Living Healthy-ly

This is the image which you will find inside our kitchen cupboards - heaps of fruits and vegetables, if it's a day or two after we have gone to the market, which we do every 4 or 5 days walking. Sometimes we ask one of our regular sellers to drop some items like 5 kls. pomegrenate, papayas, watermelon, onion, banana, greens, cucumber, a tray of egg, etc. -stuffs that don't need much personal picking like mangoes, peach or ado.

When we go, we walk to the market which is about 1500 meters carrying 4 big clothing bags -polythene and other plastics are strictly a no-no for us, as much as possible.

So, we have been on this diet for over a year now - more on raw foods such as seasonal fruits and vegetables. I do the least cooking, I think. One tea in the morning and in the evening. Then one cooked meal like bun toasting with salad (salad is uncooked, of course) or aloo paratha with palak paneer or just plain and simply-made greens like boiled lungdu (fiddleheads fern)/mustard greens/spinach/beetroot leaves, etc. with tomatoes and sauteed garlic.

So almost every day, there will be only one major cooking. Sometimes, depending on how many varieties of fruits and vegetables we have we ditch cooking altogether, except for two small cups of teas. Living minus the cooking is doable, very doable but I guess I would like to cook some stuffs sometimes.

Motherhood: A Prison?

This was on the Facebook wall of one of my friends who just recently had a child and reading all the comments made me laugh because all the comments were positive, you know the portrayal of how difficult it is to be a mother to a newborn child, how much time they spend time in tending their child, how much they can relate to that statement, etc. Not one of them realized the negative impact of this statement. 

There are four words that are very inappropriate in this statement:
PRISONER, ESCAPING, JAIL, and FREE.

Really? Rearing a child makes a mother feel like a prisoner, like someone who tried to escape everytime, and that a life with a child is like living in jail? And that too, a little break means FREEDOM to a mother? Ha ha! Great! Tsk!

Why the hell they had a child then? Do they realize how messed up this statement is? And those who read this didn't disagree to it? Oh, the idiocy of mankind.

I am not a mother (and I don't intend to create another being) but I would never say "I am not a mother so I don't know how to raise a child (telling to a mother)". Saying so is like I need to have a car to learn driving. 

You see, readers, no child has ever asked a parent that they wanted to be born. Being born is no way a child's choice. So whose choice it is? The parents, especially the mother, and to view motherhood and describe it like the above statement is just wrong...very wrong and idiotic! Any child whose mother's views are like that one above must be ashamed of her/his mother and demand her to change her views or "de-mother" her altogether.

"There must be some pre-requisite before someone can become a parent." 

(A line from the movie, Detachment)

Missing Missing Coonee

You got it right! Coonnee has been missing for more than a month now. We don't know what happened to her, what we have are only speculations based on how she has become for the last 2 years. Most probably she's dead considering her physical conditions. She was almost fully blind and her hind bones were weak. And any chasing with dogs and monkeys would put to her disadvantage. She could be a victim to a leopard, too. We really cannot say! We have looked for her but there's no trace of any dead animal within a few hundred meters.

Although she was blind she almost always wanted to stay outdoors, which we consented. I guess she has led a pretty good and happy free cat-life.

It has taken me this long to talk about her and yet thinking about her just makes me cry. It's so sad, really sad. Anyone who has a great attachment with pets knows how it feels to lose them....a loved one. We love this cat. We really had a special inter-specie relationship.

She is missed...she will always be in our heart. Sadness will go sooner or later, our life goes on without her. She will be remembered with fondness, that's for sure!

An Update: August 11, 2014
Connee will never come back to us. We don't know what really happened to her but yeah, we assume she's dead. Oh life, it's end will come sooner or later. We just wished we could bury her. It's the "not knowing what happend to her" that makes her disappearance terrible.

The Road Less Traveled

The road less traveled for only 2 or 3 jeeps come and go to a village unknown to my knowledge. It's near yet far and seems at the edge of nowhere but it offers a scenery of jaw-dropping beauty. 

This place is breezy especially in the afternoon towards ealy dusk. The roads here are perfect for contemplation abou the hustle-bustle and chaotic atmosphere of the cities.

Richard Dawkins's The God Delusion

My husband handed this book to me last night to my delight. He borrowed it from 8th Battalion's library. I started reading right away and I couldn't bring it down.

To quote a few lines from the book:
"There is NO such thing as a Christian child; only a child of Christian parents."

And I absolutely agree! Every new-born child knows nothing about God or religion and everything that goes with it. A child's religion is just a by-product of indoctrination. His/Her idea about God or religion is taught and learned from the people and society he/she grows up with. If a child is born to a Muslim family he would grow up as a Muslim. The same happens to a child born to a Hindu parents, etc. Take an orphan baby boy born to a Christian mother and give him to Muslim parents, this boy is very likely to grow up following Islam unless, of course, he would come out of his own senses and question things around him later on. But if not, he would be like the rest of the religious today.

"Children are too young to know what their opinion about God and religion really is."

If they don't grab the chance to think of their own they would remain "religious" and follow the same non-sensical, time-wasting activities of the church or temples.

Another idea that registered quickly in my mind is the "nineteenth century" argument in the context about religion. According to Dawkins, it's a code for,
"You are so crude and unsubtle, how could you be so insensitive and ill-mannered as to ask me a point-blank question like 'Do yo believe in miracles?' or 'Do you believe Jesus was born of a virgin?' Don't you know that in polite society we don't ask such questions? That sort of question went out in the nineteenth century."
He then added that, if you really think about why it is impolite to ask such direct, factual questions for religious people today is because it is EMBARRASSING!....If your answer is yes, of course!

Indeed! Gone were the days when people fear to share their views on miracles and virgin birth. No man in his right mental attributes could ever believe in those things anymore.

And many religious, when their beliefs are pointed out, tend to get offensive, angry, etc. because they are suddenly reminded of their illusion or wishful thinking, they suddenly feel threatened that the entire foundation of their 'happiness' is shaking because reality bites deep and they suddenly have to face the cognitive dissonance that they have been hiding. "How great it would have been  if everybody believes in miracles." or "How nice it would have been if nobody says, "virgin birth? Impossible!" 

This book is very interesting and really a consciousness raiser! Now I understand why moths do tend to commit "suicide".