Nurturing the Seeds

Nothing can be more distressing for parents than having their children fall sick. Children fall sick quite often these days. They grow up in a synthetic environment, away from nature.  They grow up quite detached with greenery, amidst pollution—breathing toxic air, drinking contaminated water, and consuming adulterated foods. These things have lead to a weak immunity that makes children vulnerable to diseases.

   

To ensure good health for our children, it is important to understand the mantra of healthy living: BEING CLOSER TO NATURE.  It’s our duty to ensure that our children are brought up in healthy ways, one way of doing which is to ensure that they are taught to live a life that's in harmony with nature. I learned this lesson only two months back.

I live in a joint family with my cousin, Sanyogita—a juvenile girl of eleven studying in primary. Her mom(my aunt) became very cautious about her health after a traumatic incident that befell  her life—she contracted chicken pox, and we got concerned. Though, physically, she had healed completely, the trauma of being in such a thwarting episode was still obvious in her behavior. I could sense a feeling of ‘neglect-towards-food’ that she had been portraying over a couple of weeks. No sooner did she heal from chicken pox, than she resumed her dance classes. Problem started only when she started losing weight tremendously, and complained of certain health condition including recurrent stomachaches.

If you are a school going children, life can be hectic. As I can observe from the life of Sanyogita: she wakes up early in the morning at around ‘six’ rushing for the school, only to return home after  hours of grueling study. Besides, she is also very active in extracurricular events, especially in a sports classes, which she calls ‘EDUSPORTS’. She comes home fatigued, and in a great rush, finishes her lunch so that she can make to the dance class on time. By the time she returns home, it is dark. She is too exhausted even to complete her homework satisfactorily.

Now with all such activities, you need a good stamina to keep up. You need ample calories to fuel your bodily machine, and in Sanju’s case, a machine that seldom compromises with extreme physical activities. Only if one starts to neglect food, the calories, the stamina, the proteins, vitamins, minerals, or whatsoever, would fall short. This was exactly what has been happening to Sanyogita: the weight loss, excessive fatigue, going to sleep too early, disturbed sleep pattern, craving for junk foods, recurrent stomachaches, lethargy, and all.

The solution came unexpectedly off a lady from the 50s, my grandmother, who visited Bangalore at that time. First of all, she nagged for hours about how irresponsible my aunt has been in nurturing the child. “Look how frail she’s got Tanu”, she exclaimed, “Ohh…god, her ribs can be counted”. My aunt defended saying that she had contracted  chicken pox, and since than she’d been neglecting her food. “She don’t eat her food on time Amma”, my aunt said, staring at Sanyogita with displeasure,” she often gets up from the dinner table leaving half her food in plate”. My grandmother got quite concerned, and sternly ordered me to bring home a bottle of “Dabur Chawanprash”!

/https://www.liveveda.com/daburchyawanprash/..

This stuff has been there in market since a long time, and I remember, I use to have it as a child. Even my father had had it during his childhood. “Give her chawanprash daily, twice a day”, she ordered firmly to my aunt, at the same time caressing Sanyogita’s hair affectionately. “modern parents seems to have forgotten the ways of bringing up a child”. I ran to a local store, and brought home this magical mixture of herbs. For two weeks that my grandma stayed in Bangalore, she would unfailingly feed her chawanprash three times a day. And she’d also force all of us to have it, narrating the health benefits of this herbal stuff in her traditional tone: it makes you stronger, it strengthens your immunity, it relieves cough, it increases normalizes appetite, and many more.

We started to observe changes after a week. Sanyogita’s appetite seemingly normalized, and her eating habits improved. She no longer fell flat after coming home from dance class, no longer left food in her plate at the dining table, and no longer complained of recurrent stomach aches. We been continuing this trend of eating chawanprash since then. The kids(including me), the mom, the dad, and even some of my neighbors who got influenced by my grandma are healthy. Sanyogita has won two state level dance competition the previous week, and have attained a great popularity in school.

This experience only insinuates the fact that no matter how much we tend to modernize, no matter how much we tend to consider the concrete jungles as our natural environ, real health can only be achieved by being closer to nature, and by preferring herbal products over synthetic ones.   Our children are our future, our pride, our joy, our hope. It’s our duty to ensure that our progeny are brought up in careful ways, in healthy ways, in natural ways, so that some years from now we’ll have a world filled with hale and hearty youths. Let’s nurture our seeds in an organic way, rather than inundating them with damaging fertilizers.

Thanks Grandma for teaching us this lesson!