A fine Friday feast

The visual enjoyment, in my humble opinion, is loftier than the pleasure these items can afford while consuming them to satiate our hunger or quench our thirst since consumption has an element of annihilation in it which, though permissible on the ground our existence , is not there in visual gratification


It was a fine Friday morning around 8.30 A.M . In lieu of lying in my bed tightly wrapped in my acrylic blanket and attempting to protract my somnolence in the artificial cooling of the air conditioner , I thought I would go for a shopping. Most of the Doha residents would be still sleeping . Since there would be a few vehicles on the road and a not so clever driver like me could drive unscarred of those impatient and unruly drivers, I decided exploit the situation to  my favour. Though there are a large number of supermarkets and hypermarkets in this oil rich country, one always finds long queues of customers in these shopping centers waiting to pay their bills . There will be a great rush on holidays in these supermarkets , but Friday morning is comparatively convenient for a shopper for obvious reasons.



Aalippazham

The ad display board in front of this hypermarket was unique since it said “ A BIG HALE”, not sale . In the business world , aesthetics have little role to play. It might be the work of an anonymous language lover trying to display his creative talents.. But  the word hale , thoough slightly different in spelling, reminded me of the hail stone in Doha in late eighties when one evening all on a sudden crystal like hail stones , as small as pebbles, began to fall on the roof our house. The Malayalam word for hale stone, ‘Aaalippazham’, has a special taste because of the word ‘pazham’ in which in our language means fruit. When we opened the door , the veranda was full of hail stones . My wife and myself began to pick and enjoy them as if we were plucking fruits from a tree .Our three kids, the youngest one being around one year old, were staring at us being some what scared.

How blessed are those who can convert every activity in their lives into a pleasure! Customers, pulling their shopping trolleys and baskets, were enjoying the items displayed ; pure red apples , bright yellow oranges, ripe mangoes, bananas, different types of fresh and lush  green herbs, beverage bottles of different designs, colorful packs of  food items, what else do they need to constitute a feast for their eyes? The visual enjoyment, in my humble opinion, is loftier than the pleasure these items can afford while consuming them to satiate our hunger or quench our thirst since consumption has an element of annihilation in it which, though permissible on the ground our existence , is not there in visual gratification. The customers’ movements were very slow and some of them were choosing items like a housewife separating the corn from the chaff.




Indian gooseberry- a remedy for diabetes

 My shopping was namesake because I had to buy only one item , gooseberry, which I can say, is very essential for my existence .It is the  fruit that came to my succour and saved me from depending on the allopathic tablets I was taking to cure diabetes I was afflicted with some years ago . It so happened that one of my friends advised or rather compelled me three year ago to take green Indian  gooseberry with turmeric powder early in the morning before breakfast. Thanks to that person and the grace of God , I have stopped taking medicines since then and my blood sugar is still normal . I have been, instead, eating gooseberry daily with turmeric powder before breakfast and avoiding sugar and carbohydrates . The other day when I met a diabetic patient I advised him to take goose berry telling him not stop medicine suddenly but reduce its dose gradually and stop taking medicines if gooseberry is found to effective in his case as I had done  three years ago . I also told him to drink 8 glasses of water, if possible, when he wakes up and before brushing his teeth as I had been doing and admitted that it might be very difficult for him to drink 8 glasses of water at a time especially before brushing his teeth but he could drink as much as water he could provided that it does not cause strain to his urine bladder.

When I googled I was surprised to find that gooseberry contains insulin which is why it is capable of controlling blood sugar. It is only one of the numerous  gifts of God. We,however, very often take them for granted and fail to realize how valuable these  gifts  are and how merciful God is.

By the father