RIFLE RANGE BOY

Time is cruel! © DKLA At the pinnacle of their career, the Beatles must have had an existential crisis. McCartney and Lennon must have wondered how they would be at 64. Their vision of a 64-year old man, from the lenses of a person in the 1960s, must have been quite depressing. With bad teeth, bad eyesight and bald, it must be a picture of melancholy.  Luckily, growing old in the 21st century is bearable. The 60s is the new 40s. One can still lead a productive life in the senior citizen / geriatric age group provided the bus does not come to pick you up prematurely. After completing 633 km of cycling from Seoul to Pusan in 5 days, we had a couple days to unwind in Pusan. Immersed in the euphoria of completing our gargantuan task, we thought that our feat must be something that we, the seven of us, would be talking for a long time including reminiscing about it in our twilight years. We would probably be savouring each photo that we took along the way, trying to remember each ...

Why We Get Fat (and what to do about it) Gary Taubes For the most part of Man's existence, over 99 % percent of our lives of Earth, our food pyramid had been quite different. If now, carbohydrate forms the broadest base of the pyramid, it was never like this before. As hunters and gatherers, our food mainly composed of protein and fat. Carbohydrate constituted a small portion and was found in complex forms, not refined. Come late 19th century and beyond, we started loads of carbohydrate both in simple refined forms like sugars and complex ones like in potato, wheat and rice. I suppose it must have been quite alright when we were members of an agrarian society but it soon became toxic when our lifestyles became more sedentary with the ease of performing tasks after leaps in science and technology. So, it is the carbohydrate that makes us fat. Insulin has pushed to the brim that our systems have been hardwired to use glucose as the first resource of energy. Ketones which ...

Just the other day, I watched a youtube presentation of a discussion on the affairs of world economics, mainly European economics, between two world icons, Yanis Varoufakis, an academician with a short-lived political stint in Greek Cabinet and Professor Noam Chomsky, the renowned political activist, linguist and philosopher at MIT. The gist that I gathered from the discussion is that the world is made for the affluent. Nobody gives a damn about social justice, equality, liberty and those standard phrases that go with freedom. It is all a charade. The idea of politics is just to fatten the selected few. The rich get richer, and the poor become poorer as time goes on and the rich squeeze more from the poor. In a press conference recently in 2014, an executive from a multinational company unabashedly told the pressmen that his firm made medicine for the wealthy Western patients who could afford it, not poor Indians, justifying his company's inflated prices of products....

So goes the legend from the Indian sub-continent... There was a massive war between kings. King Ram was embroiled in a battle, he must be a just king because he is Ram. His brother was morbidly injured. His army captured the enemy’s doctor and forced him to treat their wounded leader. The good doctor asked his captors. “How do you know that I would treat him to the best of my ability?”, he said. “For all you know I could not give him the best that is available.” Ram, the righteous one, could do no wrong. Despite all the violence and destruction that were going on around him, like all the senseless killing and the uprooting of a whole mountain by the first superhero known to man, Hanuman, to retrieve a particular herbal remedy, Sanjeevani, he is still the good one. In an authoritative voice, he verbalised, “It is your Dharma that you should be a healer. No matter who is injured, your job is to heal, irrespective of their political allegiance or social strata. I believe that yo...

There she was, a mid 50s a disciplined runner who is the envy of ladies of her age in the housing estate who would die to have a physique like hers, waiting outside the emergency room with her right hand all dressed up to see an orthopaedic doctor who would later assess the extend of her injuries and probably stitch up her hand which had been mauled by a stray dog. She, a dog owner herself, of many Rottweilers and Alsatians, as her husband trained guard dogs for a living could not believe her predicament. Having lived a time just after a time when typhoid and tuberculosis were treated with eggs and fresh air, she believed in the outdoors. Equipped with a earphones and iPod, she would just go for her evening runs without disturbing a soul but with her sole intention to complete her bodily duties. In fact, a few minutes before the said event, she had patted the stray dog. On her way back, out of the blues, as if like possessed, she went for her hand. A Good Samaritan who came to her ...

No, I am not referring to the character in Roman alphabets or in any other language. Neither am I referring to characters in a play or caricature nor to certain traits of human, physical, chemical or biological object. I am humbly referring to some characters with whom you have make small chats in a party! Lionel Hutz from 'The Simpsons' of the law firm “I Can’t Believe It’s A Law Firm!” As we get further and further away from the only day that our mothers smile to see us cry (to quote AKJ Kalam), as did as our forefathers before us, we fret about the generation which about to take over the rein of leadership of the nation and world arena. Everything they do seem to be counter productive and heading to doom. Like that, a conversation came forth... Generation Y and their antics. This guy was telling his newbies are forever trying to cut corners with their designated duties; how they are last to come and first to leave irrespective if he (the boss) is still around. ...

Gone are the days when people will do anything to stay away from medical facilities for fear that some unpleasant news on their future would befall on their ears. From a therapeutic and corrective role, medical industry or rather business has metamorphosed to a preventive one. So, from the position of righting the wrong, it has started looking the wrongs in a complete pink of health person to give him the pallor of ill health - that is, after so many further expensive tests and dead ends of inconclusive results. Michelin Man (spare tyres) Paranoia (to the level of hypochondriasm), hunger to perform their daily duties (of acquiring wealth), fear of death and fear of litigation on the part of the providers have skyrocketed to need to have a comprehensive exhaustive full (fool) proof way of detecting a disease even before its genesis. Like mushrooms after a rain, health sanctuaries with resort like set-up have mushroomed offering membership to exclusive (ric...

25.5.2010 ‘Wealth is Health’ or ‘Health is Wealth’? That is a good question. From the time I can remember, the age old adage of ‘Health is Wealth’ had been ingrained in our impressionable minds to be the ultimate truth. Is it really the elusive truth that everyone is looking for? In the pre-industrial era when most people led simple lives toiling on the wonders provided by nature, e.g. farming, hunting or any work which involve indentured labourers or bondage slavery. Here, a healthy fit body will ensure ability to endure the hardship of calamities of nature to bring home the bacon! An unhealthy invalid or an aging senile individual will be a burden to family and society unless a social safety net is in place. If you were the servant of the palace or a sorcerer in the dawn of human civilization, (as if we are more civilised now), health is of paramount importance for survival. Is this adage still of relevance at this present date and time? Let me look at how health brin...

6.3.2010 Are you OK, Annie 1 ? Do know why 2 ? I am still standing…yeah,yeah,yeah! 3 In the course of our conversation, I casually asked my accountant about his health. To this he replied, “Oh, I did my medicals and the doctors told me that my results were fantastic. The doctors were so happy with the result and told me that my results were better than the cardiologists’.” That’s P, my accountant, the ever optimistic chap who looks at the world from a very positive outlook. You ask him about his son who was studying in Ukraine , he would say the lecturers were so impressed with his performance and so are the Consultants he is working for now as a house officer. And his daughter is so happily married in the cold mountains of Germany ! Well good for him, P, if only everyone in this world is as contented as him, the world would be a better place and it starts with the man in the mirror 4 . On one hand, I feel happy for him for his good results as it gives him a sense of satiety to...