“You know, microwave
causes cancer?! I have decided to stop
using it.” This got a bemused, almost sneered look on my mom’s face, the
first of it’s kind, especially considering she had come to visit me after a
year.
Over the course of her trip, I kept showing off all my
latest lifestyle changes…organic eating, the boycott of processed foods, the
stainless steel additions in the kitchen, my yoga routine, the all-natural beauty
regime, and even the reincarnation of the
balti-bath
(well, the
water
campaign by Shekhar Kapur combined with my clogged shower head sealed that
deal!).
She didn’t say much, but couldn’t hide the “Havent you come
a full circle?” look on her face.
She left a few days later, leaving me behind with the thought
to ponder on.
The truth is, not very far ago, my arguments with my mom were
around these exact things…
“Why would you heat on
a stove, when you have a microwave? It’s like living in the dark ages.”
“Why don’t you give the new Maggie a try? It’s
now fortified.”
“Yoga?! Anything that boring cannot be healthy!”
“High time to chuck
the stainless steel, Mom. Everyone in the US uses non-stick cookware. And
trust me, they are more health conscious!”
“A warm shower is the
only way to really feel clean.”
Ironic, it may seem! But
the fact of the matter is, aren't we all trying to come to a full circle in
some way or other?
- How come natural healing practices are taking
center stage, when we have advanced so much in allopathy?
- Aren’t we at the onset of an organic farming revolution,
after having spent millions in research of chemical fertilizers?
- Why are we starting to bike/walk to work, when we now own
multiple cars?
- Why are some of us so excited about those new flour mills in
the neighborhood selling fresh chakki-ka-atta when we can readily get it in
grocery stores?
- What about that daily dose of sun we now feed our
vitaminD-starved bodies, having refrained from it for the fear of skin cancer?
- What about the resurgence of the eastern-style squatting
toilets now being popularized by the Westerners?
- And isn’t simplicity the ultimate sophistication these days?
- And isn’t the appeal of being an “Aam Aadmi”, an endorsement
of our back-to-basics mindset?
So all this advancement, inventions, systems, and gadgetry! Should
we have really bothered? It’s as if everything we created has had an evil
side-effect that we are now striving to compensate for. Have we really progressed then, if we are
constantly trying to fight the evils of our own progression?
If better sense prevails, looks like I may wind up where I
started off. In a household where there wasn’t a microwave or non-stick
cookware or a cupboard full of processed foods; only squatting toilets, balti-baths,
fresh chakki-ka-aata, and lots of sunshine.
And here’s how we may wind up:
How about that for a full circle of evolution?J
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This post is dedicated
to my Mom; the force behind me restarting this blog and the inspiration behind
my full circle of evolution.