Organic eggs
Seeds and eggs have one thing in common: they are nature’s most perfect blends of growth food. How come? Well, both have to look after themselves for all their needs.
The seed must have everything it needs to survive till it can send its roots into the soil and its first leaves into the sunlight.
The egg (once fertilized) must be able to raise a whole new bird from only the nutrients enclosed within its shell. Hence nature’s complete self-contained growth package. Read the rest of this entry »
The environment in the IIT’s curriculum
I am not here to add any new facts to the millions of facts you’ve been getting into your heads from the age of 3 or 4. I do not attend seminars as a matter of routine. I do not know how people like you can sit for the whole day listening to a whole lot of things thrown at you. If this is all that you can do without rebellion, you are obviously beyond salvation.
I have come to share some feelings and perceptions about our continuing disquiet about the fact that the environment remains an externality in the curriculum as it is to the economy. In the economy, the environmental issue takes on an either/or debate, or one to be done at the expense of the other. We have yet to graduate to a perspective in which both (economy and ecology) advance and enrich each other, using human intelligence. Maybe this is too idealistic a proposal for today’s set of realities. Read the rest of this entry »
Edible Oil: Blowing Hot and Cold
More than a decade ago, Bhavani (Holly) Lev of Organic India from Lucknow – one of the producers of the finest range of organic tulsi teas worldwide – asked me if I could locate some “cold-pressed” edible oil for her. I tried, I couldn’t.
Today the situation is vastly different and one can get a range of edible oils in the market that are “cold-pressed.” Of all these oils, organically produced cold-pressed oil is the most expensive solely because of its stupendous health endowments, flavour and richness. Now what exactly is cold-pressed oil? Read the rest of this entry »
Beijing Days
I visited Beijing in 2007, a year prior to the Olympics, and then again last week. The transformation of this gigantic city is clearly impressive. This is the capital of the world’s most populated nation so its scale will naturally be vast. But like the outward demeanour of the Chinese people themselves, there is little flashiness or showing off. The mammoth Olympic Stadium (the Bird’s Nest) looks abandoned and forlorn but the Forbidden City is back to its former glory (it was under renovation in 2007), exactly as one saw it in The Last Emperor. Read the rest of this entry »