Sunday, July 22, 2012

CHILLI POWER


There is no word to describe the power of Chilli other than HOT in English. I feel that it can’t be explained by a much better word. The Chilli is always a cardinal item of prominence in our daily dishes. It has been proven that it contains few medicinal benefits. Vitamin content is superfluous in it with Vitamin-C specifically in abundance. Scientific results also say that a single Chilli weapon posses four times the amount of vitamin-c present in orange and as much in any other fruit for that matter.
An inconvenient truth behind this dangerous item is that it acts as a cathartic agent. It almost has the effect of a tepid poison.  Our human body doesn’t readily accept the invasion of Chilli into the food tract and rebels by. Hence our normal defense cleanses it in the form of liquid feces. We often experience this situation when we consume a surplus amount of Chilli than the normal. When taken in small doses it won’t affect us especially Indians much as we’re used to it. Unless the effects produced by this Chilli are observed intuitively we just ignore it as a false alarm of our body.
It is a fact that every foreigner whoever tastes the subcontinent food, suffers manifold times than an Indian would. In a way it acts as the remedy for those people dealing with constipation problem.  I was confounded whether to laugh or not when I happened to listen to a conversation of a foreign guest who was trying pacify his child dealing with the same problem. He said, “See my child; I never had the problem of constipation when I was in India. Don’t worry; someday I’ll definitely take you with me there to tackle your problem. ” Oh my, isn’t it ridiculous to hear such words.
After going through some facts and reports about the Chilli, I become curious to experiment it on my own. Then I decided to take it in more in my food than usual. The purgative effect immediately materialized even before the end of the day. It was then I understood my body's mechanism to readily reject Chilli like any other unsolicited junks.
Tracing back its origin, it actually doesn’t belong to our sub-continent though it occupies a defiant position in our kitchen groceries. It was traded from Persia and Arabic by archaic time’s traders. So how did we survive without this major taste making grocery in cooking in those Pre-Chilli days? The answer to this is black gold - Pepper. This was supposed to be the best source of alternative to Chilli while adding rich hotness in our food along with surplus medicinal benefits. Even the English people had known the benefits of pepper once they got a taste of it. Hence they traded it efficiently along with other rare spice commodities and flourished.
So muse over this and try to nullify from your diet. Eat right and live well.

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

A Narrow Escape

This is about one of my memorable experiences that happened in a train journey during my German intern period. After a day long roaming around the streets of Rome, my friend JK and I had to hurry up for catching our CNL (City Night Line) train, which was bound to leave to Munich from Roma central station around 7.15p.m. Bright sun shine filled the dusk around that time where we lost our patience in order to get that train. CNL connects major cities of adjacent EU countries from Germany. It runs at nominal speed compared to high-speed trains. It has its own uniqueness like; the only train which runs in night, cheap ticket prices, and most importantly for EUrail pass holders like me and many of us.

In EU countries, ticketing system is not the same like in India. Tickets are just like a pass meant only for boarding the train and the seats are not guaranteed. Separate reservations are there for getting a confirmed seat i.e. 2 times purchase. CNL requires compulsory reservation. That’s what went wrong in our case. After boarding the train at final moment (which we normally do every time) we searched for our seat in the 6-seated cabin. To our surprise already a Japanese man occupied one of our seats. When we tried to explain him he showed his reservation, which put us in terrible shock. By that time train had already started to depart. It only left us to blame the entire system like how the hell this could happen to us. Unbelievable error had been made which led to the confusion. I showed our reservation to him and same reaction by him like us except both of us were confident with that ticket. Moments passed, we sat in the other empty seat discussing our next plan out of tiredness. I thought of picking up my cell phone to verify next day’s date to be entered in pass. Suddenly a panic stroked my mind and I got a strange clue where the mistake might have aroused.

In general, the pass validity starts from midnight. But CNL trains are exceptional where one is allowed to board previous day train (after 7p.m.). It can be counted for next day trip without compromising another day. It leads to some confusion as well, which was what happened in our case. Everything in common name, train number, coach, time, seat but not date. According to our plan ticket should have been taken for that day journey, instead by mistake we bought it for next day. I just revealed this to my friend and not to him. Convincing thought was that we have travelling pass, but just the reservation ticket was a big fault. Had a wild guess, ticket examiner shouldn’t look in depth where everything in common except date and the other person must not complain the fault. We decided not to raise this complain to TTE which we initially thought to do so. All went according to our plan but unexpectedly one, which we consider as lucky escape, was that no one came and occupied our seats till the end of the journey while rest of the 3 seats had occupants. Thank God, or else we would have spent our travel on corridor. That could be a disaster for next day trip with sleepless night and tiredness which never happened. And hence we slept peacefully and reached the destination safely. This can happen anywhere and to anyone so be cautious. Smile runs through my cheek whenever I imagine this narrow escape.

Thursday, January 13, 2011

ALL THAT GLITTERS ARE PADDY

Did you ever think which might be worth more than gold? There may be several answers necessarily dominated by rare or precious materials and elements. But in the food kingdom, Paddy i.e. Rice can be considered as one such valuable item. Very often it has been undervalued may be due to availability or high production rate and it goes on like this. True to the fact, input cost for cultivating paddy is much higher which normally goes unrealized.

How come? The incredible truth lies behind the supply of water. For producing just a kg of rice it is estimated a need of more than 3000 l of pure water and half the capacity of typical oil trucks. In shops mineral water bottle costs roughly around Rs.13. Water is not the only product which adds to the production cost. In addition, manual work, electric power for pumping, fertilizer cost and so on. On counting all these it’s worth touches half the cost of gold.

From these it is evident that each and every grain of Rice matters. So think of this every time before you chew on. Never spill over and waste even the single grain rice. Even fresh look at paddy at the dawn resembles to the glittering effect of gold. Believe the reality by visiting any of the field lands around and realize the amount of work being poured in. I leave it you to decide which of the above justifies the title.

Friday, June 18, 2010

Foot Ball Fever


Fußball (Foot Ball) fever getting around here..
Germany Standings:
Match 1 - Germany Vs Australia. Ger - 4 Aus-0 World Champion!!!(Is it in cricket only)
Match 2 - Germany Vs Serbia. Ger 0 Ser 1. Police arrived to curb victory violence(It happens after each and every match) in main roads and streets in each of the cities. Waving their country flags and roaming around city for no reason except football. Cars horn sounds exceeds decibel for marking victory sign. Fans of lost team can only watch this like another spectator.

Ah.. I was not a football fan but not any more. Still I like my all time favorite cricket. My passion towards cricket never ends. Hope to see a live match soon in T.V. like I am doing it for football. Love to watch football with same craziness as for cricket, isn't it? But the main difference is that in Cricket tension mounts only during match finishing time which happens very often(Yeah! Like every Indian team match ;O ) . But in other case it mounts every minute in game play. Thats why still it wins millions of heart all over the world. Though I watch football very often every now and then I don't forget to follow cricket too. Hope India should lift Asia Cup Series this year...

Sunday, May 16, 2010

Mythical Cheap Mode of Travel

Long days back, that was before the invention of flights and all, people had one belief. It's nothing but travelling through Hot air balloon. And it is nowhere different from today. But in olden days, people thought differently. Like rising up in air and stay there for half a day or so would make them shift to some other place. The earth continues to rotate eastwards and people may reach different destination. Quite cheap, isn't it?
That's a wrong notion. It's just their imagination. Actually we dont get separated from our mother earth even if we try to rover in air. We are tightly bonded with earth together even in mid air, as we held up by particles present in air which are also actually participating in this travel. Gravity sticks these particles in the very same place.
Strong evidance for this which I can quote here is the storm or hurricane movement. It wont cover larger distance in one day. i.e. it should have made a round trip along the latitude. You all knew that this wont happen in any of its case.
Take another case, what if we rise up beyond this invisible layer of particles. We are still bounded to earth because of the inertial force make us travel with the speed of earth. And when we come back we would find ourselves where we left initially. This is like jumping inside, on the floor in moving train makes us land in exact place.
Believe me, even I tried this in my younger age and wondered why I wasn't going back when I jump in moving train. Later on I understood this whole concept.

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Theory of Life Span

Everyone wonder how we live in this world for some years. This kindles a tricky question how the life span differs for different people including other living things. Some may have shorter life in terms of days while for others it extend like centuries, starting from simple house flies to long living Tortoise and Turtles. How could this happen.. Why such variability among all..
This question and confusion arises because of our wrong notion and methodology which we adapted for calculating life span.
For your information all living beings have equal life span (VEDA). Wondering how.. Its simple to explain. Normally how we calculate a life span. By Time, isn't it? i.e. in terms of days, weeks, years to fall on. But this is wrong formula for life span estimation. Then how our VEDA clearly states that all have equal life span. And here is the answer for that,,..
Think in another dimension and perspective. It says life time is being calculated by our breath count. Yes our normal breathing time (Caution: Not based on Heart Beat Rate) decides how long we might live in this world. Let me explain with an example. We, the humans normally take breath 12-16 times per minute. Our life span app. goes upto 70-80 years. But considering Tortoise it usually breathe for 3-5 times/min. Nearly one third of ours. Hence its lifespan extends thrice than ours. This is how we should calculate our span. Through meditation we can bring down this breath count by 4-5/min. Thats how our saints and yogi's lived a long life in the past.
Please dont do research on this to contradict. This is a simple hidden and undeniable fact of life.