exams and what not. All this stress severely inhibits their abilities to grow up psychologically and physiologically. A healthy, stress-free environment has to be created within the family for children to grow up in, giving them space to expand themselves as individuals with a healthy attitude. Regular vacations and outings with family is one very effective habit that boosts family bonding because kids get to enjoy along with their parents and share happy moments.

8) Read to them and Teach them to read
Effect of a healthy reading habit on overall health and attitude of a child is something that is often not considered in studies. I have personally observed major effects in families I know of where reading habits have boosted overall wellness in children.

Reading not only improves concentration and trains the brain in grasping concepts, but also reading many of the classics and award winning books have proved to improve the emotional quotient of children. This has been observed in various studies. A healthy attitude and outlook towards will go a long way in making champs out of your children.

9) Oil everyday
I recall a line from one of the slokas I learnt in school - "Murdha shrotha ghraana paada tailanityam syat", which translates to an instruction for "Oil the top(vertex) of you head,ears,nose and feet daily". This line is part of a sloka that talks about steps to maintain health, with a guarantee of 100 years of life. I have seen this technique being applied successfully by any octogenarians that I know of personally and via popular media. Various oils can be used for this, popular ones being Coconut, Gingelly and some Herbal concoctions.

10) Go the natural way

 Even with all these steps taken, there would still be a few things missing owing to the deviation from the natural techniques that modern lifestyle has taken. A regular habit of taking Chyawanprash is one technique that we used to follow when our household. Hence I can vouch for the it. Even regular drinking of Amla juice, Brahmi juice etc boosts immunity and improves memory power respectively. These are relatively easy habits to inculcate into a child's life.

What about experiments with some raw veggies? Studies have found that raw consumption(after washing) of many vegetables can supply a significantly larger quantity of nutrients to the body than the cooked variant. It used to be relatively easier in the older days with all vegetables being produced organically. Nowadays you have to take extra precaution to avoid effects of harmful chemicals and fertilizers. Hence, do this only if you really trust your source, or even better if you grow your vegetables in your kitchen garden. I personally have experimented with a few vegetables from our kitchen garden in my childhood and there are a few favourites even today.

11) Life is not a bed of roses
Last but not the least, please don't make the lives of kids too easy. Don't provide too many facilities and protection. Not only does such pampering affect the social behaviour of a child, but also the psychological and physical growth gets inhibited. Immunity is a natural property and it grows against the harmful elements around the body. So don't stop your child if he wants get drenched in the rain or play in the dirt or help you in the garden. A few stumbles initially will go a long way in creating world class citizens who won't be defeated by ill health, both physically and mentally.

Enjoy a bruise :-)

This is my vision for an Immune India. Thank you for taking your time to read through. Please let me know your thoughts on how we can build a very healthy society in the comments section.

This post has been submitted as an entry to the "Immune India" initiative in Indiblogger, an online blogging community.

digging in the backyard

Summer holidays were the time my brother and I got to stretch our feet, spark our imagination and run around doing whatever occurred to us, without worrying about Amma's famed "bottlewasher brush". Two months of bliss and awesome food, with no one to scold or hold us back from anything.

The one who shall not be named

We used to spend most of our summer holidays with Thaatha(grandpa) and Muthuamma(this is the name my brother coined for our grandma) in their home in Trivandrum, leaving the bustle of Ernakulam. I would be in the rhythm from the beginning of the journey itself, by taking the mandatory window seat in the train.

There usually was nothing specific to do in Trivandrum other than playing with our cousins there, or doing the mandatory visits to Sri Padmanabhaswamy temple with Muthuamma when she asked, or some occasional visits to other homes or the market. So we usually ended up running around the old rented house in the Ramaswamy Theruvu, a street designed in the traditional Brahmin agraharam style. I don't recall anyone specifically except one maama in whose house we used to watch the occasional Tamil movies in their cable TV, which was a luxury.

The house had a special design, which we call "Paamban" meaning snake-like, owing to the long and narrow corridors that largely made up the house and its rooms. From the main door, you can run straight to the kitchen and to the backyard if you didn't stumble upon the various items stationed in between or the occasional projections from doors. I still have fond memories of this house when compared to the various houses I have lived in over time.

Maybe it was the distance of the backyard from the main door that gave it its isolation and sense of ownership. Anyway, we found ourselves busy in the rear areas of the house all the day. The house was more than 300 years old, or so we were told by Thaatha. And we didn't have much difficulty in believing it, for the state of the various doors and artifacts in the house were such. But what caught our undying curiosity each time we visited was the pile of junk items accumulated near the backyard. I recall being filled with awe trying to ascertain what the ancient items were. The backyard had another door that opened to an unknown area and was out of bounds to us. The door was always securely locked by Thaatha and he carried its key with him. Whenever we enquired about it, he either had justifications, or sometimes stories which we realized were probably fakes or he ignored us completely.

Boredom doesn't allow such things to stick in ones mind and we were soon busy, playing in our little junkyard, assuming we were dacoits, or even the Two Investigators who lived in a similar junkyard, solving imaginary cases from around and telling about them to Thaatha or Muthuamma over dinner. Occassionally, when he was bold enough, my brother used to pull out random scary and dusty things out of the pile and playing with those would be our prime activity for another 2-3 days.

It was just another such day and Thaatha had gone out and Muthuamma was busy gossiping with the neighbours. Even our cousins had been joined us that day, so the energy in the gang was maximum. Being the youngest one, I could only stand by and watch as my brother and cousin went deep into the pile to bring many things out. During their spirited excavations and ensuing fights over ownership, I was left alone with my cousin sister, who obviously didn't enjoy all these boyish adventures. I don't recall if it was me or her who noticed it first. There, on the forbidden door, was a long key.

Thaatha had forgotten to take the key with him, and when we checked the door wasn't locked too. We were both excited and scared too and this new discovery made the feuding brothers to join us in our state of shock. We four were alone in the house and there was nothing to stop us from crossing over to the forbidden lands. After Manichithrathazhu, locked doors were to be taken with utmost seriousness. I even imagined large pits of fire and snakes crawling all around, probably inspired by the tales that Thaatha fed me with every night. But curiosity has a way of getting over every other impulse and soon we boys were ready to give it a quick check and get back before some adults discovered us.

The frightening imag of the damsel behind closed doors in our minds

Leaving the lone girl as watch, we three pushed open the heavy door and I was promoted to the position of point, and was asked to put my head through the gap and give reports. After an initial denial, I took the chance to avoid further embarrassment at being younger. I recall very clearly that I could hear the thumps in my chest as I 'boldly' opened the door further and put my head through it. I could make out a medium sized portion of land and the sky was open above it. The land was filled with all sorts of wild plants and nothing else of interest seemed to be there. I called my waiting brothers in. But we didn't take the risk to walk into the open courtyard, probably trying to wrestle with the fake stories fed by Thaatha. We noticed that in the centre of this yard was a black rock shaped almost like a holy idol, only that we couldn't recognize this one.
It was surrounded by something red and yellow and we couldn't make out whether it was something natural or man-made before we heard Muthuamma's voice booming through the narrow hallway.

With a guilty pang in our hearts, we quickly dashed back in through the open door and shut it close. We must have put up a bad show in trying to be busy playing, because Muthuamma almost immediately noticed the ajar door and locked it shut and took the key with her. She shot us a menacing glance, to which we all replied with hung heads until she left. The rest of day passed in passive activities, but we couldn't muster the courage to ask anything to both of them. But we knew something was wrong when our parents came in a couple of weeks ahead of schedule with some absurd excuses and took us back to Ernakulam.

We never spoke of any of these to our parents or even within ourselves. The memories of the  vacation was slowly erased by daily fights over cricket matches, wresting cards exchanges or the fight-for-no-reason. Anyway our grandparents moved to another colony the next year and we never went back to the old house again until recently. But I didn't find it necessary to dig open unnecessary things, and hence kept quiet, seeing  the old backyard door, now sealed with tufts of clothes, sacred threads and religious symbols.

This post is written for the Tata Safari "I am Explorer" blogging contest running in Indiblogger, which requires one to write about a story of exploration.  

All images used in this post are obtained from Google Image search and the copyrights are retained by the original owners.