Cultivating Tolerance

Constant feelings of gratitude, belongingness, and love towards
mother nature, God, and everyone in the world dramatically
improves our tolerance for their deeds. Vishnu Pendyala

Food Fair

Many food items like onion and garlic also are proven to have medicinal
properties and are good for the body. The reason religion discourages
them may primarily be because they are presumed to increase
attachment which causes desire, anger, and such. But in my
experience, the impact of food is far less than the impact of
some external happenings like extreme trauma.

Non-vegetarian food like fish is also very good for the body. But the
other reason religion discourages them may be because of the law
of karma. I saw a documentary somewhere during my tours and travels,
which said that to make a hamburger, it takes hundreds or even thousands
of times of the water it takes to make a salad. This is only about water,
think about the other resources. How much karma should we perform
to pay off that debt to the mother nature? That may be the reason
our ancient scriptures prescribe only foods that grow directly from the
earth (think vegan, in modern times) and discourage all indirectly
produced food.

Here's a forwarded mail I received today about drumsticks:

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sat, Sep 12, 2009 at 10:30 AM
really great though for reasons unknown it was prohibited in hindu religios functions. regards. murthy

--- On Wed, 6/8/05, _ wrote
Scientifically speaking, Moringa sounds like magic. Ounce for ounce, it has the calcium of four glasses of milk, the Vitamin C of seven oranges and the potassium of seven bananas. Memo to Popeye: Moringa has triple the iron of spinach and more impressive attributes than olive oil.”This is an excerpt from the article in the Los Angeles Times in 2000 that made the Western world sit up and take notice of a tree that grows all over India, especially in South India. Whose long, thin, knobbly pods hang from it, like so many drumsticks. Yup, I speak of the drumstick tree or “Moringa”, from the complete botanical name — Moringa Oleifera. Which sounds very similar to Murungakai, the Tamil and Malayalam name for it. Not at all surprising because the drumstick tree is an ancient and illustrious child of India. In the Sutra period, dating back to 800-300 BC, greens have always had a special pride of place, mentioned as excellent sources of nutrition. And among the many mentioned — palankya or spinach and methika or methi — is something called sigruka or shaubhanjana. Which is the Sanskrit name for — the leaves of the drumstick tree.(Sajuna, Sahijna in Hindi, Suragavo in Gujarati, Sujna, Shevga in Marathi, Sigru, Muringa in Malayalam, Sajana in Telugu, Nuggekodu/kai /soppu in Kannada and Munigha, Sajina in Oriya.)Also called the miracle tree which is actually, not an exaggeration when you consider that every single part of the drumstick tree in some way makes this planet a better and healthier place...Mother’s best friendThe Filipinos call it that. And rightly so. Health is everyone’s birthright and food shouldn’t just appease hunger but also nourish and sustain. But in large parts of the world like India, for many people, food and nutrition are often mutually exclusive things. And expectant and lactating mothers and little children are the most vulnerable. Because both need extra nutrition and find it the most difficult to get. So, sadly, almost half our children under three years of age are malnourished and nearly half of the world’s 20-40 million children suffering from the deadly Vitamin A deficiency are in India, and 60,000 go blind every year. 70 percent of our pregnant women suffer from iron deficiency. Both are potentially crippling, even life-threatening deprivations. And ironically, both are completely preventable statistics.Because India is where the drumstick tree abounds. And for little or no cost, it can provide a large part of the vital nutrients that the Indian mother and her children so desperately need but can often ill afford. In just 100 gms of fresh cooked drumstick leaves, a 1-3 year old child will get all its daily requirements of calcium, 75 percent of iron and 50 percent of protein. Just 17 grams of drumstick pods will provide it with all the Vitamin C it needs daily. The same amount of leaves will provide a pregnant or breast-feeding woman with all the protein and Vitamin A, half the iron, over a third of her daily need of calcium and potassium. Mother’s best friend and how!The answer to clean water in a handful of seeds?“Filthy water cannot be washed.” — An African sayingCan you believe that the mammoth problem of providing clean, safe, drinking water to millions of Indians could lie in a handful of drumstick seeds? Water is one of India’s most pressing problems — 80 percent of infectious diseases are water borne and 1.5 million pre-school children in India die every year from diarrhoea. Now, researchers at the University of Leicester in England say that drumstick seeds can help to provide safe, cheaply produced drinking water. Again, ironically, this apparently astounding discovery is a native wisdom that women in Sudan and Indonesia have been using for centuries! Except that we now know how this works. When dried, crushed and powdered drumstick seeds are added to water, the powder binds itself to dirt particles and bacteria. Soon, the coagulated particles sink to the bottom, leaving clear, clean water. Just two teaspoons of crushed seeds will clear 90 - 99.9 percent of the bacteria and all the muck in a bucket of water and one tree will provide enough clean water for a family of 5-6 for an entire year. You do the math on how much that would cost an average Indian household.Nature’s oil wellThe seeds don’t just make excellent and ridiculously cheap water purifiers. They also contain 35-40 percent of oil by weight and can yield more oil per hectare than sunflower or peanuts! You’re thinking — drumstick seed oil?What use could that be?Well, it has such high levels of the do-good mono-unsaturated fatty acid like oleic acid (cholesterol lowering, even anti-cancer) that it is considered equal to olive oil in healthfulness can be used to cook and also in salads. Because it is also odorless, very stable and doesn’t turn rancid, it can and has been used to make cosmetics, soap, even perfume and — believe or not — as lubrication in watch making!The final certificate of quality is the fact that in Ayurveda, it is used as massage oil.Which brings us to the miracle tree bit. Here are only a few of the many other uses of the drumstick tree.Environmentalist: A hardy, fast growing, no-fuss tree, that requires minimum care and watering, the drumstick tree is known to survive temperatures ranging from 48 degree C to light frost, making it perfect for agro-forestry, to green semi-arid and drought-prone areas.Animal fodder: The leaves aren’t just delicious and healthy for humans. They are happily eaten by cattle, sheep and goats, improving the quality of dairy produce from them. Even pigs, rabbits and fish love them!Fertilizer: Cake made from the crushed seeds is a protein-rich, organic fertilizer.Gum: The gum of this tree has been used in calico printing.Nectar pot: The flowers, also very edible and nutritive because they are rich in potassium and calcium, are a good source of nectar for honeybees.Garden decor: Mark Fritz described it as “a tree, with a gnarly trunk and tousled head of foliage that makes it look like a cypress that just rolled out of bed.”Paper maker: The soft, spongy wood is suitable for making newsprint and writing paper.Small wonder then that the National Geographic Society financed one of its explorers, the botanist Mark Olson to collect the world’s 13 Moringa species, because the fear is that many of them. which used to grow in the wild may now be extinct. At last count, Olson had found 12.Nature’s medicine cabinet“You’d think Monsanto or somebody would have patented it by now. We’ve been looking for silver bullets for so long I think they don’t exist.” Ian Bray, spokesman for Oxfam, when asked about the drumstick tree.Trying to describe the drumstick tree’s medicinal properties, I am reminded of that famous opening line in Erich Segal’s “Love Story”. “What can you say about.” A tree whose very part of the tree has been used as medicine? While researching, I have found people saying that Ayurveda uses the drumstick to treat 300 diseases! I don’t have that list but these certainly figure on it — diabetes, asthma, bronchitis, even tuberculosis; dysentery, diarrhoea, colitis and jaundice; urinary and sexual disorders, as a tonic to improve lactation in nursing mothers and as antibacterial agent against all kinds of infections. Modern research is just beginning to confirm many of these medicinal qualities.Drumstick rotisIngredients: 2 cups ragi flour; 1 small onion finely chopped; 1 large cup of washed, cleaned and finely shredded drumstick leaves; 3-4 chilies finely chopped; ¼ teaspoon jeera; Pinch of asafetida; Salt to tastePreparation: Bind all the ingredients into a thick dough. Pat or roll into thick rotis. Cook with a little oil. Serve hot with curds or a pat of fresh, home made butter. You can also add drumstick leaves to chapatis, dosais, adais even vadas to pack in the extra nutrition!

Not Every One Can Get an Opportunity to be a Friend

A lawyer is a friend in need and should be a friend indeed. Vishnu Pendyala

Management Metric: Number of People the Manager Helped Succeed

A manager's true satisfaction lies in the number of people she helped succeed and not in the extent of power exercised or the number of layoffs authorized. Vishnu Pendyala