Let The Life Flow

 I am into Day 22. What am I doing is simple; eating healthy and doing regular exercises.  The important point is I am able to do it consistently for 22 days now. The question is .. HOW? All thanks to the challenge thrown by Health First Everything Next. I do not eat meat. So for my protein intake I need to supplement my food with ltos of seeds and nuts. But I did not know how to incorporate that and keep it going regularly. Now I have a structure. Here is one of my Plate of Fruits, Nuts and Seeds. Fruits, Nuts & Seeds

 The common saying is that if you adopt a new habit for 21 days it becomes permanent. So I adopted it silently for 21 days. Now that the 21st day is over I can tell the world and rejoice in my achievement. I have taken the Healthy Life Style Challenge for 90 days!! So 69 more days to cover. Let me see how it goes. This is not only about physical health, the determination to hold on also is about mental health.  I have resolved to do daily posting about my experience till the challenge is over. :) I will give snippets about my food plates and other daily practices that makes this challenge interesting. So let the journey begin. Any Time Salad

Ever since we remained confined to home after the declaration of nationwide lock down, it seems the subject of ‘food’ has taken a prominent space in our daily activities and communication. Food definitely is and has been basic to our existence. But never before was it in the forefront of our awareness. We used to see our existential pride in many other activities and skill sets than our culinary skill: except for those in the food industry. But once we became confined to the home, the significance of food took over a vast expanse of our perceptual canvas if not the entirety of that space. That is what it seems to me. Let us see, if my thought on food gives you some more food for thought! The moment nation wide lock down was declared; probably the first thing we thought of is food. People queued up the grocery stores for food items to stock up before midnight. Government authorities quickly responded to this panic and very next day assured people that both durable and perishable ...

 The following post was written by me in 2008 after my first visit and stay in London as part of my travel diary. But it had remained as draft for so many years. After so many years reading my own post I find it interesting and think I can share it with others. :) Buildings & Beauty: London Buildings through my Perception Clarendon Drive in Putney, London (where my London colleagues had organised my home away home) seemed to be a posh locality. Beautiful houses stood in neat rows, on both sides of the almost empty roads. After reaching there suddenly I realised why the ‘videshis’ and our very ‘phoren returned’ talk about dirt and filth in India. The roads were absolutely clean, stretching from end to end between two houses on both sides. One does not get to see any cracked road, ‘broken at the edge’ road or ‘with pot holes’ road. The mostly brick colour houses at the first glance look perfectly uniform; creating a synchronised rhythm of visuals. But two days after ...

The house where I stayed in South London is a beautiful building located in a beautiful locality. I was welcomed with warmth by Caroline, the wonderful human being and owner of the house. My room was at the upper floor and carrying the suitcase through the stairs proved to be quite an exercise! I realised that entire staircase is thickly carpeted – in London a common feature perhaps, coz I saw the same even in my friend Ravi’s house – probably a measure to cope with the extreme cold in the winter. The stairs creaked below my feet – it was a wooden staircase. But that was the beginning. The amount of wood use I saw in the house was amazing from what I have seen back home. Through the carpet not only stairs but also the floors were creaking. Yeah the floors were wooden in that three floor house. There were wooden doors, wooden chairs in the rooms and corridor, wooden tables, wooden cupboards, wooden racks, wooden almirah, wooden show cases, wooden photo frames and many other things pla...

Clarendon Drive in Putney, London (where my London colleagues had organised my home away home) seemed to be a posh locality. Beautiful houses stood in neat rows, on both sides of the almost empty roads. After reaching there suddenly I realised why the ‘videshis’ and our very ‘phoren returned’ talk about dirt and filth in India. The roads were absolutely clean, stretching from end to end between two houses on both sides. One does not get to see any cracked road, ‘broken at the edge’ road or ‘with pot holes’ road. The mostly brick colour houses at the first glance look perfectly uniform; creating a synchronised rhythm of visuals. But two days after my stay, a visit to central London and exposure to lot more beautiful structures, a closer look at each building revealed to me that almost all houses were different in their design. But the designs are so ‘in sync’ with the others in material, colour, design and size that they create an illusion of uniformity though they are quite diverse in...

Those who are in the field of disability rights, they will understand when I am mentioning about accessibility. But for other’s benefit let me give you a brief on accessibility. Have you seen a particular insurance company’s ad on TV where a young man sitting on a usual chair gets transformed into a wheel chair with one leg gone? Today you are going to a cinema and you never think of the stairs. God forbid, tomorrow if you meet with an accident and to save your life doctors ampute one of your leg and then you want to go to the cinema – would you ignore those stairs? Certainly not- your access to that building is gone if they do not have a lift. So suddenly with loss of your leg you become a lesser mortal and you do not have access to many places including the roads of our country. If you are on wheel chair, can you go on our pavements? Its a joke. Is not it? With almost a foot high our pavements do not give access to the wheel chair users at any place where they can get into the pav...

Being a pedestrian on Delhi roads is not an easy task. It requires a lot of learning the unwritten rules and on the job skill up gradation for an individual to be a deft pedestrian. In many parts of the city pedestrian strips are rare luxury – either they are not there or broken or occupied by some street vendor etc. So one has to use of road sides for the purpose – a difficult task though; with parked vehicles royally gracing the road sides and occupying one fourth of the breadth of roads. So one has to have real mastery over all sensory organs to keep them alert and coordinated to walk on the available side of the road and avoid being hit by a speeding vehicle. Crossing the road requires even more skill. If you are standing at the zebra for safe crossing, you are doing that at your own peril and with time get wiser to the fact that speeding vehicles come to a screeching halt at the end of zebra instead of its beginning. Even if the signal is green you must walk fast or run to cove...

When we hit the road of London in Peter’s car, London had recovered from the heavy rain of the night and welcomed us to a bright sunny morning. On my exclamation on the beautiful morning I was complemented by Peter being the lucky one to bring the sun. The next thing which absorbed me on my journey from Heathrow to Putney is the greenery both sides along the road. The beautiful shade of green (closer to the colour of tender leaves of banana) ran all throughout; sprinkled with small white and yellow flowers. The freshness of the air and the surrounding greenery was so infectious that all traces of tiredness just vanished. Familiar to the crowded and noisy roads of Delhi, suddenly I realised that roads are abnormally quiet compared to back home though they are not empty. And then you notice the smoothly and noiselessly plying cars on the road – absolutely, I mean absolutely no sound on the road! You try to understand what is so obviously missing on that road and then it gradually come...