Anuradha Sridharan

 A few days back, K and I went for our weekly fruits and vegetable shopping. The bill is usually around Rs.1000. It has increased slightly in the past few weeks, given that more people are at home, but this is the average amount we incur every week.  Anyway, this post got triggered by two comments.  "You are buying too many fruits and vegetables for a week", a casual comment by a loved one. "Junk food is so cheap but fruits, vegetables, cold pressed oils and millets cost yaanai vilai", a comment from a dear reader. This is how I see it - "choose quality ingredients and invest towards your health NOW" or "save money by buying cheap, junk food and pay with a hefty interest towards medical expenses LATER". Having spent the last 3 months with multiple hospital visits for Appa, I got to experience the sheer magnitude of medical expenses, running in lakhs. To give you a rough idea, Doctor consultation - Rs.900 . This is for outpatients. If the same doc...

Guess the topic I have become extremely curious about. Astrology. Yes, you heard that right. Over the past three months, my interest in astrology has increased quite a bit. I was looking for answers related to events that have been unfolding in my life in the past one year or so - multiple challenges, unexpected turns of events, situations beyond my control, and so on. I wouldn't claim that I have got the answers I was looking for through astrology. But I could see a larger connection and correlation, something which helps me feel a sense of calm and acceptance. Since childhood, I have always been interested in reading Sun signs and the daily predictions - be it in a random newspaper or a magazine. But I never paid closer attention to them. But in the last few months, I have been listening to monthly predictions and watching multiple videos to understand astrology better. Instead of bluntly dismissing astrology as superstition/pseudoscience, I want to go deeper and learn the nuance...

 I vividly remember the chapters of my 12th grade Biology textbook. There were individual chapters on the various systems of our human body - digestive system, respiratory system, circulatory system, endocrine system etc. The chapters covered each system in detail and explained the various organs involved. But there weren't any mention of how each of these systems are interconnected and how they influence each other. To elaborate on this interconnectedness, let's take the example of digestive system. School textbooks talk about the different organs involved in digestion - esophagus, stomach, liver, pancreas, small intestine, large intestine and colon. They also talk about how carbohydrates, proteins and fats are broken down in various stages through the digestive enzymes present in saliva, stomach acids, role of bile etc.  From what I have observed and learned is that digestion is influenced by factors, apart from the organs of digestive system.  Good dental structure is ...