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 Hot
foods to fight the chill
What's served piping hot
may not be warm food. These food items have intrinsic heat- generating
properties that help rev up circulation
Pushpesh Pant
When
winter comes, there are some who don’t console themselves with the
clich thought that now spring can’t be far behind. Instead, they
take delight in the chill and prepare to warm body and soul with hot
stuff. Ayurveda and Unani both classify food or ingredients as having
hot or cold properties (guna and taseer) that speed up
or slow down body metabolism and either engender passionate excitement
or subdue stirrings of desire or outbursts of anger. These are
labelled as satvik and tamsik (light and dark in the
Tibetan system of medicine). Kabutar ka shorba was prescribed
to patients who had suffered a paralytic stroke to dissolve the blood
clots in the brain by raising temperature. Eggs are believed to have
inherent heat and that’s the reason that the sale of hard-boiled
eggs shoots skywards as soon as winter descends.
Arts
Delving into
the unknown
Paintings about dreams and omens
lead us into a mystifying world: inexplicable, intuitive, and beyond
reason
B.N.Goswamy
..to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub
— Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 1
Let
us consider three paintings. The first, a folio that comes from the
artists’ ateliers that were traditionally attached to the ruling
house of Mewar at Udaipur. What one sees in it are fantastic creatures
— gaja-simhas, literally ‘elephant-lions’ — roaming
about in an imagined landscape. Elephants the painters of Mewar were
inordinately fond of, and they would paint them at the slightest
opportunity that came their way: rulers riding in processions,
elephants in combat, errant elephants sought to be brought under
control by hapless mahouts, especially favoured ones standing as if
posing for a portrait, and so on. But here, in this work, there are no
true elephants: their heads have been grafted on to the lithe,
majestic bodies of lions.
Broad brush
health
An acid test
A typical modern diet, largely
made up of acid-forming foods like processed cereals, sugars and high
proteins, fats and excess sodium can cause acidosis. Our bodies are
alkaline by design but acidic in nature. Maintaining proper alkalinity
is essential to life, vitality and health
Mickey Mehta
With
urbanisation, modern lifestyles and easy access to processed and
preserved unhealthy foods, a large number of people living in this
modern world suffer from illnesses or diseases caused by the stress of
acidosis, otherwise known as acidification of the body. A typical
modern diet is largely made up of acid-forming foods like processed
cereals, sugars and high proteins, fats and excess sodium.
Alkaline-producing foods like vegetables and fruits are eaten in
smaller quantities. Stimulants like tobacco, tea, coffee, alcohol and
stress are the main promoters of acidification and the illnesses that
follow.
Health
Capsules
Eat apple, chew gum for shining teeth
New Delhi:
Eating an apple daily and chewing gum is beneficial for
maintaining white pearlies. Peta Leigh, a teeth whitening
expert, offers tips, reports femalefirst.co.uk. Firm or crisp
foods help clean teeth as these are eaten. Apples are considered
to be 'nature's toothbrush'. Other choices include raw carrots,
celery, and popcorn.
Society
Traditional, timeless comfort foods
Aditi Garg
Winters
are a time for foods that help you keep warm and give you the
much-needed energy to face the chill. Foods like pinnis, panjiri,
gachak, bhugga, baajre ki khichri and many more tempt the
tastebuds with their rustic flavour. But the fast-paced lifestyle of
today leaves little time for indulgences that are cooked slowly to
bring out the best flavours. Ice-creams, cakes and pies have edged out
the traditional cuisines from homes and kitchens have become places
where food is reheated after home-delivery, and whatever is cooked is
anything that can be rustled up in a jiffy. Here is a collection of
recipes that will take you back to your childhood and offer a burst of
taste and texture that no quick-fixes can replace.
Myths
that wreck relationships
iF
you believe that finding the right partner will ensure that the two of
you will remain in love for the rest of your lives without any effort,
then you are highly mistaken. According to YourTango.com, author Russ
Harris has debunked some biggest myths that can destroy marriages, in
his book ACT with Love.
travel
Relics of the
colonial past
Digboi in Assam presents a
glimpse of the bygone era
Kavita Kanan Chandra
You
would get a colonial
hangover in Digboi, the oldest ‘Oil City’ of India in Assam,
located in the far eastern corner of our country’s Northeast. The
huge British bungalows scattered on hillocks, the small pretty church,
war cemetery dating from the World War II, the historical Stillwell
road at Ledo, oldest oil refinery in the country and an expansive golf
course would transport you back in the days of the ‘Raj’. Even if
the time machine is a figment of imagination, those who have history
fixation and wish to get a glimpse of the British era would love the
Digboi experience, albeit with all modern comforts.
Globetrotting
Entertainment
Cinematic century
From a side-show attraction, the Indian cinema has become a billion-dollar industry. The dream factory, which completed a century recently, continues to enchant us
Rahul Sahgal
Individual
apathy and institutional
neglect has lost much of India’s early visual heritage from the
early 20th century. A list of firsts is lost to eternity: documentary
(The Wrestlers, 1899), feature (Raja Harishchandra,
1913), historical (Narayan Rao Peshwa, 1915), serial (Rama
Banwas), satire (Bilet Pherat), adaptation (Barer Bazaar),
talkie (Alam Ara) and colour film (Kisan Kanya). Our
silent cinema’s early influencers were the fluid and fantastical
flamboyance of Parsi theatre, the rhythm of Sanskrit drama and the
epic narrative form of Ramayana and Mahabharata.
Adieu
O’ Toole
Acting was a second nature to
versatile actor Peter O’Toole, who could perform well despite his
reckless living
Ervell E. Menezes
WHAT
an actor he was! Supreme. Unmatched. The early 1960s were indeed Peter
O’Toole’s salad years, what with The Lawrence of Arabia, Becket
and The Night of the Generals almost in one breath. The first
two were before my film critic days, and especially remember those
cryptic, even shocking lines, speaking of his wife as "a withered
flower in the pages of a hymn-book which duty forced me to
wander." Jean Anouilh at his scathing best and as Henry II, he
overshadowed Richard Burton’s Becket. One wasn’t yet
exposed to such candid lines in those distant days. Both of them
shared two talents, acting and drinking, though not necessarily in
that order.
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