Indian Super Foods - by Rujuta Diwekar

Change the way you eat.

An enlightening book. I realized the way to stay fit is to eat what your body knows and wants and not your mouths and brain tells you to. I was very insecure of my inability to adapt to the ancient-made-modern healthy foods like millets instead of rice or cereals/oats instead of breakfast and many more. Sometimes I would wonder if there is anything on earth fit for human consumption anymore!

But that is the ‘fear’ the so called scientific research and social pressure implants in you. Fear is not real, modern eating need not be real for you. Rice is my soul food, I can’t survive without it probably, because that is what I have been eating since 26 years yet hale and healthy. 

Not just rice, Rujuta talks about ghee, kokum, banana, cashew, ambadi, coconut, aliv, jackfruit and sugar. 

To summarize, eat your gene food- which you have been eating since birth, eat a complete meal- consisting carbs-proteins-fat-nutrients etc, workout regularly- need not be high intensity but regular and normal, eat local grown fruits and veggies, more the distance and time between farm and your mouth- more the loss of nutrients from foods, chuck crash diets, make food a lifestyle more than a diet of short term and many many more.  

Oh you must read the book, you will change the way you eat. And just to make sure you get full knowledge of what she is saying, also read her another book ‘don’t lose your mind, lose your weight’. Or there is a chance of misunderstanding. 

Don’t look at me like that… I’m not on any fitness goals. I like to read that is all! ;)

So happy reading and happy eating! 

The book gets 5/5.

The Tao Of Physics - by Fritjof Capra

 

An exploration of the parallels between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism

I must say this book is a bridge between the Mystic so-called “fairy tale” religious world and the Modern Scientific world. Because in this book you will understand various things but in two entirely different approaches of the same language. 

Fritjof Capra contradicts himself while speaking about language barriers and drawbacks, where language falls short of words to explain one’s experience or findings, but surprisingly the author himself has written the whole book about something that can’t be well expressed in an outstandingly understandable way. 

Though physics is not my territory, my understanding of physics in the book was like a bubble. I understood what he explained and also experienced the spontaneous short-term awareness when he mentions the parallels of the same in eastern mysticism. But now if you ask me the physics part I’m equal to illiterate. I don’t remember but I have the experience part with me forever. 

Towards the end of reading the book, there was one thing staring right in my face when reading the parallels part, like I had two columns drawn in my mind and went on filling them with similarities and distinctions between P and EM. Though there were not many distinctions mentioned by the author, there was one somewhere in the corner of my mind unclear and hard to point out. So I went back to the beginning of the book and glanced at it again.  

Now it became clear, a very simple and subtle distinction. Physics is trying to ‘know about’ something and Eastern mysticism is ‘about knowing’ something. Though it looks simple, it is very subtle. You may know a hell lot about something and still not know even a bit of it. That is the difference and that is exactly why you will find even a 100 types of mysticism will repeat the same things again and again. And physics keeps evolving and changing continuously but doesn't reach there. 

If you go on dividing something with an intention to find an indivisible thing at the core, you will never reach there because even if you find something, you will divide it further according to the categories held in your perception. This intellect of ours is good only when there is a threat to our better-survival not when we are aspiring to psychologically evolve further and reach higher conscious states. 

This is just my personal opinion, I can be absolutely wrong. But as they say there’s only one way to find out. 

I had a great time reading and learning from this book and also surprised by subtle parallels.

The book gets 5/5.