“… and I can roughly predict your family’s physical-mental-emotional roga (illness)”, challenges a Vaidya. Unbelievable, right? A tall claim? Actually, not. I made the connection between the two only recently while holding a half inch piece of mysore-pak.
Sit next to me. I’ll tell you all about it!
A couple of weeks ago, along with 300 others, I was sincerely carrying out Anushtaana’s latest “No-fridge edition” of kitchen sadhana where we were required to make food with ingredients not stored in the fridge. I thought this was a great opportunity to clear out my fridge. God knows, I don’t get this thought often. That is when I discovered a neatly tucked giant dabba (box) containing cut veggies in all possible shapes. Its darshan reminded me of “महामल्लभङ्ग-न्याय:” (Mahamallabhanga-nyaya). What is that, you ask?
When you are in war, the first one who needs to be defeated (bhanga) is the mahamalla, the fiercest, strongest enemy. This maxim (nyaya) asserts that in this Mahamalla’s defeat that the enemy start losing their stronghold. I pride myself on never keeping cooked food in the fridge, but I still have managed to fill my fridge with all sort of dry ingredients; I had unconsciously made it an extended kitchen shelf. In Dr. Prajna’s words, it has become “the VIP lounge” of the kitchen holding everything from the sweets that the guests bring to cut veggies that we hope to remember and use someday. Her words resonated as I discovered a half an inch piece of forgotten mysore-pak that my neighbor gave a month ago when she got married!
So, where is the war and who is the mahamalla?
The war is the one we are fighting against poor food, unhealthy lifestyle and disturbing mental attitudes. It is the war in which we are losing our older warriors to multiple-organ failure and our younger ones to heart-attack or stroke. Rest of us are all taking strips of medicines to just patch-up our dysentery and vomiting, or worse, constipation!
The biggest enemy, the mahamalla, is the stale, prana-less food from our fridge. As Dr. Sadhana pointed out in the group, when you have a fresh and easily digestible meal around 7pm, you are almost always likely to wake up fresh after a goodnight’s sleep. Else, even 10 hours of sleep cannot help you.
But why is that so? Our body is an intelligent being. Most of the processes are, thank God, involuntary. The body breathes on its own, the heart beats on its own and the kidneys cleanses on their own. So much building and repair also happen on their own.
The body allocate energy to many tasks including digestion, locomotion, healing, thinking, etc. Based on the conditions we provide, it prioritizes and deprioritizes different tasks. If we provide stale food, it needs more downtime to process and isn’t quite prioritizing your other tasks. Our mind never thinks about mysore-pak when we are chased by an angry dog. There is constant reprioritizing happening in our heads. So, it is no wonder you feel sleepy and tired after a bowl of refrigerated paneer and frozen paratha.
We need to eat based on how we want to function. So, if we want a fresh mind and body, fresh food is the only way to go. Period. If we have a giant fridge filled with cooked food, stale veggies and expired sauces, you are going to have a lot of diseases of mind and body. There is no surprise there.
What is the path forward?
Normalizing fresh food
It is very common for people to comment that they feel “off” because they haven’t been to the gym in 2 days. In this world where everyone thinks that they need to hit the gym for 1 hour everyday or enjoy their favorite streaming service for an hour to unwind, the mindset to set aside 1 hour to make healthy fresh meals should also be normalized. There is no glory in eating stale food, anymore. If we care about our health, we need to take care of what we put in our mouth. We deserve better, our body and mind deserve better.
Keep calm and clear your fridge! Our health starts in our kitchen. ✨
P.S: Some of my friends say that I’m obsessed with mysore-pak. I completely disagree. I’m obsessed with Chum-chum. I’m not sure about its waist-friendliness though!
