By M H Ahssan
The quickest way to lose weight may not always be the most obvious way in the fray. Sure you can lose weight in a number of ways. You could go on one of those fad diets that you keep hearing about celebrities using to drop weight. The ones where you get to eat no fats and only nibble on salads all day long. Or one where you eliminate all carbohydrates from your food and just eat some proteins. Or you could even go on a "no cooking" diet where you have to eat all the vegetables and fruits fresh and raw.
If all these seasonal diets are going to help you at all, they will not do it in this lifetime. They are just going to help you lose some weight for the time that you are on the diet and you will gain all that weight and more back on as soon as you eat regular food again.
The quickest way to lose weight may not be the healthiest way to lose weight. The quickest way to lose weight may cause your body to act like a "Yo-Yo" with it putting on and dropping pounds as a matter of routine. This is not, as you can imagine, exactly the healthiest thing for your body. Sure you will drop pounds fast, but it will not be because you are burning fat. It will be because you are losing water from the body. And it will cause you to lose muscle tone as well. I for one do not believe that you should opt to lose weight in this haphazard manner.
It is far better to go about your weight loss in a more organized manner. Don't expect to work miracles instantly. It took some time for you to get to your current weight and it will take you some time to come down to your ideal weight. Don't get distracted by gadgets and products that offer to give you instant weight loss. You will be handing away your money to anyone who has a decent sales pitch. There are enough people out there who will have no qualms doing just that, so do your home work before you make a purchase. Remember that to lose weight you need to have a plan.
Here is a three week plan that works. Try it out for yourself and see if it makes any difference to you. In the first week monitor what your calorie intake and calorie burning is. Write it all down. In the second week decrease your calorie intake and increase your calorie burning causing a difference of 500 calories per day. In the third week make adjustments to your schedule so that you can burn extra calories and lose more weight faster.
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Friday, March 06, 2009
Fats that make your heart happy
Dr.Anjali Kapoor
Fats and cholesterol are always the prime accused in the case of heart trouble and the first things to be pushed out of the diet when on a weight loss regime. But, do fats deserve all the bad publicity?
Not all fats are bad for your health. The right sort can help your heart keep pumping, make your joints supple, and improve the texture of your skin. Fats and oils are made up of fatty acids and it is these that make a difference to your health. If you go on a low-fat diet or consume calories from the wrong foods, your body may not get enough good fats, which are needed to build healthy cells. This can cause poor organ function.
The good fats
Monounsaturated fatty acids (MUFA): Oils extracted from olives, groundnuts, sesame seeds, rapeseed, canola and flaxseed contain MUFAs, which protect the cardiovascular system. MUFA also helps reduce low density lipoprotein (LDL, a type of cholesterol) in your body, promoting heart health. Olive oil is the richest source of MUFA.
Essential fatty acids (EFA): As the name suggests, these are necessary for normal growth and development. There are two types: omega-3 and omega-6. These are not manufactured by the body so the only way to acquire them is through diet.
Among the omega-3 fatty acids, the most important ones are a-linolenic acid (ALA), eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA), and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA). These stimulate blood circulation by increasing the breakdown of fibrin (a compound involved in clot formation) and help reduce blood pressure. Omega-3 fatty acids also reduce the risk of heart attack and atherosclerosis by significantly reducing blood triglyceride levels. Omega-3s are also known to to have anti-inflammatory properties and help in conditions like arthritis, varicose veins and depression.
Primary omega-6 fatty acids constitute linoleic acid. But a high consumption these fatty acids is know to increase the risk of heart disease. The ratio of not more than 4:1 of omega-6 to omega-3 acids in your diet is considered beneficial to health.
Indian diets are packed with an abundant supply of omega-6, from cereals, grains, vegetables and dals, so it’s important to make sure you’re getting enough foods with omega-3 fatty acids in them to maintain the ratio.
Eat foods like fish, walnuts, soybeans, almonds, leafy vegetables and flaxseed, which are rich in omega-3. Avoid adding vegetable oil while cooking, since it is rich in omega-6 and disrupts the ratio.
Tips to balancing your diet
Have two tablespoons of alsi-seed (flaxseeds) powder daily. Alsi is rich in ALA, and helps increase high density lipoprotein (HDL, good cholesterol) in your body. Alsi powder can be added to salads or can be had as a chutney.
To increase the amount of EPA and DHA in your diet, eat cold water oily fish like salmon, bangda, sardines, and surmai, 2-3 times a week (grilled or steamed).
Include evening primrose oil and fish oil supplements in your diet.
Reduce your intake of processed food, margarine and vegetable oils like corn and sunflower, as they are high in omega-6.
Reduce your saturated fat intake by avoiding red meat, high fat dairy products like whole milk and butter, and deep fried food.
Use oils extracted from olives, mustard and canola.
Eat more omega-3 rich foods like walnuts, almonds, soybeans, leafy vegetables, sea-food, etc.
The human body is very resilient but improper eating eventually exacts a toll. So make sure you make the right choices.
Fats and cholesterol are always the prime accused in the case of heart trouble and the first things to be pushed out of the diet when on a weight loss regime. But, do fats deserve all the bad publicity?
Not all fats are bad for your health. The right sort can help your heart keep pumping, make your joints supple, and improve the texture of your skin. Fats and oils are made up of fatty acids and it is these that make a difference to your health. If you go on a low-fat diet or consume calories from the wrong foods, your body may not get enough good fats, which are needed to build healthy cells. This can cause poor organ function.
The good fats
Monounsaturated fatty acids (MUFA): Oils extracted from olives, groundnuts, sesame seeds, rapeseed, canola and flaxseed contain MUFAs, which protect the cardiovascular system. MUFA also helps reduce low density lipoprotein (LDL, a type of cholesterol) in your body, promoting heart health. Olive oil is the richest source of MUFA.
Essential fatty acids (EFA): As the name suggests, these are necessary for normal growth and development. There are two types: omega-3 and omega-6. These are not manufactured by the body so the only way to acquire them is through diet.
Among the omega-3 fatty acids, the most important ones are a-linolenic acid (ALA), eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA), and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA). These stimulate blood circulation by increasing the breakdown of fibrin (a compound involved in clot formation) and help reduce blood pressure. Omega-3 fatty acids also reduce the risk of heart attack and atherosclerosis by significantly reducing blood triglyceride levels. Omega-3s are also known to to have anti-inflammatory properties and help in conditions like arthritis, varicose veins and depression.
Primary omega-6 fatty acids constitute linoleic acid. But a high consumption these fatty acids is know to increase the risk of heart disease. The ratio of not more than 4:1 of omega-6 to omega-3 acids in your diet is considered beneficial to health.
Indian diets are packed with an abundant supply of omega-6, from cereals, grains, vegetables and dals, so it’s important to make sure you’re getting enough foods with omega-3 fatty acids in them to maintain the ratio.
Eat foods like fish, walnuts, soybeans, almonds, leafy vegetables and flaxseed, which are rich in omega-3. Avoid adding vegetable oil while cooking, since it is rich in omega-6 and disrupts the ratio.
Tips to balancing your diet
Have two tablespoons of alsi-seed (flaxseeds) powder daily. Alsi is rich in ALA, and helps increase high density lipoprotein (HDL, good cholesterol) in your body. Alsi powder can be added to salads or can be had as a chutney.
To increase the amount of EPA and DHA in your diet, eat cold water oily fish like salmon, bangda, sardines, and surmai, 2-3 times a week (grilled or steamed).
Include evening primrose oil and fish oil supplements in your diet.
Reduce your intake of processed food, margarine and vegetable oils like corn and sunflower, as they are high in omega-6.
Reduce your saturated fat intake by avoiding red meat, high fat dairy products like whole milk and butter, and deep fried food.
Use oils extracted from olives, mustard and canola.
Eat more omega-3 rich foods like walnuts, almonds, soybeans, leafy vegetables, sea-food, etc.
The human body is very resilient but improper eating eventually exacts a toll. So make sure you make the right choices.
Monday, March 02, 2009
Milk can prevent Alzheimer’s, says study
By Rajini Mathews
Want to stave off dementia? Drink just two glasses of milk daily, for a new study has suggested that it can help protect against memory loss and Alzheimer’s disease in old age.
An international team, led by Oxford University, has found that milk is actually one of the best sources of a key vitamin, B12, that is said to reduce the neurological damage to the brain which can lead to forms of dementia. Moreover, the study has revealed that elderly patients with low levels of the vitamin B12 suffer twice as much shrinkage of the brain as those with higher levels of the substance in their bodies. According to lead researcher Prof David Smith, downing just two glasses of milk everyday would be enough to “increase levels of vitamin B12” to an adequate level and increasing the intake of B12 in the elderly could slow cognitive decline.
“Our study shows that consuming around half a litre of milk or more per day, and it can be skimmed milk, could take someone who has marginal levels of B12 into the safe range. But drinking just two glasses a day can protect against having low levels,” ‘The Daily Telegraph’ quoted Smith as saying. Vitamin B12 is found mainly in meat, fish and dairy products.
But, the study, published in the ‘American Journal of Clinical Nutrition’ has revealed that while meat contain some of the highest levels of the vitamin, it’s poorly absorbed by the body when eaten.
Instead Prof Smith, together with colleagues at Oslo University and Bergen University in Norway, found the highest levels of vitamin B12 absorbed by the body came from milk, despite having lower B12 concentrations than meat.
Around 55% of the vitamin in milk entered the blood stream; fish provided the second highest source of the vitamin, followed by other dairy products, they found in their study.
Want to stave off dementia? Drink just two glasses of milk daily, for a new study has suggested that it can help protect against memory loss and Alzheimer’s disease in old age.
An international team, led by Oxford University, has found that milk is actually one of the best sources of a key vitamin, B12, that is said to reduce the neurological damage to the brain which can lead to forms of dementia. Moreover, the study has revealed that elderly patients with low levels of the vitamin B12 suffer twice as much shrinkage of the brain as those with higher levels of the substance in their bodies. According to lead researcher Prof David Smith, downing just two glasses of milk everyday would be enough to “increase levels of vitamin B12” to an adequate level and increasing the intake of B12 in the elderly could slow cognitive decline.
“Our study shows that consuming around half a litre of milk or more per day, and it can be skimmed milk, could take someone who has marginal levels of B12 into the safe range. But drinking just two glasses a day can protect against having low levels,” ‘The Daily Telegraph’ quoted Smith as saying. Vitamin B12 is found mainly in meat, fish and dairy products.
But, the study, published in the ‘American Journal of Clinical Nutrition’ has revealed that while meat contain some of the highest levels of the vitamin, it’s poorly absorbed by the body when eaten.
Instead Prof Smith, together with colleagues at Oslo University and Bergen University in Norway, found the highest levels of vitamin B12 absorbed by the body came from milk, despite having lower B12 concentrations than meat.
Around 55% of the vitamin in milk entered the blood stream; fish provided the second highest source of the vitamin, followed by other dairy products, they found in their study.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
How Happy Are You?
By M H Ahssan
Have you ever wondered what makes people happy? Why do millionaires often seem wretched when slum-dwellers in Kolkata profess to be content? Here’s what modern science can teach you about turning that frown upside down
It does not look like a picture of the pursuit of happiness. In the photograph, social psychologist Robert Biswas-Diener is sitting on the ground somewhere in Kenya, his back straight, hands in his lap, the fingers of one wrapped fiercely around the opposite wrist. His short-sleeved shirt is half off. A Maasai warrior sits facing him, calmly poking a red-hot stick into Biswas-Diener’s exposed pectoral muscle. Which he did again and again.
“They’re a culture of bravery,” says Biswas-Diener, who travels the world to study happiness. “They do all these rituals of burning and sacrifice as a show of pain tolerance. I went to see a male circumcision on a 15-year-old, and it’s pretty horrific. But the kid held completely still, almost as if he was asleep. The Maasai really do prize this capital of courage. They didn’t necessarily have a lot of respect for my project. So I said, ‘Sure, I’d be willing to have this ritual burning.’ ”
Biswas-Diener’s reaction was to clench his jaw as the burning stick seared his flesh, allowing one eyebrow to jut wildly skyward. The Maasai warriors submitted in turn to that odd instrument of torture, the attitudinal survey. It turned out that they were happy, despite having little or no formal education, few possessions other than their cattle, and nothing but spears to fend off hungry lions.
What makes people happy? Why do millionaires often seem wretched, whereas slum-dwellers in Kolkata profess to be content? Why do we find satisfaction in activities that are painful in the actual experience, like running a marathon, or being branded in a tribal ritual? If real happiness lies in our relationships with family and friends, as research suggests, how do we cultivate these relationships—and not let these people drive us nuts?
Over the past few decades, a small army of scientists has been working to tease out the elusive nature of happiness. The results of their work can at times seem dauntingly complex, as when two economists offer this formula for happiness: r = h[u(y, s, z, t)] + e. At other times, it can seem blissfully simple, as when the same two authors conclude, “The more sex, the happier the person.”
The good news about happiness is that it seems to be a skill that we can acquire and develop. Studies indicate that even severely depressed individuals can increase their sense of well-being. Moreover, some of the most effective techniques are relatively simple and cost nothing.
Let’s start with a list. I sat up all night making mine, and it was infinitely more gratifying than the more familiar 1 am pastime of making “to-do” lists. It was a list of things that, at one time or another, have made me happy. When I was a kid, for instance, I loved to circle a berry tree in our backyard while still my pajamas, stuffing my face till my hands and feet and lips were purple with crushed berries. Sounds dumb? But the truth is that my list was full of trivial stuff: driving my first car with one arm out the window and Hey Jude playing loud on the radio; walking to my flat in Dublin carrying a pint of milk with the cream rising to the top and a loaf of brown bread still warm from the oven; sitting on a porch with a gin and tonic, looking out at the bay, while my daughter played nearby on a swing. Nothing you would put on your list of “99 Things to Do before I Die”.
But maybe it’s not about big things, after all. We often stake our happiness on things that we know, deep down, will quickly leave us feeling empty—acquiring the next big promotion, the slick new car, the hot date. We act as if all hangs on, say, our team winning this Saturday’s big match. But Saturday afternoon comes and goes, says Harvard researcher Daniel T Gilbert, PhD, and all the emotions stirred up by the game get “pushed, pulled, dampened, exacerbated, and otherwise altered by post-game pizza, late-night parties and next-day hangovers”.
In one experiment, Gilbert and other researchers asked participants how bad they would feel if they failed to win the big date. B-a-a-ad, they thought. But when they actually lost, they generally shrugged it off.
So the researchers upped the ante. They asked participants what quantity of a mood-enhancing drug they would want to ingest to make themselves feel better if they lost. A ton, they predicted. But on losing, they actually opted for a much smaller imaginary dose. We have, says Gilbert, a kind of “psychological immune system” for explaining away bad news.
This is, of course, a good thing. It enables us to find our way back to our familiar emotional baseline, even after a devastating event, such as the loss of a parent. Curiously, Gilbert suggests that we may also benefit from our inability to predict what will make us happy. Exaggerating the impact of future events may help us drum up the energy for Saturday’s game. It may explain what Gilbert refers to as “our willingness to marry despite the responsibilities and constraints… or to raise children despite the pooping and howling”.
On the other hand, it may also help sustain the illusion that we could be happy if we were just a little richer, say, or a little more physically attractive. Research has repeatedly shown that increasing your income, or even winning the lottery, is unlikely to make you much happier, once you get beyond the basic minimum.
The psychological immune system is also good at explaining away even extraordinarily good events, so that they quickly seem ordinary “and perhaps even a little dull”, Gilbert says. Thus, people who pin their hopes on the next big thing often end up on what researchers call “the hedonic treadmill”, chasing goals that, once attained, don’t seem to matter much.
People also fool themselves about what made them happy in the past. In one experiment, test subjects’ memories of their vacations were much happier than their feelings during the actual holidays. This flawed memory made them more willing to repeat the vacation experience. The “peak/end rule,” put forth by Princeton psychologist Daniel Kahneman, PhD, provides a possible explanation. Kahneman points out that there are 20,000 or so three-second “moments” in the average waking day. Keeping track of them all is just too damned hard. So, as a sort of shortcut, people’s memories of an event are disproportionately influenced, according to Kahneman, by the peak moment and the ending.
Scientists are beginning to understand the mechanisms that make happiness possible—and they’re figuring out how to tinker with them. The peak/end rule, for instance, has practical implications: we’re far more likely to feel happy about some past experience, and far more willing to go back for more, if the experience ended on a positive note. The moral is simple: whatever you’re doing, if you want to do it again with the same people anytime soon, send ’em away smiling.
At the University of Wisconsin in Madison, a volunteer slides his head into the doughnut-hole opening of a magnetic resonance imaging machine, which pings and squeals, constructing a picture of his brain in 30 slices. The MRI is recording the life of the patient’s mind, measuring activity in areas of his brain at any given moment. This gives neuroscientists a way to measure something as intangible as happiness. It also helps explain why things often look gloomier than they are.
Being negative is natural. We evolved to accentuate the negative, to notice the one dumb thing that goes wrong rather than the five or 10 things that go right. For instance, when researchers show people a paper on which is printed a grid full of smiling faces and one angry face, the test subjects instantly zero in on the angry face. Reverse the pattern and it takes them much longer to pick out the solitary smile.
Why be negative? Because focussing on what can go wrong helps us deal with danger. An angry face grabs our attention more than a smile does because it represents a threat. Psychologists say “negativity bias” was built into our minds evolution, because early humans who wandered up to the local watering hole a little too casually tended to be eaten by predators. Staying alive to enjoy your moment of happiness meant having a quick eye for the unhappy possibilities.
On the other hand, if we spent all our time being skittish, we’d never leave our beds. We’d never go to work. Or if we did, we’d shut the door and hide under our desks to avoid all the problems, a behaviour not unknown among new managers. So evolution has also equipped our brains with the opposite tendency, a “positivity offset”, simultaneously encouraging us to approach rather than to withdraw, and thus enabling us to ask somebody out on a date, or apply for a big job, or elbow our way to the bar.
Every human being has an emotional set point, an individual tendency to approach or withdraw, according to University of Wisconsin neuroscientist Richard Davidson, PhD, and the MRI is a way to index it. Activity in the left side of the prefrontal cortex is associated with a whole package of approach behaviours, including the way we point, move towards an object, handle it, and then give it a name. The right side of the prefrontal cortex, on the other hand, specialises in withdrawal behaviours, particularly detecting threats and backing away from them.
So what does all this have to do with happiness? Davidson has found that people with a distinctly higher level of activity on the left side of the prefrontal cortex rarely experience troubling moods, and tend to recover from them quickly. At the other extreme, people with a significantly higher level of activity on the right side of the brain are the most likely to have clinical depression or an anxiety disorder over the course of their lives.
But Davidson’s most interesting finding is that people can shift their emotional set points. In a study at a Wisconsin company called Promega, volunteers undertook a regimen of traditional meditation techniques (sitting quietly, breathing deeply, becoming calm and mindful). After eight weeks, MRI tests showed that they experienced a 10 to 15 per cent shift in the ratio of brain activity, away from the right side, bastion of negativity and withdrawal, and over to the positive-thinking left side. The subjects themselves could feel the change.
“I don’t react as much if my buttons are being pushed,” says Promega employee Michael Slater. “Instead of reacting, I ask why this is bugging me, and then I choose what to do about it. It maybe takes half a second. It’s not a big internal dialogue.” Davidson suggests that becoming more positive is an important step: “This culture is obsessed with certain practices, such as going to the gym to achieve demonstrable effects on the body. But there is every evidence that if we care for the mind in the same way we care for the body, positive emotions like generosity, happiness, and compassion can be trained up. They are skills, not fixed characteristics.”
If being negative is natural, why tamper with it now? “We’re no longer living in a hunter-gatherer society,” says University of Pennsylvania psychologist Tayyab Rashid, PhD. “We have basic security.” For the students who go to him suffering from depression, the negatives have piled up and become an impediment. They talk about how screwed up they are, how their mothers were very controlling, how their fathers were never at home, how the world is falling apart. “I listen,” says Rashid. But he also asks them to write a 300-word true story, with a beginning, middle and end, about an instance in which they exhibited strength. “They’re resistant at first.” Another paper. Just what a college student needs. Couldn’t we cut to the Prozac?
Instead of meditation—or medication— Rashid employs a repertoire of exercises developed by researchers in the thriving specialty known as positive psychology. For instance, in the “blessings” exercise, patients take time each night to write down three good things that happened that day. “The brain is wired to be negative. So we don’t remember the good things as well,” says Rashid. Writing them down helps change that.
Next, Rashid has his patients write a letter of thanks to someone who has played an important part in their lives. Then they arrange to visit with their benefactor and read the letter aloud. The face-to-face experience of saying “thank you” is life changing for some people, Rashid says. The “very raw expression of goodwill” tends to open up channels of communication and strengthen relationships. In experiments by psychologist Robert Emmons, PhD, at the University of California at Davis, these techniques helped test subjects boost their optimism, vitality, alertness and other building blocks of happiness.
If expressing deep gratitude seems a little too raw, particularly for emotionally inhibited Western males, Rashid says he understands: he grew up in Pakistan, as the youngest of five children. When their father’s business collapsed, one of the older brothers went to work as a labourer, putting in 20-hour days, six days a week. No one in the family had ever gone beyond high school, but the elder brother sent Rashid to private school and then to an American university. When Rashid eventually earned his doctorate, the brother came to the US for graduation. Rashid had his letter of gratitude ready—and could not read it aloud. “He would have been embarrassed,” Rashid says. “But I gave him the letter, and he responded with lots of tears and hugs. The expression was there. But no spoken words. And it cemented our relationship.”
These exercises are all aimed at spurring people to savour their own lives before it’s too late. It is the Warren Zevon lesson, articulated when the songwriter and performer was dying of cancer. Asked what his condition had taught him, Zevon replied, “How much you’re supposed to enjoy every sandwich.”
We are most likely to achieve happiness, it seems, when it is completely off the agenda. It shows up when we become so totally absorbed in an activity that time hardly seems to exist, and everything flows in the moment. “The surgeon can’t afford to feel happy during a demanding operation, or a musician while playing a challenging score,” writes Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the psychologist who first proposed the concept of “flow”. “Only after the task is completed do we have the leisure to look back on what has happened, and then we are flooded with gratitude for the excellence of that experience— then, in retrospect, we are happy.”
The key to happiness, Csikszentmihalyi suggests, is figuring out what gives you that feeling of flow. For me, it happens when I’m writing, or rowing a boat. For you? Eating Thai food or revising a bank statement are all legitimate contenders. But wait. We naturally think of happiness mainly in terms of pleasures. And yet some of these things sound suspiciously like work. In fact, some researchers suggest that flow— and happiness—often occurs when we set difficult goals for ourselves and go about achieving them—even at a cost of much pain.
Carnegie Mellon University economist George Loewenstein, PhD, describes mountaineering as “long periods of stultifying boredom punctuated by brief periods of terror”. So, what’s the appeal? Loewenstein writes that it’s almost impossible to fake it when you’re climbing a mountain. In addition to the potential for living in the moment, this makes it “an ideal venue for self-signalling”, he says. He suggests that a sense of well-being depends on the need not just to build a good name and impress other people, but also “to impress oneself”. Science underrates the importance of such motives, says Loewenstein, because it hasn’t yet figured out how to measure them.
Our happiness depends finally on other people and on the strength of our connections to them. When Biswas-Diener found that the Maasai in Kenya and slum-dwellers in Kolkata were relatively happy, one key factor was that they had a strong sense of their place in a social network. Homeless people in California, lacking such a network, were deeply unhappy.
When Biswas-Diener’s father, the psychologist and happiness researcher Ed Diener, examined the traits of the happiest people in his studies, he also found that, without exception, they had strong social relationships. A person does not need a vast circle of friends, or many party invites, to be happy. It may just be the people you play carrom with. But everybody needs somebody. When I look at my little happiness list, these connections are everywhere: I see myself climbing into my mother’s arms when I was three; I see my little daughter riding out for the first time on her bike; I see the time my sons appeared together in their high-school production of a famous musical; I see us all lying around on a beach, our noses buried in books; I see my English teacher from first year in college, rumoured to be a death-camp survivor, walking on a city street. “Hello,” I said, “How are you?” And I can still feel the way she beamed at me, lifting her chin to indicate the sky. “The sun is shining!” she explained. Then she passed contagiously by, and I’m not sure why, 30-odd years later, her happiness still makes me so happy.
But this is perhaps too high-minded a note to end on. So bear in mind this final piece of useful advice about one of the most important ways we connect with other people: when in doubt about what will make your significant other happy, have sex with her. In a study, researchers asked 900 working women in Texas to log their activities of the previous day and rank them according to happiness. They rated sex as the activity that produced the most happiness. (The least happy part of the day was commuting to work.) Oh, what the heck, do it twice. Send her off on that commute with a big fat grin.
From the world of happiness research, this is perhaps the ultimate take-home.
Have you ever wondered what makes people happy? Why do millionaires often seem wretched when slum-dwellers in Kolkata profess to be content? Here’s what modern science can teach you about turning that frown upside down
It does not look like a picture of the pursuit of happiness. In the photograph, social psychologist Robert Biswas-Diener is sitting on the ground somewhere in Kenya, his back straight, hands in his lap, the fingers of one wrapped fiercely around the opposite wrist. His short-sleeved shirt is half off. A Maasai warrior sits facing him, calmly poking a red-hot stick into Biswas-Diener’s exposed pectoral muscle. Which he did again and again.
“They’re a culture of bravery,” says Biswas-Diener, who travels the world to study happiness. “They do all these rituals of burning and sacrifice as a show of pain tolerance. I went to see a male circumcision on a 15-year-old, and it’s pretty horrific. But the kid held completely still, almost as if he was asleep. The Maasai really do prize this capital of courage. They didn’t necessarily have a lot of respect for my project. So I said, ‘Sure, I’d be willing to have this ritual burning.’ ”
Biswas-Diener’s reaction was to clench his jaw as the burning stick seared his flesh, allowing one eyebrow to jut wildly skyward. The Maasai warriors submitted in turn to that odd instrument of torture, the attitudinal survey. It turned out that they were happy, despite having little or no formal education, few possessions other than their cattle, and nothing but spears to fend off hungry lions.
What makes people happy? Why do millionaires often seem wretched, whereas slum-dwellers in Kolkata profess to be content? Why do we find satisfaction in activities that are painful in the actual experience, like running a marathon, or being branded in a tribal ritual? If real happiness lies in our relationships with family and friends, as research suggests, how do we cultivate these relationships—and not let these people drive us nuts?
Over the past few decades, a small army of scientists has been working to tease out the elusive nature of happiness. The results of their work can at times seem dauntingly complex, as when two economists offer this formula for happiness: r = h[u(y, s, z, t)] + e. At other times, it can seem blissfully simple, as when the same two authors conclude, “The more sex, the happier the person.”
The good news about happiness is that it seems to be a skill that we can acquire and develop. Studies indicate that even severely depressed individuals can increase their sense of well-being. Moreover, some of the most effective techniques are relatively simple and cost nothing.
Let’s start with a list. I sat up all night making mine, and it was infinitely more gratifying than the more familiar 1 am pastime of making “to-do” lists. It was a list of things that, at one time or another, have made me happy. When I was a kid, for instance, I loved to circle a berry tree in our backyard while still my pajamas, stuffing my face till my hands and feet and lips were purple with crushed berries. Sounds dumb? But the truth is that my list was full of trivial stuff: driving my first car with one arm out the window and Hey Jude playing loud on the radio; walking to my flat in Dublin carrying a pint of milk with the cream rising to the top and a loaf of brown bread still warm from the oven; sitting on a porch with a gin and tonic, looking out at the bay, while my daughter played nearby on a swing. Nothing you would put on your list of “99 Things to Do before I Die”.
But maybe it’s not about big things, after all. We often stake our happiness on things that we know, deep down, will quickly leave us feeling empty—acquiring the next big promotion, the slick new car, the hot date. We act as if all hangs on, say, our team winning this Saturday’s big match. But Saturday afternoon comes and goes, says Harvard researcher Daniel T Gilbert, PhD, and all the emotions stirred up by the game get “pushed, pulled, dampened, exacerbated, and otherwise altered by post-game pizza, late-night parties and next-day hangovers”.
In one experiment, Gilbert and other researchers asked participants how bad they would feel if they failed to win the big date. B-a-a-ad, they thought. But when they actually lost, they generally shrugged it off.
So the researchers upped the ante. They asked participants what quantity of a mood-enhancing drug they would want to ingest to make themselves feel better if they lost. A ton, they predicted. But on losing, they actually opted for a much smaller imaginary dose. We have, says Gilbert, a kind of “psychological immune system” for explaining away bad news.
This is, of course, a good thing. It enables us to find our way back to our familiar emotional baseline, even after a devastating event, such as the loss of a parent. Curiously, Gilbert suggests that we may also benefit from our inability to predict what will make us happy. Exaggerating the impact of future events may help us drum up the energy for Saturday’s game. It may explain what Gilbert refers to as “our willingness to marry despite the responsibilities and constraints… or to raise children despite the pooping and howling”.
On the other hand, it may also help sustain the illusion that we could be happy if we were just a little richer, say, or a little more physically attractive. Research has repeatedly shown that increasing your income, or even winning the lottery, is unlikely to make you much happier, once you get beyond the basic minimum.
The psychological immune system is also good at explaining away even extraordinarily good events, so that they quickly seem ordinary “and perhaps even a little dull”, Gilbert says. Thus, people who pin their hopes on the next big thing often end up on what researchers call “the hedonic treadmill”, chasing goals that, once attained, don’t seem to matter much.
People also fool themselves about what made them happy in the past. In one experiment, test subjects’ memories of their vacations were much happier than their feelings during the actual holidays. This flawed memory made them more willing to repeat the vacation experience. The “peak/end rule,” put forth by Princeton psychologist Daniel Kahneman, PhD, provides a possible explanation. Kahneman points out that there are 20,000 or so three-second “moments” in the average waking day. Keeping track of them all is just too damned hard. So, as a sort of shortcut, people’s memories of an event are disproportionately influenced, according to Kahneman, by the peak moment and the ending.
Scientists are beginning to understand the mechanisms that make happiness possible—and they’re figuring out how to tinker with them. The peak/end rule, for instance, has practical implications: we’re far more likely to feel happy about some past experience, and far more willing to go back for more, if the experience ended on a positive note. The moral is simple: whatever you’re doing, if you want to do it again with the same people anytime soon, send ’em away smiling.
At the University of Wisconsin in Madison, a volunteer slides his head into the doughnut-hole opening of a magnetic resonance imaging machine, which pings and squeals, constructing a picture of his brain in 30 slices. The MRI is recording the life of the patient’s mind, measuring activity in areas of his brain at any given moment. This gives neuroscientists a way to measure something as intangible as happiness. It also helps explain why things often look gloomier than they are.
Being negative is natural. We evolved to accentuate the negative, to notice the one dumb thing that goes wrong rather than the five or 10 things that go right. For instance, when researchers show people a paper on which is printed a grid full of smiling faces and one angry face, the test subjects instantly zero in on the angry face. Reverse the pattern and it takes them much longer to pick out the solitary smile.
Why be negative? Because focussing on what can go wrong helps us deal with danger. An angry face grabs our attention more than a smile does because it represents a threat. Psychologists say “negativity bias” was built into our minds evolution, because early humans who wandered up to the local watering hole a little too casually tended to be eaten by predators. Staying alive to enjoy your moment of happiness meant having a quick eye for the unhappy possibilities.
On the other hand, if we spent all our time being skittish, we’d never leave our beds. We’d never go to work. Or if we did, we’d shut the door and hide under our desks to avoid all the problems, a behaviour not unknown among new managers. So evolution has also equipped our brains with the opposite tendency, a “positivity offset”, simultaneously encouraging us to approach rather than to withdraw, and thus enabling us to ask somebody out on a date, or apply for a big job, or elbow our way to the bar.
Every human being has an emotional set point, an individual tendency to approach or withdraw, according to University of Wisconsin neuroscientist Richard Davidson, PhD, and the MRI is a way to index it. Activity in the left side of the prefrontal cortex is associated with a whole package of approach behaviours, including the way we point, move towards an object, handle it, and then give it a name. The right side of the prefrontal cortex, on the other hand, specialises in withdrawal behaviours, particularly detecting threats and backing away from them.
So what does all this have to do with happiness? Davidson has found that people with a distinctly higher level of activity on the left side of the prefrontal cortex rarely experience troubling moods, and tend to recover from them quickly. At the other extreme, people with a significantly higher level of activity on the right side of the brain are the most likely to have clinical depression or an anxiety disorder over the course of their lives.
But Davidson’s most interesting finding is that people can shift their emotional set points. In a study at a Wisconsin company called Promega, volunteers undertook a regimen of traditional meditation techniques (sitting quietly, breathing deeply, becoming calm and mindful). After eight weeks, MRI tests showed that they experienced a 10 to 15 per cent shift in the ratio of brain activity, away from the right side, bastion of negativity and withdrawal, and over to the positive-thinking left side. The subjects themselves could feel the change.
“I don’t react as much if my buttons are being pushed,” says Promega employee Michael Slater. “Instead of reacting, I ask why this is bugging me, and then I choose what to do about it. It maybe takes half a second. It’s not a big internal dialogue.” Davidson suggests that becoming more positive is an important step: “This culture is obsessed with certain practices, such as going to the gym to achieve demonstrable effects on the body. But there is every evidence that if we care for the mind in the same way we care for the body, positive emotions like generosity, happiness, and compassion can be trained up. They are skills, not fixed characteristics.”
If being negative is natural, why tamper with it now? “We’re no longer living in a hunter-gatherer society,” says University of Pennsylvania psychologist Tayyab Rashid, PhD. “We have basic security.” For the students who go to him suffering from depression, the negatives have piled up and become an impediment. They talk about how screwed up they are, how their mothers were very controlling, how their fathers were never at home, how the world is falling apart. “I listen,” says Rashid. But he also asks them to write a 300-word true story, with a beginning, middle and end, about an instance in which they exhibited strength. “They’re resistant at first.” Another paper. Just what a college student needs. Couldn’t we cut to the Prozac?
Instead of meditation—or medication— Rashid employs a repertoire of exercises developed by researchers in the thriving specialty known as positive psychology. For instance, in the “blessings” exercise, patients take time each night to write down three good things that happened that day. “The brain is wired to be negative. So we don’t remember the good things as well,” says Rashid. Writing them down helps change that.
Next, Rashid has his patients write a letter of thanks to someone who has played an important part in their lives. Then they arrange to visit with their benefactor and read the letter aloud. The face-to-face experience of saying “thank you” is life changing for some people, Rashid says. The “very raw expression of goodwill” tends to open up channels of communication and strengthen relationships. In experiments by psychologist Robert Emmons, PhD, at the University of California at Davis, these techniques helped test subjects boost their optimism, vitality, alertness and other building blocks of happiness.
If expressing deep gratitude seems a little too raw, particularly for emotionally inhibited Western males, Rashid says he understands: he grew up in Pakistan, as the youngest of five children. When their father’s business collapsed, one of the older brothers went to work as a labourer, putting in 20-hour days, six days a week. No one in the family had ever gone beyond high school, but the elder brother sent Rashid to private school and then to an American university. When Rashid eventually earned his doctorate, the brother came to the US for graduation. Rashid had his letter of gratitude ready—and could not read it aloud. “He would have been embarrassed,” Rashid says. “But I gave him the letter, and he responded with lots of tears and hugs. The expression was there. But no spoken words. And it cemented our relationship.”
These exercises are all aimed at spurring people to savour their own lives before it’s too late. It is the Warren Zevon lesson, articulated when the songwriter and performer was dying of cancer. Asked what his condition had taught him, Zevon replied, “How much you’re supposed to enjoy every sandwich.”
We are most likely to achieve happiness, it seems, when it is completely off the agenda. It shows up when we become so totally absorbed in an activity that time hardly seems to exist, and everything flows in the moment. “The surgeon can’t afford to feel happy during a demanding operation, or a musician while playing a challenging score,” writes Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the psychologist who first proposed the concept of “flow”. “Only after the task is completed do we have the leisure to look back on what has happened, and then we are flooded with gratitude for the excellence of that experience— then, in retrospect, we are happy.”
The key to happiness, Csikszentmihalyi suggests, is figuring out what gives you that feeling of flow. For me, it happens when I’m writing, or rowing a boat. For you? Eating Thai food or revising a bank statement are all legitimate contenders. But wait. We naturally think of happiness mainly in terms of pleasures. And yet some of these things sound suspiciously like work. In fact, some researchers suggest that flow— and happiness—often occurs when we set difficult goals for ourselves and go about achieving them—even at a cost of much pain.
Carnegie Mellon University economist George Loewenstein, PhD, describes mountaineering as “long periods of stultifying boredom punctuated by brief periods of terror”. So, what’s the appeal? Loewenstein writes that it’s almost impossible to fake it when you’re climbing a mountain. In addition to the potential for living in the moment, this makes it “an ideal venue for self-signalling”, he says. He suggests that a sense of well-being depends on the need not just to build a good name and impress other people, but also “to impress oneself”. Science underrates the importance of such motives, says Loewenstein, because it hasn’t yet figured out how to measure them.
Our happiness depends finally on other people and on the strength of our connections to them. When Biswas-Diener found that the Maasai in Kenya and slum-dwellers in Kolkata were relatively happy, one key factor was that they had a strong sense of their place in a social network. Homeless people in California, lacking such a network, were deeply unhappy.
When Biswas-Diener’s father, the psychologist and happiness researcher Ed Diener, examined the traits of the happiest people in his studies, he also found that, without exception, they had strong social relationships. A person does not need a vast circle of friends, or many party invites, to be happy. It may just be the people you play carrom with. But everybody needs somebody. When I look at my little happiness list, these connections are everywhere: I see myself climbing into my mother’s arms when I was three; I see my little daughter riding out for the first time on her bike; I see the time my sons appeared together in their high-school production of a famous musical; I see us all lying around on a beach, our noses buried in books; I see my English teacher from first year in college, rumoured to be a death-camp survivor, walking on a city street. “Hello,” I said, “How are you?” And I can still feel the way she beamed at me, lifting her chin to indicate the sky. “The sun is shining!” she explained. Then she passed contagiously by, and I’m not sure why, 30-odd years later, her happiness still makes me so happy.
But this is perhaps too high-minded a note to end on. So bear in mind this final piece of useful advice about one of the most important ways we connect with other people: when in doubt about what will make your significant other happy, have sex with her. In a study, researchers asked 900 working women in Texas to log their activities of the previous day and rank them according to happiness. They rated sex as the activity that produced the most happiness. (The least happy part of the day was commuting to work.) Oh, what the heck, do it twice. Send her off on that commute with a big fat grin.
From the world of happiness research, this is perhaps the ultimate take-home.
Do you have office A.D.D.?
By M H Ahssan
Mail inbox cluttered with last year’s spam. Juggling three phones at once. Getting frazzled looking at the number of messages that need a reply. If that’s your usual day, you may be heading for, or have already caught, that deadly workplace disease: attention deficit disorder.
Rahul Ahuja, a Delhi-based jeweller, told his girlfriend to meet him for lunch, only to discover, after she was already at the restaurant, that he had a meeting with some outstation clients, and they, too, had already reached the meeting place. Not a good day for Ahuja, but hardly an unusual day. Things slipping out of his mind moments after he fi led them in his brain had become a common occurrence...
Pradeep Mitra hasn’t cleaned his offi ce e-mail inbox in a long while. Not since early 2007, maybe. The message overload means that any new mail he tries to send refuses to make the trip. A fl ustered Pradeep has to quickly identify some useless (he hopes so) mail from his inbox and create a tiny opening for his new mail to zoom off. “Why,” his colleagues ask Pradeep, “don’t you clean the inbox out?” Um, because so many of them still need to be read and replied to....
These men have a condition that Dr Edward Hallowell, MD, would label as the upshot of 21st Century Information Overload. Dr Hallowell is one of the world’s most eminent experts in attention defi cit disorder and the symptoms displayed by Rahul and Pradeep are familiar to him: diffi culty in focussing, inability to complete a project, irritability, anxiety.
In many men, these symptoms can be explained away as a bad day at work. But in many others, they are a clinical condition.
EXCESS BAGGAGE
Very short attention spans have been traditionally associated with children. Until the mid ’80s, physicians and psychologists believed that A.D.D. was outgrown by the time a child hit adolescence. Surprise, surprise! It is now accepted by the medical community that childhood A.D.D. can continue well into adulthood.
The biggest prey group consists of young professional men, not equipped with the multitasking skills that evolution has given women. Two of the biggest tools of multitasking—the cell phone and e-mail—are also two of the biggest enemies of concentration. These fi rst came to India just over a decade ago, changing the way we work. And in the past few years, these have been the channels through which an avalanche of information has swamped users.
Every mobile phone interruption from a tele-caller peddling some scheme, some PR person selling a product, every e-mail message popping up on the corner of your computer screen is a hindrance to your concentration. Because, much as the modern young professional loves to believe that he is an effi cient juggler at work, study after study shows that the grey matter is not equipped to handle two complex tasks at once—at least not without slowing you down or screwing you up. That’s why, studies say, driving while talking on the cell phone is like driving after two drinks.
In a 2006 study published in Neuron, fMRI technology was used to show that an actual neural bottleneck occurs in the frontal lobes when you attempt to do two tasks at once. And when you are interrupted doing something, your brain can’t go back seamlessly to the job it was doing before the interruption. A study at Microsoft last year looked at how long it took people to return to a task when they were interrupted by an e-mail or a phone call. The average: an astonishing 15 minutes. The study authors found that people, once interrupted, take the opportunity to do other things, like check more e-mail.
PRIMED FOR IT
In some people, A.D.D. is inbuilt. They had very short attention spans as children. When they grew up, responsibilities increased, but their concentration did not get any better. This led to unfi nished jobs, rising stress and panic attacks, all of which coalesce into a psychological disorder. Dr (Prof.) Manju Mehta, clinical psychology, AIIMS, explains, “Often X Sharma in Class IV, who was unable to sit still in the classroom, becomes Mr X Sharma, who at age 30, is unable to sit through business presentations.” Dr Mehta describes the signs of A.D.D.: “His eyes dart around, his fi ngers drum continuously, his legs kick under the table, he stretches, sometimes even scratches and, of course, doesn’t grasp a word the presenter is saying...”
There is no question that A.D.D. can disrupt lives and reduce productivity. “It can be mild, moderate or severe and the symptoms vary from person to person—but they have some combination of inattention, hyperactivity and impulsiveness,” explains Dr Mehta. “For most people with A.D.D., their lives are fi lled with an overwhelming chaos—piles of stuff, never-ending tasks and out-of-control clutter. They are constantly behind schedule and frazzled.”
People teetering at the edge of an abyss will often fall into it, and this happens with A.D.D. sufferers, too. Dr Mehta warns, “In adults, the impulsive behaviour becomes more common; it is more dangerous, as this can lead to substance abuse and other risky behaviour.”
“Then there are some people who, along with a very, very short attention span, display hyperactivity,” says Dr Sandeep Vohra, senior consultant psychiatrist, Indraprastha Apollo Hospital, New Delhi. This is A.D.H.D., the nasty big brother of A.D.D.. “To a person with A.D.H.D., it feels as if everything is happening all at once. This creates a sense of inner turmoil, even panic.”
It’s like being super-charged all the time, but not in a good way. This is Dr Vohra’s picture of what goes in an A.D.H.D. sufferer’s mind: “You get one idea and you have to act on it. Then you get another idea, so you go for that. But a third idea interrupts just then… and pretty soon people are calling you disorganised, irresponsible and impulsive. But you know that you are trying really hard—yet not getting anywhere!”
E-MAIL ADDICTION
As Dr Ashima Puri, consultant psychologist, Aashlok Hospital, New Delhi, explains, like a wildly swinging camera lens, the A.D.D. sufferer’s constantly gyrating mind prevents him from focussing on the things that matter.
Why, for example, do you need to check every mail that pops up on your screen, even though you can see from the subject line that it’s nothing important. But most of you will, compulsively, drop the task you are doing, read the new mail, maybe follow a link, and then another and get caught up in what Dr Hallowell calls “screensucking”. He calls it a turbo-charged version of a natural human trait: procrastination.
What keeps you coming back to your inbox is the prospect of a thrill: information about a new project; great news about something; positive feedback from a colleague or the boss. This constant thrill-chasing keeps you, however, from fi nishing the less exciting but more important tasks. And when the task pileup begins to look scary, you fi nd escape in even more thrill-seeking in your inbox.
THE ROAD AHEAD
Offi ce A.D.D. can be controlled by training your mind and forcing yourself to stick to a new work fl ow plan until the habit becomes second nature. Clinical A.D.D., like any other clinical condition, needs diagnosis and treatment. “The diagnosis can be liberating, particularly for people who have been stuck with labels like ‘lazy’, ‘stubborn’, ‘wilful’, ‘disruptive’, ‘impossible’, ‘tyrannical’, ‘brain-damaged’, ‘stupid’ or just plain ‘bad’,” writes Dr Hallowell in his book Delivered from Distraction.
It’s not unusual for A.D.D. sufferers to taste success in an enterprise if they manage to focus their energies, say experts; but A.D.D. prevents them from becoming well-adjusted individuals. In the case of Chennaibased entrepreneur K Shashi, while his medical equipment business was smooth sailing, his relationships kept running into stormy weather. He could never settle in a relationship, let alone marry. This led to seeking psychological counselling. “The doctor put a name to my troubles. It’s been such a weight off my chest,” says Shashi, who is now on medication. “Now I know how to handle my situation.”
That’s the thing about this disorder. It takes a lot of adapting to get on in life living with A.D.D. “But,” stresses Dr Mehta, “it certainly can be done, and be done very well.”
Mail inbox cluttered with last year’s spam. Juggling three phones at once. Getting frazzled looking at the number of messages that need a reply. If that’s your usual day, you may be heading for, or have already caught, that deadly workplace disease: attention deficit disorder.
Rahul Ahuja, a Delhi-based jeweller, told his girlfriend to meet him for lunch, only to discover, after she was already at the restaurant, that he had a meeting with some outstation clients, and they, too, had already reached the meeting place. Not a good day for Ahuja, but hardly an unusual day. Things slipping out of his mind moments after he fi led them in his brain had become a common occurrence...
Pradeep Mitra hasn’t cleaned his offi ce e-mail inbox in a long while. Not since early 2007, maybe. The message overload means that any new mail he tries to send refuses to make the trip. A fl ustered Pradeep has to quickly identify some useless (he hopes so) mail from his inbox and create a tiny opening for his new mail to zoom off. “Why,” his colleagues ask Pradeep, “don’t you clean the inbox out?” Um, because so many of them still need to be read and replied to....
These men have a condition that Dr Edward Hallowell, MD, would label as the upshot of 21st Century Information Overload. Dr Hallowell is one of the world’s most eminent experts in attention defi cit disorder and the symptoms displayed by Rahul and Pradeep are familiar to him: diffi culty in focussing, inability to complete a project, irritability, anxiety.
In many men, these symptoms can be explained away as a bad day at work. But in many others, they are a clinical condition.
EXCESS BAGGAGE
Very short attention spans have been traditionally associated with children. Until the mid ’80s, physicians and psychologists believed that A.D.D. was outgrown by the time a child hit adolescence. Surprise, surprise! It is now accepted by the medical community that childhood A.D.D. can continue well into adulthood.
The biggest prey group consists of young professional men, not equipped with the multitasking skills that evolution has given women. Two of the biggest tools of multitasking—the cell phone and e-mail—are also two of the biggest enemies of concentration. These fi rst came to India just over a decade ago, changing the way we work. And in the past few years, these have been the channels through which an avalanche of information has swamped users.
Every mobile phone interruption from a tele-caller peddling some scheme, some PR person selling a product, every e-mail message popping up on the corner of your computer screen is a hindrance to your concentration. Because, much as the modern young professional loves to believe that he is an effi cient juggler at work, study after study shows that the grey matter is not equipped to handle two complex tasks at once—at least not without slowing you down or screwing you up. That’s why, studies say, driving while talking on the cell phone is like driving after two drinks.
In a 2006 study published in Neuron, fMRI technology was used to show that an actual neural bottleneck occurs in the frontal lobes when you attempt to do two tasks at once. And when you are interrupted doing something, your brain can’t go back seamlessly to the job it was doing before the interruption. A study at Microsoft last year looked at how long it took people to return to a task when they were interrupted by an e-mail or a phone call. The average: an astonishing 15 minutes. The study authors found that people, once interrupted, take the opportunity to do other things, like check more e-mail.
PRIMED FOR IT
In some people, A.D.D. is inbuilt. They had very short attention spans as children. When they grew up, responsibilities increased, but their concentration did not get any better. This led to unfi nished jobs, rising stress and panic attacks, all of which coalesce into a psychological disorder. Dr (Prof.) Manju Mehta, clinical psychology, AIIMS, explains, “Often X Sharma in Class IV, who was unable to sit still in the classroom, becomes Mr X Sharma, who at age 30, is unable to sit through business presentations.” Dr Mehta describes the signs of A.D.D.: “His eyes dart around, his fi ngers drum continuously, his legs kick under the table, he stretches, sometimes even scratches and, of course, doesn’t grasp a word the presenter is saying...”
There is no question that A.D.D. can disrupt lives and reduce productivity. “It can be mild, moderate or severe and the symptoms vary from person to person—but they have some combination of inattention, hyperactivity and impulsiveness,” explains Dr Mehta. “For most people with A.D.D., their lives are fi lled with an overwhelming chaos—piles of stuff, never-ending tasks and out-of-control clutter. They are constantly behind schedule and frazzled.”
People teetering at the edge of an abyss will often fall into it, and this happens with A.D.D. sufferers, too. Dr Mehta warns, “In adults, the impulsive behaviour becomes more common; it is more dangerous, as this can lead to substance abuse and other risky behaviour.”
“Then there are some people who, along with a very, very short attention span, display hyperactivity,” says Dr Sandeep Vohra, senior consultant psychiatrist, Indraprastha Apollo Hospital, New Delhi. This is A.D.H.D., the nasty big brother of A.D.D.. “To a person with A.D.H.D., it feels as if everything is happening all at once. This creates a sense of inner turmoil, even panic.”
It’s like being super-charged all the time, but not in a good way. This is Dr Vohra’s picture of what goes in an A.D.H.D. sufferer’s mind: “You get one idea and you have to act on it. Then you get another idea, so you go for that. But a third idea interrupts just then… and pretty soon people are calling you disorganised, irresponsible and impulsive. But you know that you are trying really hard—yet not getting anywhere!”
E-MAIL ADDICTION
As Dr Ashima Puri, consultant psychologist, Aashlok Hospital, New Delhi, explains, like a wildly swinging camera lens, the A.D.D. sufferer’s constantly gyrating mind prevents him from focussing on the things that matter.
Why, for example, do you need to check every mail that pops up on your screen, even though you can see from the subject line that it’s nothing important. But most of you will, compulsively, drop the task you are doing, read the new mail, maybe follow a link, and then another and get caught up in what Dr Hallowell calls “screensucking”. He calls it a turbo-charged version of a natural human trait: procrastination.
What keeps you coming back to your inbox is the prospect of a thrill: information about a new project; great news about something; positive feedback from a colleague or the boss. This constant thrill-chasing keeps you, however, from fi nishing the less exciting but more important tasks. And when the task pileup begins to look scary, you fi nd escape in even more thrill-seeking in your inbox.
THE ROAD AHEAD
Offi ce A.D.D. can be controlled by training your mind and forcing yourself to stick to a new work fl ow plan until the habit becomes second nature. Clinical A.D.D., like any other clinical condition, needs diagnosis and treatment. “The diagnosis can be liberating, particularly for people who have been stuck with labels like ‘lazy’, ‘stubborn’, ‘wilful’, ‘disruptive’, ‘impossible’, ‘tyrannical’, ‘brain-damaged’, ‘stupid’ or just plain ‘bad’,” writes Dr Hallowell in his book Delivered from Distraction.
It’s not unusual for A.D.D. sufferers to taste success in an enterprise if they manage to focus their energies, say experts; but A.D.D. prevents them from becoming well-adjusted individuals. In the case of Chennaibased entrepreneur K Shashi, while his medical equipment business was smooth sailing, his relationships kept running into stormy weather. He could never settle in a relationship, let alone marry. This led to seeking psychological counselling. “The doctor put a name to my troubles. It’s been such a weight off my chest,” says Shashi, who is now on medication. “Now I know how to handle my situation.”
That’s the thing about this disorder. It takes a lot of adapting to get on in life living with A.D.D. “But,” stresses Dr Mehta, “it certainly can be done, and be done very well.”
Kitchen crimes
By M H Ahssan
FOOD FELONY#1 Going non-stick
You could come unstuck if you use non-stick. "Heating nonstick pans releases harmful particles of polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE)," says New Delhi based nutritionist Dr Sonia Kakar. These fumes can cause 'polymer fume fever,' a little known severe flu-like condition.
Break free: Use stainless steel. Tests showed Teflon takes five minutes to reach 360°C, at which PTFE is released. So cook on medium heat, with a window open. The risk is low in routine cooking, but that doesn't mean you can't lower it further. "Poaching or using spray oil is an effective method, since there is another medium that's absorbing the heat of the flame," says Dr Kakar.
FOOD FELONY#2 Boiling vegetables
To guarantee your vit-hit, prepare with care. "Vitamin C is a very labile vitamin. It is sensitive to light and heat. So it is not a good idea to cut fruits and salads hours before consumption," says Dr Niti Desai, consultant dietician, Cumballa Hill Hospital. Studies by Warwick University found boiling broccoli for 10 minutes reduced its immunity-boosting glucosinolates by 80 per cent.
Break free: Boiling is for potatoes only. Ideally steam other vegetables, ensuring the water's piping hot to minimise cooking time. "Our way of cooking veggies is that we usually overcook-with resultant loss of vitamins," adds Dr Desai. The Warwick study found reducing broccoli cooking time to just five minutes meant only a 10 per cent loss of glucosinolates. Remember that crunchy veggies are nutrient-dense and that outer skins harbour vitamins. Stir frying locks nutrients in as it uses intense heat for less time.
FOOD FELONY#3 Soaring temperatures
Studies in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found cooking meat and cheese on high heat ups the amount of advanced glycation endproducts (AGEs) in your meal. "It's time we paid attention to these toxins," says Dr Helen Vlassara, the Mt Sinai School of Medicine in New York. "They accumulate in the body, leading to inflammation which, over time, causes organ damage and disease." AGEs, in fact, have been linked to diabetes, Alzheimer's, arthritis and heart disease.
Break free: AGEs occur when sugar, protein and fat are exposed to high heat without water. Cook at lower temperatures, and stew or poach rather than dry-fry. A steamed meal has one fifth the AGEs of a fried one. And marinating meat in acidic liquids such as vinegar, lemon juice or tomato sauce also cuts AGEs.
FOOD FELONY#4 Nuking garlic
It may keep vampires away but if you manhandle garlic, you'll zap its anti-cancer properties. Penn State University research discovered that heating garlic for just one minute after crushing destroyed its only proven anti-cancer compound, allyl sulphur. Heating right after crushing deactivates the enzyme and blocks the anticancer effects.
Break free: Leave crushed bulbs to stand for 15 minutes before cooking to give the allyl sulphur time to stabilise. Another effective method is to leave it in water for 10 minutes before cooking. This also helps the allyl sulphur stabilise so it won't leach out. Better still, roast the clove whole to protect the enzyme. "You could also crush the garlic raw in salad or buttermilk or have a chilli-garlic chutney," says Dr Desai.
FOOD FELONY#5 Playing with plastic
Storing fatty foods like meat, dairy or last night's korma in plastic containers means dodgy chemicals can leak into them. "It's a myth that plastics don't break down," says Dr Kakar. "Plastic is dicey. Chemicals can get into food from plastic whether it's heated or not." Re-heating is a double offence. Microwave heating means more chemicals escape.
Break free: "Use heat-resistant glass, ceramics and steel whenever possible for cooking and storage. Too much of plastic should not be used to thaw or heat food," says Dr Kakar. It's better not to use plastic dishware in the microwave or place hot food in it. Plastics are good to freeze food, but then heat it in glass containers. And what of cling film? Well, reduce contamination risk by ensuring it doesn't touch the food.
FOOD FELONY#6 Overcooking overload
University of California research found raw food is easier to digest, and overcooked food can trigger an immune response. "The higher the temperature food is cooked at, the harder it is to absorb and the longer it stays in your gut," says Dr Desai.
Break free: The more food you eat raw, the better. Steam, boil or chew rather than baking or roasting, and cut down on overprocessed foods, which your body has a hard time digesting. "Tandoori or barbequed food is a no-no," says Dr Desai.
FOOD FELONY#7 Being heavy with metal
Baking or wrapping acidic food in aluminium foil can be risky-the metal can leach into food, but heating certainly speeds the process. Scientists from Ondokuz Mayis University in Turkey found baking meat in foil increases its aluminium content by 378 per cent. And the more acidic the food, the more it corrodes aluminium. "Acidic foods have lower pH. This means they have a tendency to react with the metal," says Dr Kakar. Tomatoes are particularly prone to dissolving aluminium. As for that open can-once it is opened, the tin starts to corrode. And though no long-term health problems have been linked with consuming tin, it can cause nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea, wind, abdominal cramps and bloating.
Break free: "Don't cook soft fruit, tomatoes or cabbage in aluminium pans," warns Dr Kakar. Also try not to bake your meat in aluminium foil.
FOOD FELONY#1 Going non-stick
You could come unstuck if you use non-stick. "Heating nonstick pans releases harmful particles of polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE)," says New Delhi based nutritionist Dr Sonia Kakar. These fumes can cause 'polymer fume fever,' a little known severe flu-like condition.
Break free: Use stainless steel. Tests showed Teflon takes five minutes to reach 360°C, at which PTFE is released. So cook on medium heat, with a window open. The risk is low in routine cooking, but that doesn't mean you can't lower it further. "Poaching or using spray oil is an effective method, since there is another medium that's absorbing the heat of the flame," says Dr Kakar.
FOOD FELONY#2 Boiling vegetables
To guarantee your vit-hit, prepare with care. "Vitamin C is a very labile vitamin. It is sensitive to light and heat. So it is not a good idea to cut fruits and salads hours before consumption," says Dr Niti Desai, consultant dietician, Cumballa Hill Hospital. Studies by Warwick University found boiling broccoli for 10 minutes reduced its immunity-boosting glucosinolates by 80 per cent.
Break free: Boiling is for potatoes only. Ideally steam other vegetables, ensuring the water's piping hot to minimise cooking time. "Our way of cooking veggies is that we usually overcook-with resultant loss of vitamins," adds Dr Desai. The Warwick study found reducing broccoli cooking time to just five minutes meant only a 10 per cent loss of glucosinolates. Remember that crunchy veggies are nutrient-dense and that outer skins harbour vitamins. Stir frying locks nutrients in as it uses intense heat for less time.
FOOD FELONY#3 Soaring temperatures
Studies in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found cooking meat and cheese on high heat ups the amount of advanced glycation endproducts (AGEs) in your meal. "It's time we paid attention to these toxins," says Dr Helen Vlassara, the Mt Sinai School of Medicine in New York. "They accumulate in the body, leading to inflammation which, over time, causes organ damage and disease." AGEs, in fact, have been linked to diabetes, Alzheimer's, arthritis and heart disease.
Break free: AGEs occur when sugar, protein and fat are exposed to high heat without water. Cook at lower temperatures, and stew or poach rather than dry-fry. A steamed meal has one fifth the AGEs of a fried one. And marinating meat in acidic liquids such as vinegar, lemon juice or tomato sauce also cuts AGEs.
FOOD FELONY#4 Nuking garlic
It may keep vampires away but if you manhandle garlic, you'll zap its anti-cancer properties. Penn State University research discovered that heating garlic for just one minute after crushing destroyed its only proven anti-cancer compound, allyl sulphur. Heating right after crushing deactivates the enzyme and blocks the anticancer effects.
Break free: Leave crushed bulbs to stand for 15 minutes before cooking to give the allyl sulphur time to stabilise. Another effective method is to leave it in water for 10 minutes before cooking. This also helps the allyl sulphur stabilise so it won't leach out. Better still, roast the clove whole to protect the enzyme. "You could also crush the garlic raw in salad or buttermilk or have a chilli-garlic chutney," says Dr Desai.
FOOD FELONY#5 Playing with plastic
Storing fatty foods like meat, dairy or last night's korma in plastic containers means dodgy chemicals can leak into them. "It's a myth that plastics don't break down," says Dr Kakar. "Plastic is dicey. Chemicals can get into food from plastic whether it's heated or not." Re-heating is a double offence. Microwave heating means more chemicals escape.
Break free: "Use heat-resistant glass, ceramics and steel whenever possible for cooking and storage. Too much of plastic should not be used to thaw or heat food," says Dr Kakar. It's better not to use plastic dishware in the microwave or place hot food in it. Plastics are good to freeze food, but then heat it in glass containers. And what of cling film? Well, reduce contamination risk by ensuring it doesn't touch the food.
FOOD FELONY#6 Overcooking overload
University of California research found raw food is easier to digest, and overcooked food can trigger an immune response. "The higher the temperature food is cooked at, the harder it is to absorb and the longer it stays in your gut," says Dr Desai.
Break free: The more food you eat raw, the better. Steam, boil or chew rather than baking or roasting, and cut down on overprocessed foods, which your body has a hard time digesting. "Tandoori or barbequed food is a no-no," says Dr Desai.
FOOD FELONY#7 Being heavy with metal
Baking or wrapping acidic food in aluminium foil can be risky-the metal can leach into food, but heating certainly speeds the process. Scientists from Ondokuz Mayis University in Turkey found baking meat in foil increases its aluminium content by 378 per cent. And the more acidic the food, the more it corrodes aluminium. "Acidic foods have lower pH. This means they have a tendency to react with the metal," says Dr Kakar. Tomatoes are particularly prone to dissolving aluminium. As for that open can-once it is opened, the tin starts to corrode. And though no long-term health problems have been linked with consuming tin, it can cause nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea, wind, abdominal cramps and bloating.
Break free: "Don't cook soft fruit, tomatoes or cabbage in aluminium pans," warns Dr Kakar. Also try not to bake your meat in aluminium foil.
The Anatomy of Ecstasy
By M H Ahssan
Creating an explosive sexual reaction means taking the right elements for you and her. Get it right and you'll prolong your relationship and your life.
The A-spot Anal
Take advantage of her nerves: sensation from both the vagina and the anus go to the brain through the pelvic nerve. "So it's not surprising that when activated non-genitally, it can also generate orgasm," says Dr Rajan Bhonsle, consultant in sexual medicine and counsellor. Thus rectal stimulation can feel good because her nervous system thinks the pleasure is coming from the vagina. The way to make this work for you both is to gently stimulate both at the same time. But make sure you ask first because a lot of women are squeamish.
The E-spot Eyes
Research in the journal Sexual Rehabilitation of the Spinal-Cord-Injured Patient found that some women can experience orgasm and sexual pleasure from imagery alone, without any form of touching. Use it to your advantage by assuming a face-to-face position, with you on top and her getting a good view of your manly physique enveloping her. Doggy style is out, then. But her imagining it is not.
The B-spot Breasts
Use the science of breasts to speed along her orgasm. Sensory activity from the breasts causes production and secretion of oxytocin, the same hormone as caused by vaginal or clitoral stimulation, says Dr Bhonsle who is also head of department of sexual medicine at Seth GS Medical College, Mumbai. This then travels to the area of the brain that monitors the genitals. Use slow, rhythmic stimulation of her nipples and the lower portion of her breasts to increase her responsiveness before you move south.
The M-spot Mouth
"Orgasms can be elicited from any body part," says Dr Bhonsle. "But because of their high nerve density, a woman's lips have been found to have a direct effect on her genital organs." So kiss her at different levels of pressure and rhythm during sex- don't just roll on top of her lips-first as a signal that you're bored with watching TV and angling to get down to it. That's a turn-off.
The K-spot Knees
Experiments conducted by the authors of The Science Of Orgasm discovered an orgasm-like response from the stimulation of a woman's knee. A vibrator applied to this body-part caused an increase in muscle-tension leading toward the top of her legs, which resulted in climax. Exploit the orgasmic potential of running your hands up and down her legs before and during sex, paying particular attention to the area between the very top of her thighs and the crook of her knee.
The G-spot G-spot
After the clitoris, this should be your orgasmic fail-safe. Research in the journal Annals Of Sex Research describes how using fingers to stimulate the front wall inside the vagina with the woman lying on her back enabled 100 per cent of those tested to achieve orgasm. Follow the technique of the examiners and rub the "internal region nearest the clitoris" using a 'come-here' motion (shape like a fish-hook) with one or more fingers.
The C-spot Clitoris
You know where this is, right? In a report published in Obstetrics and Gynaecology, 94 per cent of women studied had experienced orgasm from direct clitoral simulation. The clitoris was said to be 'the most densely innervated part of the human body' and clitoral orgasms were found to feel acutely localised around the genitals. All those nerve endings mean you need to start slow. "Follow her body's motion so you build up your rhythm as she gets closer to her big moment," says Dr Sudhakar Krishnamurti, andrologist and microsurgeon, director of Andromeda Andrology Center, Hyderabad.
Jumpstart your sex lifeHere's your most definitive guide to win her heart, body and soul...
Compliment her: And keep doing it. It'll make her feel noticed, special and appreciated, and closer to you. "The more connected she feels, the more sexually inspired she'll feel," says Dr Minnu Bhonsle, a psychologist at Heart To Heart Counselling Centre, Mumbai. Compliment what she feels good about and cares about—her hair, shoes, work triumphs—but be genuine. A confident sex partner is an adventurous sex partner.
Use fragrance for foreplay: Spray a touch of the cologne she loves on the sheets. A study by Indiana University found that women who fantasised while smelling a men's cologne were more aroused than when smelling a neutral odour or women's cologne. If you don't have a scent, shop for one with her. That's foreplay for her, too.
Talk in public: In a park with people all around, whisper your fantasies to each other, sparing no detail. You'll create sexual tension, but there's no possibility of sex then and there. "It's just plain sexy to start something that can't be finished right then," says Helen Fisher, PhD, a US-based anthropologist and the author of Why We Love.
Go wild: Add a distinct but manageable touch of danger to the day. It will stimulate dopamine in her brain, which may trigger her sex drive, says Dr Rohit Jaiman, consultant psychiatrist at Fortis, New Delhi. Pick the right trip-a guided white-water excursion, for instance-and learn all about both the risks and the precautions you'll take. She'll see you as the cause of the excitement, as well as the source of security.
Explore new regions: You've heard about her nipples and vagina? Good. Now spend some time on the back of her neck. It's a brave new world of nerve endings, so gentle caressing and kissing helps. The base of her spine is sensation central, as well. Sex becomes about discovery, not seeking some destination. "Goal-oriented sex is not that sexy, so you need to try new erogenous zones," says Mumbai-based sexologist and counsellor Dr Prakash Kothari.
Watch porn with the sound off... So the two of you can provide the dialogue. You'll learn how to talk erotically, so it's very educational. But it's also fun, you're both in vested in it, and it can help reveal fantasies, says Ava Cadell, PhD, a sex therapist and the author of Love around the House.
...or see a chick flick: Maybe porn isn't her thing. But Hrithik, Imran Khan or George Clooney might be, and for her, these guys are porn. She'll be fantasising about a man who's sweet and will treat her well. And when he kisses the female lead, you kiss your lady at the same time. Show her that reality-her life-can be better.
Craft fantasies: One lazy afternoon, get some wine and divide 10 playing cards amongst yourselves. Write down five sexual fantasies while the wine loosens your inhibitions. Then head out to dinner and over more wine, pull out the cards and discuss. You'll feel filthy discussing this stuff in hushed voices in public, which is the point. Make three piles-'Yes', 'Maybe' and 'Never'. Once a month (she feels sexiest before she ovulates), pull a winner. Any necessary planning heightens the anticipation.
Invite her to ditch her underwear during dinner: The naked secret you now share will linger through dessert, says Dr Samir Parikh, chief of department of mental health and behavioural sciences at Max Healthcare, New Delhi.
Visit the bookstore: The books on erotica will fuel your imaginations. Make some purchases, then read them to each other. You'll discover new interests that, amazingly, never came up. Then, enact a scene.
Try something new during penetration: Rather than in-and-out, try rotation. It'll make for a different kind of clitoral stimulation, says Dr Rajan Bhonsle, consultant in sexual medicine and counsellor. Less thrusting will help you last much longer too.
Leave home: Plan a trip without the kids, because Mom and Dad must also be husband and wife. Take lots of pictures; in a few months, go through them slowly, and recall all the great stuff.
Ask for directions: The clitoris has two sides. So ask, "Do you like it on the left or the right?" Either she knows and will appreciate your sensitivity or she doesn't, and now you've given her a new path to happiness. Plus, she'll be more comfortable giving you feedback.
Feed her black licorice: Black licorice has been shown to speed up her genital blood flow by 40 per cent. Or eat one of these sex enhancers yourself.
Sex enhancers to try today
If you need a dose to further stiffen your resolve in the bedroom, here's the lowdown on prominent potency products.
Viagra
The claim: Developed to combat angina, Viagra dilates blood vessels with the effect, among other things, of increasing blood flow to the penis.
The science: According to researchers at Auburn University, Viagra can help treat the unmanly droop caused by everything from depression to diabetes.
Ginkgo Biloba
The claim: The leaves of this tree are said to be an anti-depressant and increasing sexual response.
The science: It relaxes the muscle controlling blood flow to the penis. One study found that it improved libido and orgasm in 76 per cent of cases tested.
Yohimbine
The claim: Bark from this tree has been said to enhance your erection quality.
The science: According to the Archives of Sexual Behavior, a dose of 15-30gm per day can produce 'positive effects'.
Tribulus Terrestris
The claim: This plant extract is reputed to help you grow every (and that!) muscle in your body, by increasing your testosterone production.
The science: The results are dubious. Online drug watchdog supplementwatch. com notes the active ingredient hasn't even been identified. It's been observed to stimulate 'mounting' in animals.
Ginseng
The claim: A stress-reliever, ginseng has been found to perk up more than just your mood.
The science: This increases the flow of erection-facilitating nitric oxide. A study found ginseng had a positive effect on 60 per cent of men suffering the droop.
Arginmax
The claim: This is a herbal supplement pitched at the Viagra buyer that promises 'great sex and good health for men and women'.
The science: A study published in the Hawaii Medical Journal found an 89 per cent increase in ability to maintain erection in men who participated in the study.
Cardamom
The claim: Spices are said to fire up libido. A strong aphrodisiac, it is popular in India and was used by queen Cleopatra to deodorise her rooms.
The science: Cardamom is high in cineole, a central nervous system stimulant. It can increase blood flow in areas where it is applied. It can be mixed with honey.
Chillies
The claim: One of the 'love foods', it has been known to have anti-inflammatory, circulatory and relaxant properties.
The science: These are rich in capsaicin, a chemical that stimulates nerve endings and raises pulse. They also release endorphins that give the body a heady feeling.
Creating an explosive sexual reaction means taking the right elements for you and her. Get it right and you'll prolong your relationship and your life.
The A-spot Anal
Take advantage of her nerves: sensation from both the vagina and the anus go to the brain through the pelvic nerve. "So it's not surprising that when activated non-genitally, it can also generate orgasm," says Dr Rajan Bhonsle, consultant in sexual medicine and counsellor. Thus rectal stimulation can feel good because her nervous system thinks the pleasure is coming from the vagina. The way to make this work for you both is to gently stimulate both at the same time. But make sure you ask first because a lot of women are squeamish.
The E-spot Eyes
Research in the journal Sexual Rehabilitation of the Spinal-Cord-Injured Patient found that some women can experience orgasm and sexual pleasure from imagery alone, without any form of touching. Use it to your advantage by assuming a face-to-face position, with you on top and her getting a good view of your manly physique enveloping her. Doggy style is out, then. But her imagining it is not.
The B-spot Breasts
Use the science of breasts to speed along her orgasm. Sensory activity from the breasts causes production and secretion of oxytocin, the same hormone as caused by vaginal or clitoral stimulation, says Dr Bhonsle who is also head of department of sexual medicine at Seth GS Medical College, Mumbai. This then travels to the area of the brain that monitors the genitals. Use slow, rhythmic stimulation of her nipples and the lower portion of her breasts to increase her responsiveness before you move south.
The M-spot Mouth
"Orgasms can be elicited from any body part," says Dr Bhonsle. "But because of their high nerve density, a woman's lips have been found to have a direct effect on her genital organs." So kiss her at different levels of pressure and rhythm during sex- don't just roll on top of her lips-first as a signal that you're bored with watching TV and angling to get down to it. That's a turn-off.
The K-spot Knees
Experiments conducted by the authors of The Science Of Orgasm discovered an orgasm-like response from the stimulation of a woman's knee. A vibrator applied to this body-part caused an increase in muscle-tension leading toward the top of her legs, which resulted in climax. Exploit the orgasmic potential of running your hands up and down her legs before and during sex, paying particular attention to the area between the very top of her thighs and the crook of her knee.
The G-spot G-spot
After the clitoris, this should be your orgasmic fail-safe. Research in the journal Annals Of Sex Research describes how using fingers to stimulate the front wall inside the vagina with the woman lying on her back enabled 100 per cent of those tested to achieve orgasm. Follow the technique of the examiners and rub the "internal region nearest the clitoris" using a 'come-here' motion (shape like a fish-hook) with one or more fingers.
The C-spot Clitoris
You know where this is, right? In a report published in Obstetrics and Gynaecology, 94 per cent of women studied had experienced orgasm from direct clitoral simulation. The clitoris was said to be 'the most densely innervated part of the human body' and clitoral orgasms were found to feel acutely localised around the genitals. All those nerve endings mean you need to start slow. "Follow her body's motion so you build up your rhythm as she gets closer to her big moment," says Dr Sudhakar Krishnamurti, andrologist and microsurgeon, director of Andromeda Andrology Center, Hyderabad.
Jumpstart your sex lifeHere's your most definitive guide to win her heart, body and soul...
Compliment her: And keep doing it. It'll make her feel noticed, special and appreciated, and closer to you. "The more connected she feels, the more sexually inspired she'll feel," says Dr Minnu Bhonsle, a psychologist at Heart To Heart Counselling Centre, Mumbai. Compliment what she feels good about and cares about—her hair, shoes, work triumphs—but be genuine. A confident sex partner is an adventurous sex partner.
Use fragrance for foreplay: Spray a touch of the cologne she loves on the sheets. A study by Indiana University found that women who fantasised while smelling a men's cologne were more aroused than when smelling a neutral odour or women's cologne. If you don't have a scent, shop for one with her. That's foreplay for her, too.
Talk in public: In a park with people all around, whisper your fantasies to each other, sparing no detail. You'll create sexual tension, but there's no possibility of sex then and there. "It's just plain sexy to start something that can't be finished right then," says Helen Fisher, PhD, a US-based anthropologist and the author of Why We Love.
Go wild: Add a distinct but manageable touch of danger to the day. It will stimulate dopamine in her brain, which may trigger her sex drive, says Dr Rohit Jaiman, consultant psychiatrist at Fortis, New Delhi. Pick the right trip-a guided white-water excursion, for instance-and learn all about both the risks and the precautions you'll take. She'll see you as the cause of the excitement, as well as the source of security.
Explore new regions: You've heard about her nipples and vagina? Good. Now spend some time on the back of her neck. It's a brave new world of nerve endings, so gentle caressing and kissing helps. The base of her spine is sensation central, as well. Sex becomes about discovery, not seeking some destination. "Goal-oriented sex is not that sexy, so you need to try new erogenous zones," says Mumbai-based sexologist and counsellor Dr Prakash Kothari.
Watch porn with the sound off... So the two of you can provide the dialogue. You'll learn how to talk erotically, so it's very educational. But it's also fun, you're both in vested in it, and it can help reveal fantasies, says Ava Cadell, PhD, a sex therapist and the author of Love around the House.
...or see a chick flick: Maybe porn isn't her thing. But Hrithik, Imran Khan or George Clooney might be, and for her, these guys are porn. She'll be fantasising about a man who's sweet and will treat her well. And when he kisses the female lead, you kiss your lady at the same time. Show her that reality-her life-can be better.
Craft fantasies: One lazy afternoon, get some wine and divide 10 playing cards amongst yourselves. Write down five sexual fantasies while the wine loosens your inhibitions. Then head out to dinner and over more wine, pull out the cards and discuss. You'll feel filthy discussing this stuff in hushed voices in public, which is the point. Make three piles-'Yes', 'Maybe' and 'Never'. Once a month (she feels sexiest before she ovulates), pull a winner. Any necessary planning heightens the anticipation.
Invite her to ditch her underwear during dinner: The naked secret you now share will linger through dessert, says Dr Samir Parikh, chief of department of mental health and behavioural sciences at Max Healthcare, New Delhi.
Visit the bookstore: The books on erotica will fuel your imaginations. Make some purchases, then read them to each other. You'll discover new interests that, amazingly, never came up. Then, enact a scene.
Try something new during penetration: Rather than in-and-out, try rotation. It'll make for a different kind of clitoral stimulation, says Dr Rajan Bhonsle, consultant in sexual medicine and counsellor. Less thrusting will help you last much longer too.
Leave home: Plan a trip without the kids, because Mom and Dad must also be husband and wife. Take lots of pictures; in a few months, go through them slowly, and recall all the great stuff.
Ask for directions: The clitoris has two sides. So ask, "Do you like it on the left or the right?" Either she knows and will appreciate your sensitivity or she doesn't, and now you've given her a new path to happiness. Plus, she'll be more comfortable giving you feedback.
Feed her black licorice: Black licorice has been shown to speed up her genital blood flow by 40 per cent. Or eat one of these sex enhancers yourself.
Sex enhancers to try today
If you need a dose to further stiffen your resolve in the bedroom, here's the lowdown on prominent potency products.
Viagra
The claim: Developed to combat angina, Viagra dilates blood vessels with the effect, among other things, of increasing blood flow to the penis.
The science: According to researchers at Auburn University, Viagra can help treat the unmanly droop caused by everything from depression to diabetes.
Ginkgo Biloba
The claim: The leaves of this tree are said to be an anti-depressant and increasing sexual response.
The science: It relaxes the muscle controlling blood flow to the penis. One study found that it improved libido and orgasm in 76 per cent of cases tested.
Yohimbine
The claim: Bark from this tree has been said to enhance your erection quality.
The science: According to the Archives of Sexual Behavior, a dose of 15-30gm per day can produce 'positive effects'.
Tribulus Terrestris
The claim: This plant extract is reputed to help you grow every (and that!) muscle in your body, by increasing your testosterone production.
The science: The results are dubious. Online drug watchdog supplementwatch. com notes the active ingredient hasn't even been identified. It's been observed to stimulate 'mounting' in animals.
Ginseng
The claim: A stress-reliever, ginseng has been found to perk up more than just your mood.
The science: This increases the flow of erection-facilitating nitric oxide. A study found ginseng had a positive effect on 60 per cent of men suffering the droop.
Arginmax
The claim: This is a herbal supplement pitched at the Viagra buyer that promises 'great sex and good health for men and women'.
The science: A study published in the Hawaii Medical Journal found an 89 per cent increase in ability to maintain erection in men who participated in the study.
Cardamom
The claim: Spices are said to fire up libido. A strong aphrodisiac, it is popular in India and was used by queen Cleopatra to deodorise her rooms.
The science: Cardamom is high in cineole, a central nervous system stimulant. It can increase blood flow in areas where it is applied. It can be mixed with honey.
Chillies
The claim: One of the 'love foods', it has been known to have anti-inflammatory, circulatory and relaxant properties.
The science: These are rich in capsaicin, a chemical that stimulates nerve endings and raises pulse. They also release endorphins that give the body a heady feeling.
Asthma could start in the womb, says study
By Sarah Williams
Children born in heavy traffic areas could be at greater risk of developing asthma due to genetic changes brought on by pollution and acquired in the womb, researchers said.
The new study conducted by researchers from the University of Cincinnati (UC) and Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health is published in the journal PLoS ONE.
The researchers studied umbilical cord blood from New York City children, and discovered evidence of a possible new biomarker — an epigenetic alteration in the gene ACSL3 — associated with prenatal exposure to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). They pointed out that such chemical compounds are created as byproducts of incomplete combustion from carbon-containing fuels, resulting in high levels in heavy-traffic areas. Past studies have linked exposure to PAHs to diseases like cancer and childhood asthma.
The researchers said that their latest finding provides a potential clue for predicting environmentally related asthma in children, particularly those born to mothers who live in high-traffic areas while pregnant.
The team claim that theirs is the first study to examine the effects of prenatal ambient air pollutant exposure on epigenetic changes — which may disrupt the normal functioning of genes by affecting their expression but do not cause structural changes or mutations in the genes-linked to asthma.
Working in collaboration with researchers from Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health, the team studied the relationship between prenatal PAH exposure and childhood asthma, hypothesizing that transplacental exposure to PAHs could “reprogram” foetal genes and lead to airway inflammation or asthma during childhood.
“Our data support the concept that environmental exposures can interact with genes during key developmental periods to trigger disease onset later in life, and that tissues are being reprogrammed to become abnormal later,” says Shuk-mei Ho, senior author of the paper, chair of UC’s Department of Environmental Health and the director of the Center for Environmental Genetics. The researchers used biological specimens from the CCCEH birth cohort of mothers and children living in Northern Manhattan and the South Bronx, and analysed umbilical cord white blood cell samples from 56 children for epigenetic alterations related to prenatal PAH exposure.
Children born in heavy traffic areas could be at greater risk of developing asthma due to genetic changes brought on by pollution and acquired in the womb, researchers said.
The new study conducted by researchers from the University of Cincinnati (UC) and Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health is published in the journal PLoS ONE.
The researchers studied umbilical cord blood from New York City children, and discovered evidence of a possible new biomarker — an epigenetic alteration in the gene ACSL3 — associated with prenatal exposure to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). They pointed out that such chemical compounds are created as byproducts of incomplete combustion from carbon-containing fuels, resulting in high levels in heavy-traffic areas. Past studies have linked exposure to PAHs to diseases like cancer and childhood asthma.
The researchers said that their latest finding provides a potential clue for predicting environmentally related asthma in children, particularly those born to mothers who live in high-traffic areas while pregnant.
The team claim that theirs is the first study to examine the effects of prenatal ambient air pollutant exposure on epigenetic changes — which may disrupt the normal functioning of genes by affecting their expression but do not cause structural changes or mutations in the genes-linked to asthma.
Working in collaboration with researchers from Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health, the team studied the relationship between prenatal PAH exposure and childhood asthma, hypothesizing that transplacental exposure to PAHs could “reprogram” foetal genes and lead to airway inflammation or asthma during childhood.
“Our data support the concept that environmental exposures can interact with genes during key developmental periods to trigger disease onset later in life, and that tissues are being reprogrammed to become abnormal later,” says Shuk-mei Ho, senior author of the paper, chair of UC’s Department of Environmental Health and the director of the Center for Environmental Genetics. The researchers used biological specimens from the CCCEH birth cohort of mothers and children living in Northern Manhattan and the South Bronx, and analysed umbilical cord white blood cell samples from 56 children for epigenetic alterations related to prenatal PAH exposure.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Telangana Cuisine, the best 'highway' food
By M H Ahssan
If you're on the highway from Hyderabad to Mumbai, you just have to pull over for the best experience in Telangana cuisine. HNN reports.
If you regularly take a road trip from Hyderabad to Mumbai, and are looking for meal stops just before you drive off onto the highway, the long haul bus drivers normally dictate terms. The first stop usually is Madhura. A small biryani joint in Ameerpet, it is very popular with those planning to eat a few miles down the road. Further down at Sangareddy there are the dhabas that allow the buses to drive in, and while the driver is tanking up with tea you the passenger can gorge on everything that a dhaba offers. But if you hold on to your horses for just a few more kilometres and reach Zaheerabad, you can experience the delicacies of India's only organic millet restaurant.
Cafe Ethnic with its warm welcoming exteriors and cosy, rustic interiors is an eating experience that's different from most and tastier, healthier and more nutritious than any other.
The restaurant rustles up a variety of dishes using home grown Telangana recipes that feature everything from foxtail millet to finger millet, little millet to pearl millet and jowar and sorghum.
If it's breakfast time, start with the millet porridge. A taida (ragi) preparation, this is wholesome and delicious to the point of a definite second helping. The crushed jaggery base and the topping of freshly chopped cashew and ground nuts give it a sweet, crunchy smoothness. The cardamom and fennel seeds give it a fresh flavour. You graduate to the South Indian staple, the idlivada combo. But here too, there is a difference. Full of proteins, minerals and iron (between 100 and 500% more than rice) the vadas are made from a dough that blends in soaked blackgram dal and finely chopped coconut, ginger, coriander and green chillies.
The idlis feel a bit coarser than the softer city variants but eaten with the groundnut or ginger chutney, you realise that healthy appetites deserve more than just soft steamed rice patties. The next step is almost predictable but surprises you with the texture to taste. The variety of millet dosas on offer are amazing. Part of their korra krackers range, the dosas which are made from fermented dough that also allows pride of place to blackgram dal, bengalgram dal and fenugreek seeds fill you in the most wondrous way. The beauty of this cuisine is that you feel full but never heavy. You feel your hunger being satiated and your batteries being recharged, but never get pushed to the realm of overfed drowsiness.
If you still feel the need to fuel up for the long haul, don't miss the khichdi. This is either a foxtail or little millet preparation, complete with chopped onions, chillies and greens. The green gram blend and the mustard, cumin seeds, curry leaf and ginger-garlic seasoning make it wholesome and you can also decide to pack it for a filling snack a couple of hundred miles down the road. While the breakfast menu includes other favourites like millet upma, bajjis and puris, and of course, tea and coffee, it's the lunch fare that brings to the fore the planks of taste, health and nutrition that Cafe Ethnic stands solidly on.
Mealtimes at this cafe are delicious thalis or a platter of rotis depending on your choice. The jonna (jowar, sorghum) rotis with masala, paalak and onion as well as the kulchas are authentic in feel and flavour.
The other fast moving items here are traditional crunchies like murukulu and appalu and sweets like paysham, laddus, puddings, badusha, noone polelu and malida. Packed and taken away, they are great companions on the highway.
The cafe is a strict no-smoking zone and while fresh fruit juices and chilled mineral water are available, aerated soft drinks are not encouraged.
The pricing is extremely reasonable and a couple can have a full meal for less than Rs 100.
The normal fare on highways and in dhabas is the oily, fried stuff which tastes great but leaves us with after burn complications. Cafe Ethnic is kinder and allows you to relish its uniqueness without side effects. While it is definitely a highway recommendation, its distance from Hyderabad (just under 2 hours by car) makes it a great option for a Sunday afternoon picnic spot or even an early afterparty destination.
If you're on the highway from Hyderabad to Mumbai, you just have to pull over for the best experience in Telangana cuisine. HNN reports.
If you regularly take a road trip from Hyderabad to Mumbai, and are looking for meal stops just before you drive off onto the highway, the long haul bus drivers normally dictate terms. The first stop usually is Madhura. A small biryani joint in Ameerpet, it is very popular with those planning to eat a few miles down the road. Further down at Sangareddy there are the dhabas that allow the buses to drive in, and while the driver is tanking up with tea you the passenger can gorge on everything that a dhaba offers. But if you hold on to your horses for just a few more kilometres and reach Zaheerabad, you can experience the delicacies of India's only organic millet restaurant.
Cafe Ethnic with its warm welcoming exteriors and cosy, rustic interiors is an eating experience that's different from most and tastier, healthier and more nutritious than any other.
The restaurant rustles up a variety of dishes using home grown Telangana recipes that feature everything from foxtail millet to finger millet, little millet to pearl millet and jowar and sorghum.
If it's breakfast time, start with the millet porridge. A taida (ragi) preparation, this is wholesome and delicious to the point of a definite second helping. The crushed jaggery base and the topping of freshly chopped cashew and ground nuts give it a sweet, crunchy smoothness. The cardamom and fennel seeds give it a fresh flavour. You graduate to the South Indian staple, the idlivada combo. But here too, there is a difference. Full of proteins, minerals and iron (between 100 and 500% more than rice) the vadas are made from a dough that blends in soaked blackgram dal and finely chopped coconut, ginger, coriander and green chillies.
The idlis feel a bit coarser than the softer city variants but eaten with the groundnut or ginger chutney, you realise that healthy appetites deserve more than just soft steamed rice patties. The next step is almost predictable but surprises you with the texture to taste. The variety of millet dosas on offer are amazing. Part of their korra krackers range, the dosas which are made from fermented dough that also allows pride of place to blackgram dal, bengalgram dal and fenugreek seeds fill you in the most wondrous way. The beauty of this cuisine is that you feel full but never heavy. You feel your hunger being satiated and your batteries being recharged, but never get pushed to the realm of overfed drowsiness.
If you still feel the need to fuel up for the long haul, don't miss the khichdi. This is either a foxtail or little millet preparation, complete with chopped onions, chillies and greens. The green gram blend and the mustard, cumin seeds, curry leaf and ginger-garlic seasoning make it wholesome and you can also decide to pack it for a filling snack a couple of hundred miles down the road. While the breakfast menu includes other favourites like millet upma, bajjis and puris, and of course, tea and coffee, it's the lunch fare that brings to the fore the planks of taste, health and nutrition that Cafe Ethnic stands solidly on.
Mealtimes at this cafe are delicious thalis or a platter of rotis depending on your choice. The jonna (jowar, sorghum) rotis with masala, paalak and onion as well as the kulchas are authentic in feel and flavour.
The other fast moving items here are traditional crunchies like murukulu and appalu and sweets like paysham, laddus, puddings, badusha, noone polelu and malida. Packed and taken away, they are great companions on the highway.
The cafe is a strict no-smoking zone and while fresh fruit juices and chilled mineral water are available, aerated soft drinks are not encouraged.
The pricing is extremely reasonable and a couple can have a full meal for less than Rs 100.
The normal fare on highways and in dhabas is the oily, fried stuff which tastes great but leaves us with after burn complications. Cafe Ethnic is kinder and allows you to relish its uniqueness without side effects. While it is definitely a highway recommendation, its distance from Hyderabad (just under 2 hours by car) makes it a great option for a Sunday afternoon picnic spot or even an early afterparty destination.
Monday, February 09, 2009
Dr. Zakir Naik - Defame And Destroy
By Jamshed Iqbal
One comes across several interesting comments from the people who have been defending Mr. Zakir Naik on Indian Muslims Blog. Most of my brothers and sisters are impressed by his “immense knowledge” without knowing that his kind of knowledge (database or retention) has nothing to do with religion at all. In other words the knowledge he and his fans boast of is irreligious in its very essence, for any true religion is an ever-flowing fountain of “wisdom” not “knowledge”.
However, Mr. Naik is not an only man basking under this false impression but, it is pity that most of our so-called Muslim scholars are making the profits of same deceptive notion. And it is about this “subtle subversion” that Muslim world or Muslim identity has suffered a great deal. Therefore in this article, I would talk about a whole range of “scholars” of this nature and use the name of Mr. Naik as an “all-purpose unit” to bring my point home.
A wise man may have some knowledge but “it does not necessitate that every knowledgeable man is wise”. For knowledge comes with analysis but wisdom with synthesis. Analysis demands scattering the whole into parts and pieces, on the contrary, synthesis demands uniting and reassembling the parts, once again, into a whole.
Men of knowledge without wisdom are far more harmful for human family than mad men. For knowledge without wisdom lacks comprehensiveness of vision, feelings, beauty and empathy. Therefore it is not beneficial at all, and in religious terms, it is irreligious! How?
A man of knowledge studies the composition of the atom from a disinterested desire for knowledge, and incidentally places it in the hands of powerful lunatics as the means of destroying the human race.
In such ways the pursuit of knowledge may become harmful unless it is combined with wisdom; and wisdom in the sense of comprehensive vision is not necessarily present in specialists in the pursuit of any kind of knowledge.
The point is “so-called men of knowledge lack comprehensive vision that is necessary to make them wise”. Ask, for example, a man of science to define human being! If he is sociologist he will tell you that, “man is a social animal for he cannot live without society”. Ask the same question to a physicist and he would brief you about “material composition of a human being” and reduce it to material hump. Raise this question before a chemist and get ready to listen that “man is nothing but product or composition of different chemicals”. A chemist would also open your eyes by telling that “man is a chemical animal and his emotions and character is mainly controlled by chemical balance or imbalance”. Go to a biologist to listen, “human being is an organism composed of different organs”. See a human being have been dissected into piece and lost! Even if all of these definitions cannot include what makes a human being a human being!
Definitions, I mean to say, are the foundations of analytical thinking and they always fail to spot the core—the essence. For example, in above definition of human person, what makes human person a human person is nowhere, as no definition could be holistic! Moreover, in definition, metaphor or simile, as logic demands, is not allowed to make analytical thinking free from feelings but religious wisdom or morality is absurd or impossible without feelings! There is no room for aesthetics (beauty) in analysis and morality or wisdom gushes from these two springs as well!
I think Islam is very clear about this point as:
“Allah is beautiful and loves beauty”. Allah (The Supreme Reality) is truth and truth cannot be revealed unto those whose whole effort is demystification and dissection!
Has analysis anything to do with “love”? Isn’t beauty a mystery so beyond the logic (Allah Him/Herself)? Have analytical sciences, from so-called Enlightenment Age onwards, not been trying to demystify the mysterious phenomenon of existence or being? Was it not an organized effort to obliterate God from human consciousness? Has sciences (knowledge not wisdom) not been consciously trying to omit suggestiveness from natural phenomena to make it dull and ugly!
There have a tendency among Quranic scholars—the tendency to count! For example word (or Ism-e-Zat) Allah has been used so many times in Quran. Mr. Zakir Naik, and others of course, can safely claim 10 GB memory containing these types of calculations. But, so far as I know, no one has told that how many similes and metaphors are used in Quran. How many attributes of Allah (the beneficent the merciful) reflect rationality and others feelings or emotions?
Mr. Zakir Naik could not deny that Prophet Mohammad’s (May peace by upon him) holy life is an evergreen epic of compassion and empathy—the gift “to feel” with others! Remember once my Lord was running for milking the sheep to feed a crying cat when West was not familiar with “animal rights”! Was it analysis or feeling—feeling with and for the whole creation?
Islam is known to be the highest point of Abrahamic tradition and Prophet Abraham dived into the fire! A rationalist or an analyst (or a man of knowledge) would never think that fire could behave otherwise!
In short the whole range of knowledge mounted up by sciences is of analytical nature, and therefore today, world is rich with knowledge but poor in wisdom. For if it were rich in wisdom we would have been living in paradise! The main problem with our age is that our age far surpasses all previous ages in knowledge (rotted data) but there is a correlative “famine” of wisdom. Since wisdom includes not only intellect but also feelings, and this world is mostly steered by those whose knowledge is wide but feelings are too narrow! Therefore they have made it a hell of hatred!
One of my brothers, Mr. Wasif, wrote about Zakir Naik’s comments about Sufi saints. According to him Zakir Naik says:
“Sufism is an alien plant in the soil of Islam”
These are actually the words of Allama Mohammad Iqbal (1877-1938) who, no doubt, was an extraordinarily profound and inspiring poet—but as a philosopher, he used to wear several hats of intellect like Herbert Spencer in Western philosophical tradition. Actually, as I think, his poetry and thought begins in trivial metaphors, pretty metaphors, then culminates into “grace metaphors” and finally goes on to profoundest thinking that we have. Mr. Zakir Naik should note that in his profundity—Iqbal himself is a Sufi! For example:
Ik Danish-e-burhani, ik Danish-e-ruhani
Hai Danish-e-burhani hairat ki frawani
(One the one hand there is an argumentative/logical wisdom, and, on the other hand spiritual wisdom! But argumentative/logical wisdom is nothing but surplus of wonder…….)
Qadhe khirad froze keh Frang dad mara
Hama aftab lekin asar-e-sahar na darid
(The shining wine cup of rationality offered by the West is the full Sun but powerless/impotent to bring into being lime light of the morning)
Iqbal used to call himself a disciple (mureed hindi) of Jalal-ud-Din Rumi—the great Persian Sufi poet! Therefore, he was highly impressed by Persian influence on Islamic culture, community and thought. For example, in his famous chapter, The Muslim Community, in The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam, Iqbal writes:
“The conquest of Persia gave to the Musalmans what the conquest of Greece gave to the Romans. But for Persian, our culture would have been absolutely one sided”.
It is doubtless that Mr. Zakir Naik is advocating and pushing exclusively soulless, fanatical and chauvinistic Saudi (Wahhabi) version of Islam that has become a disgusting scar on the face of highly inclusive Islamic teachings! It is duty of Wahabism to wage war against teachings of great Sufi saints who kept the divinely prophet-consciousness alive not by preaching the truth but living like truth! Naik’s grudge towards Hussain (may Allah be pleased with him) is a clear sign that he is an agent of un-Islamic Saudi state employed to save her from Hussain who exposes and challenges Yazid of every age!
Wahhabism is troubled by Sufism for it is a message of inclusiveness and tolerance! Wahhabism wages war against it for it is a message of freedom and core of Islam that is, in its essence anti- hierarchy and anti-establishment! Wahhabism is afraid of Sufism for it shows a beautiful face of Islam but Saudi’s allies (especially United States) are funding her to prove it ugly and dangerous for peaceful coexistence!
Mr. Zakir Naik and all his friends are stakeholders in the highly lucrative and hideous business of a great conspiracy “Defame & Destroy”. For it is duty of Wahhabism to promote blameful and reproachably bigoted religiosity for facilitating its funders to wipe Muslims from the face of the earth by declaring them potentially dangerous creatures!
May Allah save my innocent brothers and sisters in Islam from felling a prey to a vicious alliance! May Allah help us to show our non-Muslim brothers and sisters that Wahhabism is not the real face of Islam! Islam is one of the most inclusive religions wherein “ink of a scholar is holier than blood of a martyr” and “killing one human person is killing humanity”! Islam—that is a religion of heart, love, empathy and compassion!
Amen!
One comes across several interesting comments from the people who have been defending Mr. Zakir Naik on Indian Muslims Blog. Most of my brothers and sisters are impressed by his “immense knowledge” without knowing that his kind of knowledge (database or retention) has nothing to do with religion at all. In other words the knowledge he and his fans boast of is irreligious in its very essence, for any true religion is an ever-flowing fountain of “wisdom” not “knowledge”.
However, Mr. Naik is not an only man basking under this false impression but, it is pity that most of our so-called Muslim scholars are making the profits of same deceptive notion. And it is about this “subtle subversion” that Muslim world or Muslim identity has suffered a great deal. Therefore in this article, I would talk about a whole range of “scholars” of this nature and use the name of Mr. Naik as an “all-purpose unit” to bring my point home.
A wise man may have some knowledge but “it does not necessitate that every knowledgeable man is wise”. For knowledge comes with analysis but wisdom with synthesis. Analysis demands scattering the whole into parts and pieces, on the contrary, synthesis demands uniting and reassembling the parts, once again, into a whole.
Men of knowledge without wisdom are far more harmful for human family than mad men. For knowledge without wisdom lacks comprehensiveness of vision, feelings, beauty and empathy. Therefore it is not beneficial at all, and in religious terms, it is irreligious! How?
A man of knowledge studies the composition of the atom from a disinterested desire for knowledge, and incidentally places it in the hands of powerful lunatics as the means of destroying the human race.
In such ways the pursuit of knowledge may become harmful unless it is combined with wisdom; and wisdom in the sense of comprehensive vision is not necessarily present in specialists in the pursuit of any kind of knowledge.
The point is “so-called men of knowledge lack comprehensive vision that is necessary to make them wise”. Ask, for example, a man of science to define human being! If he is sociologist he will tell you that, “man is a social animal for he cannot live without society”. Ask the same question to a physicist and he would brief you about “material composition of a human being” and reduce it to material hump. Raise this question before a chemist and get ready to listen that “man is nothing but product or composition of different chemicals”. A chemist would also open your eyes by telling that “man is a chemical animal and his emotions and character is mainly controlled by chemical balance or imbalance”. Go to a biologist to listen, “human being is an organism composed of different organs”. See a human being have been dissected into piece and lost! Even if all of these definitions cannot include what makes a human being a human being!
Definitions, I mean to say, are the foundations of analytical thinking and they always fail to spot the core—the essence. For example, in above definition of human person, what makes human person a human person is nowhere, as no definition could be holistic! Moreover, in definition, metaphor or simile, as logic demands, is not allowed to make analytical thinking free from feelings but religious wisdom or morality is absurd or impossible without feelings! There is no room for aesthetics (beauty) in analysis and morality or wisdom gushes from these two springs as well!
I think Islam is very clear about this point as:
“Allah is beautiful and loves beauty”. Allah (The Supreme Reality) is truth and truth cannot be revealed unto those whose whole effort is demystification and dissection!
Has analysis anything to do with “love”? Isn’t beauty a mystery so beyond the logic (Allah Him/Herself)? Have analytical sciences, from so-called Enlightenment Age onwards, not been trying to demystify the mysterious phenomenon of existence or being? Was it not an organized effort to obliterate God from human consciousness? Has sciences (knowledge not wisdom) not been consciously trying to omit suggestiveness from natural phenomena to make it dull and ugly!
There have a tendency among Quranic scholars—the tendency to count! For example word (or Ism-e-Zat) Allah has been used so many times in Quran. Mr. Zakir Naik, and others of course, can safely claim 10 GB memory containing these types of calculations. But, so far as I know, no one has told that how many similes and metaphors are used in Quran. How many attributes of Allah (the beneficent the merciful) reflect rationality and others feelings or emotions?
Mr. Zakir Naik could not deny that Prophet Mohammad’s (May peace by upon him) holy life is an evergreen epic of compassion and empathy—the gift “to feel” with others! Remember once my Lord was running for milking the sheep to feed a crying cat when West was not familiar with “animal rights”! Was it analysis or feeling—feeling with and for the whole creation?
Islam is known to be the highest point of Abrahamic tradition and Prophet Abraham dived into the fire! A rationalist or an analyst (or a man of knowledge) would never think that fire could behave otherwise!
In short the whole range of knowledge mounted up by sciences is of analytical nature, and therefore today, world is rich with knowledge but poor in wisdom. For if it were rich in wisdom we would have been living in paradise! The main problem with our age is that our age far surpasses all previous ages in knowledge (rotted data) but there is a correlative “famine” of wisdom. Since wisdom includes not only intellect but also feelings, and this world is mostly steered by those whose knowledge is wide but feelings are too narrow! Therefore they have made it a hell of hatred!
One of my brothers, Mr. Wasif, wrote about Zakir Naik’s comments about Sufi saints. According to him Zakir Naik says:
“Sufism is an alien plant in the soil of Islam”
These are actually the words of Allama Mohammad Iqbal (1877-1938) who, no doubt, was an extraordinarily profound and inspiring poet—but as a philosopher, he used to wear several hats of intellect like Herbert Spencer in Western philosophical tradition. Actually, as I think, his poetry and thought begins in trivial metaphors, pretty metaphors, then culminates into “grace metaphors” and finally goes on to profoundest thinking that we have. Mr. Zakir Naik should note that in his profundity—Iqbal himself is a Sufi! For example:
Ik Danish-e-burhani, ik Danish-e-ruhani
Hai Danish-e-burhani hairat ki frawani
(One the one hand there is an argumentative/logical wisdom, and, on the other hand spiritual wisdom! But argumentative/logical wisdom is nothing but surplus of wonder…….)
Qadhe khirad froze keh Frang dad mara
Hama aftab lekin asar-e-sahar na darid
(The shining wine cup of rationality offered by the West is the full Sun but powerless/impotent to bring into being lime light of the morning)
Iqbal used to call himself a disciple (mureed hindi) of Jalal-ud-Din Rumi—the great Persian Sufi poet! Therefore, he was highly impressed by Persian influence on Islamic culture, community and thought. For example, in his famous chapter, The Muslim Community, in The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam, Iqbal writes:
“The conquest of Persia gave to the Musalmans what the conquest of Greece gave to the Romans. But for Persian, our culture would have been absolutely one sided”.
It is doubtless that Mr. Zakir Naik is advocating and pushing exclusively soulless, fanatical and chauvinistic Saudi (Wahhabi) version of Islam that has become a disgusting scar on the face of highly inclusive Islamic teachings! It is duty of Wahabism to wage war against teachings of great Sufi saints who kept the divinely prophet-consciousness alive not by preaching the truth but living like truth! Naik’s grudge towards Hussain (may Allah be pleased with him) is a clear sign that he is an agent of un-Islamic Saudi state employed to save her from Hussain who exposes and challenges Yazid of every age!
Wahhabism is troubled by Sufism for it is a message of inclusiveness and tolerance! Wahhabism wages war against it for it is a message of freedom and core of Islam that is, in its essence anti- hierarchy and anti-establishment! Wahhabism is afraid of Sufism for it shows a beautiful face of Islam but Saudi’s allies (especially United States) are funding her to prove it ugly and dangerous for peaceful coexistence!
Mr. Zakir Naik and all his friends are stakeholders in the highly lucrative and hideous business of a great conspiracy “Defame & Destroy”. For it is duty of Wahhabism to promote blameful and reproachably bigoted religiosity for facilitating its funders to wipe Muslims from the face of the earth by declaring them potentially dangerous creatures!
May Allah save my innocent brothers and sisters in Islam from felling a prey to a vicious alliance! May Allah help us to show our non-Muslim brothers and sisters that Wahhabism is not the real face of Islam! Islam is one of the most inclusive religions wherein “ink of a scholar is holier than blood of a martyr” and “killing one human person is killing humanity”! Islam—that is a religion of heart, love, empathy and compassion!
Amen!
Scarface: The face of the Muslim youth?
By Prof.Abdul Rehman Al Attass
"They came in search of the American Dream. One of them found it on the sun-washed avenues of Miami… wealth, power and passion beyond his wildest dreams. He was Tony Montana. The world would remember him by another name… Scarface".
This is the blurb for the infamous feature film 'Scarface'. The 'they' refers to the Cuban immigrants in America in the 70's. The film evolves around one particular immigrant Tony Montana who works his way up the criminal hierarchy to become 'Scarface', one of the most vicious and ruthless gangsters in cinematic history.
From cocaine to beautiful women, Scarface fulfils his every desire. In the process he amasses incredible wealth and then loses it all in a foolhardy blaze of glory. But his blasé attitude is not vilified rather it is the subject of adulation: he steals, murders and tortures his enemies and anyone who dares to oppose him.
Scarface sums it up perfectly himself. "In this country, you gotta make the money first. Then when you get the money, you get the power. Then when you get the power, then you get the women".
His complete contempt for life is glorified in the film, and many of the modern rappers and gangster wannabes hail Tony Montana as their prime influence.
Unfortunately, this admiration of the Scarface type gangster is not limited to the rap stars. The Muslim youth in inner city areas have begun to adopt the Scarface mentality. From the 'Lisson Green posse' in Edgware Road to the 'Shadwell Massive' in East London, a worrying number of Muslim youth are being gripped by gangster culture. Youth associate themselves with gangs for respect and find solace and security in their fellow gangsters. The gang mentality extends to protecting their patch from rival gangs. Turf wars are conducted on estates and woe betide anyone who attempts to infringe on another gangs territory. Knives and bicycle chains are the weapons of choice yet more sophisticated gangs conduct their reign of terror with handguns.
When one of the gangs is shown 'disrespect' the others rally around and make an example of the poor fool who dared to cross them. This is done to reinforce their credibility and ensure word does not get out that they have become soft.
The gangs are formed along nationalistic lines, for example in Edgware Road the Moroccan youth have long lasting 'beef' with the Bengali youth. More often than not, the fighting revolves around girls and drugs. Violent crime is commonplace as they rival each other to be the ultimate 'hustler', 'player' and 'pimp'. Muslim parents are helpless spectators as the youth begin to formulate a lifestyle alien to the Islamic values that they attempted to instil within them. Instead, respect is granted to the likes of Jay-Z and Tupac Shakur, after all they live the 'thug life'.
But the problem does not purely revolve around gangs of Muslim youth who just beat each other up. These gangs need a source of income to support their lifestyle. And hence they will turn to whatever is easy and also compatible with the 'thug life', namely drugs. Tower Hamlets is an area of London reported to have the highest concentration of Muslims in the UK. The local MP Oona King has dubbed Tower Hamlets as the 'heroin capital' of the country.
Up North the problem of Muslim youth in gangs is self-evident. Furious turf wars between rival drug gangs in Keighley on the outskirts of Bradford have left many dead in the space of a few months. Keighley is an area where the majority of the Asian community are Muslim of Pakistani origin. One of the victims was 24-year-old Qadir Ahmed, who was beaten and stabbed to death in the street after his killers' shunted his car off the road.
The effect of the gangster mentality is all too evident in these youth. As one Muslim youth in Bradford interviewed by the Guardian stated with respect to a rival gang member who had a gleaming new Mercedes. 'He does the same thing as me. That's what I want. But you need to spend time out here in these streets. That man's taken it to the next level'. These words worryingly seem to echo those uttered by Tony Montana about power and money and betray a certain mentality.
Then of course there is the curious phenomenon of the 'wannabe' amongst Muslim youth. The 'wannabe' is by no means a gangster in the true sense of the word. The 'wannabe' has probably never stepped foot outside the leafy suburbs of Surrey and has more in common with Ali G than Tony Montana. However he spends time and money attempting to convince his contemporaries that he is 'street'. This will involve having the latest Ja Rule CD, spitting the 'illest lyrics' and talking about who he 'sparked up'.
The 'wannabe' sees the designer clothes and flash souped up Ford Fiestas as something to admire and emulate. Of course very few of these youth will ever possess wealth and power to the same extent as Tony Montana, however the desire is there. Violent computer games like 'Grand Theft Auto' is probably the closest the 'wannabe' will ever get to being like a gangster.
The youth will tell you 'it's all about respect', but in reality they are repeating the rhetoric heard in the rap music and seen on the screens. There is no respect in the life of a gangster. There is only selfishness and contempt for society. Forget the myth of the 'ethical gangster' such as Don Corleone from the Godfather. Dismiss from your mind the notion that these youth are like a modern day Robin Hood, stealing from the rich to give to the poor. Instead to achieve true gangster status you have to be willing to 'smoke anybody, anytime'. There is no place for morals or ethics. So if you're a gangster and your Muslim brother 'disrespects' you then there is no consideration paid to anything except the law of the street. And this law dictates that he should be made an example of, made to weep in front of others. It should become known that he is weak and you are strong. You should break his dignity and spread the word that you are not to be messed with.
These gangsters are blessed with the bodies of men but behave like schoolchildren. The gangster will bully those weaker than him and where he cannot win a fight himself, he will recruit his mates.
Why this mess?
It's no coincidence that the gangster mentality is endemic in inner city areas of the Western world. Many point to the 'violent' lyrics in rap music, especially in the light of the recent gang killings in Birmingham. However if we scratch beneath the surface it is evident that the gangster image emanates from Western Capitalism’s incorrect view about the way man should behave.
The reality is that the idea of individualism and the 'me, myself and I' mentality is responsible for the behaviour of these Muslim youth. And it is undoubted that this concept stems from the Capitalist creed, which places sensual pleasure above all other values. But there are certain key ideas stemming from this concept of individualism that need to be understood in order to understand the mentality of the 'gangster'.
Firstly there is the value of pride and the ego, which accompany the lifestyle of a gangster. No one should be able to put you down if you are a gangster. After all, you're the 'baddest' and the most ruthless. These values do not breed stability in society rather they create an atmosphere of fear.
Islam, painting a different picture for the youth.
Islam is undoubtedly a deen regulating all aspects of man’s life, including man’s relationship with others. Islam defines what makes a true man and the correct way to live life. And Islam has attracted people from all sorts of backgrounds instead of limiting itself to an area or a council estate like these petty gangs.
If we look to how some of the Sahabah embraced Islam, one particular story catches the eye, that of Abu Dhar al-Ghifaary. One morning he went and found the Prophet(saw)sitting alone. He approached him and said,
نَعِمْتَ صباحاً يا أخا العرب. فأجابَ الرسولُ : وعليكَ السلامُ يا أخاه. قال أبو ذرٍّ: أَنْشِدني مما تقولُ. فأجاب الرسول : ما هو بشعرٍ فأنشُدك، ولكنه قرآنٌ كريمٌ. قال أبو ذرًّ: إقرأ عليَّ.
"O my Arab brother, good morning". Thereupon the Prophet(saw)replied, "And may peace be upon you, my brother". Abu Dhar then said, "Sing to me some of what you are saying". The Prophet (saw) answered, "It isn't a poem to be sung, but a Holy Qur'an" Abu Dhar said, "Then recite for me".
The Prophet (saw) recited to him while he listened. It was not long until Abu Dhar shouted,
فقرأ عليه رسول الله ، و أبو ذر يصغي. ولم يمض من الوقت غير القليل حتى هتف أبو ذر: أشهد ألا إله إلا الله و أشهد أن محمداً رسول الله. وسأله النبي : ممن أنت يا أخا العرب؟ فأجابه: من غفار. وتألقت ابتسامة واسعة على فم الرسول ، واكتسى وجهه بالدهشة والعجب.
"I bear witness that there is no god but Allah and that Muhammad is His Messenger". The Prophet (saw) asked him, "Where are you from, my Arab brother?" Abu Dhar answered, "From Ghifaar". A broad smile appeared on the Prophet's lips (saw) and his face was filled with wonder and astonishment.
Abu Dhar was also smiling, for he knew well that the reason behind the Prophet's astonishment was because the man who had just embraced Islam in front of him was from Ghifaar. Ghifaar was a tribe with a notorious reputation for highway robbery. Its people were famous for theft and were known as allies of darkness and night. Narrating this account himself, Abu Dhar said:
جعل النبي يرفع بصره ويصوبه تعجباً، لما كان من غفار، ثم قال: إن الله يهدي من يشاء. أجل ، إن الله يهدي من يشاء
"The Prophet (saw) lifted his eyes out of astonishment, due to Ghifaar's reputation". Then he said, "Allah guides whom He wills, Indeed, Allah guides whom He wills".
Hence Ghifaar were a tribe of 'gangsters' the equivalent of the modern day hustlers. Abu Dhar went back and convinced his entire tribe of Islam yet before he did this he displayed the courage to go and declare his Islam openly in front of the Quraish. It was the first public pronouncement declaring Islam and challenging the arrogance of the Quraish. What was even more amazing is that Abu Dhar was a man with no relative, reputation or protection in Makkah.
As a result he was beaten severely by the polytheists. However not to be intimidated, Abu Dhar returned the next day and encountered two women circling around two idols (Usaaf and Naaliah) and calling upon them. He stood in front of them rudely disgracing their idols. The women shouted loudly, and men hastened to beat Abu Dhar senseless.
Abu Dhar was a gangster, from a particular tribe of hoodlums. Yet Islam transformed his personality and he exhibited bravery that the modern day gangster cannot even begin to fathom. Imagine going into an area where you have no protection and challenging the local gang, with your ideas and thoughts to the extent that you are beaten senseless, yet you return the next day for more. This is the meaning of being a true man in Islam, the one who enjoins the good and forbids the evil and in the process fears the rebuke of no one.
The Prophet (saw) said of Abu Dhar.
ما أقلت الغبراء، ولا أظلت الخضراء أصدق لهجةً من أبي ذز
'The earth never carried above it, nor did the sky ever shade under it a more truthful tongue than Abu Dhar's'.
Muslim youth should aspire to be like these great men who went before us. The men who demonstrated for Allah's sake what bravery and courage really is. They were men who did not fear anyone except Allah (swt) and men who had the most outstanding personality, such that the Ummah will remember them long after the memory of Scarface and his emulators fades.
"They came in search of the American Dream. One of them found it on the sun-washed avenues of Miami… wealth, power and passion beyond his wildest dreams. He was Tony Montana. The world would remember him by another name… Scarface".
This is the blurb for the infamous feature film 'Scarface'. The 'they' refers to the Cuban immigrants in America in the 70's. The film evolves around one particular immigrant Tony Montana who works his way up the criminal hierarchy to become 'Scarface', one of the most vicious and ruthless gangsters in cinematic history.
From cocaine to beautiful women, Scarface fulfils his every desire. In the process he amasses incredible wealth and then loses it all in a foolhardy blaze of glory. But his blasé attitude is not vilified rather it is the subject of adulation: he steals, murders and tortures his enemies and anyone who dares to oppose him.
Scarface sums it up perfectly himself. "In this country, you gotta make the money first. Then when you get the money, you get the power. Then when you get the power, then you get the women".
His complete contempt for life is glorified in the film, and many of the modern rappers and gangster wannabes hail Tony Montana as their prime influence.
Unfortunately, this admiration of the Scarface type gangster is not limited to the rap stars. The Muslim youth in inner city areas have begun to adopt the Scarface mentality. From the 'Lisson Green posse' in Edgware Road to the 'Shadwell Massive' in East London, a worrying number of Muslim youth are being gripped by gangster culture. Youth associate themselves with gangs for respect and find solace and security in their fellow gangsters. The gang mentality extends to protecting their patch from rival gangs. Turf wars are conducted on estates and woe betide anyone who attempts to infringe on another gangs territory. Knives and bicycle chains are the weapons of choice yet more sophisticated gangs conduct their reign of terror with handguns.
When one of the gangs is shown 'disrespect' the others rally around and make an example of the poor fool who dared to cross them. This is done to reinforce their credibility and ensure word does not get out that they have become soft.
The gangs are formed along nationalistic lines, for example in Edgware Road the Moroccan youth have long lasting 'beef' with the Bengali youth. More often than not, the fighting revolves around girls and drugs. Violent crime is commonplace as they rival each other to be the ultimate 'hustler', 'player' and 'pimp'. Muslim parents are helpless spectators as the youth begin to formulate a lifestyle alien to the Islamic values that they attempted to instil within them. Instead, respect is granted to the likes of Jay-Z and Tupac Shakur, after all they live the 'thug life'.
But the problem does not purely revolve around gangs of Muslim youth who just beat each other up. These gangs need a source of income to support their lifestyle. And hence they will turn to whatever is easy and also compatible with the 'thug life', namely drugs. Tower Hamlets is an area of London reported to have the highest concentration of Muslims in the UK. The local MP Oona King has dubbed Tower Hamlets as the 'heroin capital' of the country.
Up North the problem of Muslim youth in gangs is self-evident. Furious turf wars between rival drug gangs in Keighley on the outskirts of Bradford have left many dead in the space of a few months. Keighley is an area where the majority of the Asian community are Muslim of Pakistani origin. One of the victims was 24-year-old Qadir Ahmed, who was beaten and stabbed to death in the street after his killers' shunted his car off the road.
The effect of the gangster mentality is all too evident in these youth. As one Muslim youth in Bradford interviewed by the Guardian stated with respect to a rival gang member who had a gleaming new Mercedes. 'He does the same thing as me. That's what I want. But you need to spend time out here in these streets. That man's taken it to the next level'. These words worryingly seem to echo those uttered by Tony Montana about power and money and betray a certain mentality.
Then of course there is the curious phenomenon of the 'wannabe' amongst Muslim youth. The 'wannabe' is by no means a gangster in the true sense of the word. The 'wannabe' has probably never stepped foot outside the leafy suburbs of Surrey and has more in common with Ali G than Tony Montana. However he spends time and money attempting to convince his contemporaries that he is 'street'. This will involve having the latest Ja Rule CD, spitting the 'illest lyrics' and talking about who he 'sparked up'.
The 'wannabe' sees the designer clothes and flash souped up Ford Fiestas as something to admire and emulate. Of course very few of these youth will ever possess wealth and power to the same extent as Tony Montana, however the desire is there. Violent computer games like 'Grand Theft Auto' is probably the closest the 'wannabe' will ever get to being like a gangster.
The youth will tell you 'it's all about respect', but in reality they are repeating the rhetoric heard in the rap music and seen on the screens. There is no respect in the life of a gangster. There is only selfishness and contempt for society. Forget the myth of the 'ethical gangster' such as Don Corleone from the Godfather. Dismiss from your mind the notion that these youth are like a modern day Robin Hood, stealing from the rich to give to the poor. Instead to achieve true gangster status you have to be willing to 'smoke anybody, anytime'. There is no place for morals or ethics. So if you're a gangster and your Muslim brother 'disrespects' you then there is no consideration paid to anything except the law of the street. And this law dictates that he should be made an example of, made to weep in front of others. It should become known that he is weak and you are strong. You should break his dignity and spread the word that you are not to be messed with.
These gangsters are blessed with the bodies of men but behave like schoolchildren. The gangster will bully those weaker than him and where he cannot win a fight himself, he will recruit his mates.
Why this mess?
It's no coincidence that the gangster mentality is endemic in inner city areas of the Western world. Many point to the 'violent' lyrics in rap music, especially in the light of the recent gang killings in Birmingham. However if we scratch beneath the surface it is evident that the gangster image emanates from Western Capitalism’s incorrect view about the way man should behave.
The reality is that the idea of individualism and the 'me, myself and I' mentality is responsible for the behaviour of these Muslim youth. And it is undoubted that this concept stems from the Capitalist creed, which places sensual pleasure above all other values. But there are certain key ideas stemming from this concept of individualism that need to be understood in order to understand the mentality of the 'gangster'.
Firstly there is the value of pride and the ego, which accompany the lifestyle of a gangster. No one should be able to put you down if you are a gangster. After all, you're the 'baddest' and the most ruthless. These values do not breed stability in society rather they create an atmosphere of fear.
Islam, painting a different picture for the youth.
Islam is undoubtedly a deen regulating all aspects of man’s life, including man’s relationship with others. Islam defines what makes a true man and the correct way to live life. And Islam has attracted people from all sorts of backgrounds instead of limiting itself to an area or a council estate like these petty gangs.
If we look to how some of the Sahabah embraced Islam, one particular story catches the eye, that of Abu Dhar al-Ghifaary. One morning he went and found the Prophet(saw)sitting alone. He approached him and said,
نَعِمْتَ صباحاً يا أخا العرب. فأجابَ الرسولُ : وعليكَ السلامُ يا أخاه. قال أبو ذرٍّ: أَنْشِدني مما تقولُ. فأجاب الرسول : ما هو بشعرٍ فأنشُدك، ولكنه قرآنٌ كريمٌ. قال أبو ذرًّ: إقرأ عليَّ.
"O my Arab brother, good morning". Thereupon the Prophet(saw)replied, "And may peace be upon you, my brother". Abu Dhar then said, "Sing to me some of what you are saying". The Prophet (saw) answered, "It isn't a poem to be sung, but a Holy Qur'an" Abu Dhar said, "Then recite for me".
The Prophet (saw) recited to him while he listened. It was not long until Abu Dhar shouted,
فقرأ عليه رسول الله ، و أبو ذر يصغي. ولم يمض من الوقت غير القليل حتى هتف أبو ذر: أشهد ألا إله إلا الله و أشهد أن محمداً رسول الله. وسأله النبي : ممن أنت يا أخا العرب؟ فأجابه: من غفار. وتألقت ابتسامة واسعة على فم الرسول ، واكتسى وجهه بالدهشة والعجب.
"I bear witness that there is no god but Allah and that Muhammad is His Messenger". The Prophet (saw) asked him, "Where are you from, my Arab brother?" Abu Dhar answered, "From Ghifaar". A broad smile appeared on the Prophet's lips (saw) and his face was filled with wonder and astonishment.
Abu Dhar was also smiling, for he knew well that the reason behind the Prophet's astonishment was because the man who had just embraced Islam in front of him was from Ghifaar. Ghifaar was a tribe with a notorious reputation for highway robbery. Its people were famous for theft and were known as allies of darkness and night. Narrating this account himself, Abu Dhar said:
جعل النبي يرفع بصره ويصوبه تعجباً، لما كان من غفار، ثم قال: إن الله يهدي من يشاء. أجل ، إن الله يهدي من يشاء
"The Prophet (saw) lifted his eyes out of astonishment, due to Ghifaar's reputation". Then he said, "Allah guides whom He wills, Indeed, Allah guides whom He wills".
Hence Ghifaar were a tribe of 'gangsters' the equivalent of the modern day hustlers. Abu Dhar went back and convinced his entire tribe of Islam yet before he did this he displayed the courage to go and declare his Islam openly in front of the Quraish. It was the first public pronouncement declaring Islam and challenging the arrogance of the Quraish. What was even more amazing is that Abu Dhar was a man with no relative, reputation or protection in Makkah.
As a result he was beaten severely by the polytheists. However not to be intimidated, Abu Dhar returned the next day and encountered two women circling around two idols (Usaaf and Naaliah) and calling upon them. He stood in front of them rudely disgracing their idols. The women shouted loudly, and men hastened to beat Abu Dhar senseless.
Abu Dhar was a gangster, from a particular tribe of hoodlums. Yet Islam transformed his personality and he exhibited bravery that the modern day gangster cannot even begin to fathom. Imagine going into an area where you have no protection and challenging the local gang, with your ideas and thoughts to the extent that you are beaten senseless, yet you return the next day for more. This is the meaning of being a true man in Islam, the one who enjoins the good and forbids the evil and in the process fears the rebuke of no one.
The Prophet (saw) said of Abu Dhar.
ما أقلت الغبراء، ولا أظلت الخضراء أصدق لهجةً من أبي ذز
'The earth never carried above it, nor did the sky ever shade under it a more truthful tongue than Abu Dhar's'.
Muslim youth should aspire to be like these great men who went before us. The men who demonstrated for Allah's sake what bravery and courage really is. They were men who did not fear anyone except Allah (swt) and men who had the most outstanding personality, such that the Ummah will remember them long after the memory of Scarface and his emulators fades.
The Modern Youth Lifestyle
By NEWSCOP
One of the basic features of the modem lifestyle is, of course, the impact of the mass media. One cannot overemphasize the significance of the role of the media upon the creation of the world view of the youth and, in fact almost everyone else in modern society today.
The impact of the modern world upon young Muslims, whether they happen to live within the Islamic world or have come to the West to study, comes most of all through what can be called the modern lifestyle. Much more than modern philosophies and theologies or ideologies, the modern lifestyle, which needless to say, reflects a particular philosophy on its own level, affects Muslim youth directly and immediately with an impact which can be seen in almost all major urban centres of the Islamic world as well as among many Muslims studying or living in the West. This infatuation of the young with the modern lifestyle, which has its origin more in America than Europe, is in fact not limited to the Islamic world. Rather, it is a world-wide phenomenon and reflects the attraction of many youth, on whatever continent they happen to be living today, for what appears to be complete individualistic freedom from tradition and principles which have been handed down over numerous generations.
Today, one sees an intense attraction among the young throughout the world for the so-called pop music whether it be rock, heavy metal or other forms and for the wearing of such typically modern dresses as blue jeans which reflect the idea of freedom from constraint and of mobility and of the individual declaration of independence from social norms. There is also the attraction for fast cars and forms of entertainment which involve speed and daring as seen in Westem-made movies and other forms of mass entertainment. Most of the youth are travelling fast without knowing where to go. This fascination or even mesmerization with the everyday modern lifestyle emanating from the West, which is world-wide, is shared by large numbers of young Muslims, especially those bombarded by television and other forms of mass media transmitting the cultural values of the modern or so called post-modern world. Of course, one of the most important characteristics of the new lifestyle is rebellion against what youth consider to be tradition, as customs and habits and all that has been transmitted to them from older generations. This has created what is called the 'generation gap' which has not existed until now in this way in the Islamic world.
To this must be added the fact that to an even greater extent, many children are brought up in a home in which one of the parents is absent and the other parent, not being able to fulfil the authority of both parents, often times relinquished that responsibility which parents had in traditional families to transmit ethical values and provide in all cultures in one form or another, but today its commercialization and overemphasis have brought its significance out of proportion and made it into almost a substitute for certain types of religious activity. The sports champion along with heroes of pop art and especially pop music, constitutes the new cultural hero in a society given to the worship of the body and the senses.
One of the basic features of the modern lifestyle is, of course, the impact of the mass media. One cannot overemphasize the significance of the role of the media upon the creation of the world view of the youth and, in fact, almost everyone else in modern society today.
The modern lifestyle is also characterized to a large extent by an earnest search for meaning. It is the loss of the meaning of life for many of the young that leads them either down the road of immediate sensual gratification through sexuality or the use of drugs and in some cases to violence and crime or to the quest for new philosophies, cultures and even religions. This phenomenon of the search for the rediscovery of the meaning of life had had both a positive and a negative aspect. Its positive aspect is that many spiritually sensitive and intellectually alert young people in the West have become, for the first time, open to the spiritual message of other cultures and religions and there is much more receptivity to other spiritual worlds among them.
As for its negative aspect, it is that much of this openness turns to shallow emulation of often times inauthentic forms of Eastern religions and cultures to the detriment of what still remains of the once authentic Christian and Jewish traditions in the West and also the sudden appearance upon the scene of , what are called new religions. If the modern world marks opposition to tradition and religion as traditionally understood, these new forces represent in many instances the setting up of a counter tradition and counter religion and the dissolution of the traditional world view. Therefore, in a sense, they go hand in hand with the nihilism, relativism and deconstructionalism which can be seen in so many fields, especially in the philosophical and literary domains.
A young Muslim cannot understand the modern world and cannot continue to live as a Muslim in the modern world without understanding in depth, not only the various aspects of the modern lifestyle in its ever changing kaleidoscopic nature, but also the impact that this lifestyle has, often unconsciously, upon Muslims who may not be fully prepared to respond to the challenges which it poses for themselves as individuals and mot of all for them as Muslims who have dedicated themselves to Allah and have surrendered themselves to the Divine Will. Needless to say, it is this Will which has the last say because Allah's Will is always triumphant.
One of the basic features of the modem lifestyle is, of course, the impact of the mass media. One cannot overemphasize the significance of the role of the media upon the creation of the world view of the youth and, in fact almost everyone else in modern society today.
The impact of the modern world upon young Muslims, whether they happen to live within the Islamic world or have come to the West to study, comes most of all through what can be called the modern lifestyle. Much more than modern philosophies and theologies or ideologies, the modern lifestyle, which needless to say, reflects a particular philosophy on its own level, affects Muslim youth directly and immediately with an impact which can be seen in almost all major urban centres of the Islamic world as well as among many Muslims studying or living in the West. This infatuation of the young with the modern lifestyle, which has its origin more in America than Europe, is in fact not limited to the Islamic world. Rather, it is a world-wide phenomenon and reflects the attraction of many youth, on whatever continent they happen to be living today, for what appears to be complete individualistic freedom from tradition and principles which have been handed down over numerous generations.
Today, one sees an intense attraction among the young throughout the world for the so-called pop music whether it be rock, heavy metal or other forms and for the wearing of such typically modern dresses as blue jeans which reflect the idea of freedom from constraint and of mobility and of the individual declaration of independence from social norms. There is also the attraction for fast cars and forms of entertainment which involve speed and daring as seen in Westem-made movies and other forms of mass entertainment. Most of the youth are travelling fast without knowing where to go. This fascination or even mesmerization with the everyday modern lifestyle emanating from the West, which is world-wide, is shared by large numbers of young Muslims, especially those bombarded by television and other forms of mass media transmitting the cultural values of the modern or so called post-modern world. Of course, one of the most important characteristics of the new lifestyle is rebellion against what youth consider to be tradition, as customs and habits and all that has been transmitted to them from older generations. This has created what is called the 'generation gap' which has not existed until now in this way in the Islamic world.
To this must be added the fact that to an even greater extent, many children are brought up in a home in which one of the parents is absent and the other parent, not being able to fulfil the authority of both parents, often times relinquished that responsibility which parents had in traditional families to transmit ethical values and provide in all cultures in one form or another, but today its commercialization and overemphasis have brought its significance out of proportion and made it into almost a substitute for certain types of religious activity. The sports champion along with heroes of pop art and especially pop music, constitutes the new cultural hero in a society given to the worship of the body and the senses.
One of the basic features of the modern lifestyle is, of course, the impact of the mass media. One cannot overemphasize the significance of the role of the media upon the creation of the world view of the youth and, in fact, almost everyone else in modern society today.
The modern lifestyle is also characterized to a large extent by an earnest search for meaning. It is the loss of the meaning of life for many of the young that leads them either down the road of immediate sensual gratification through sexuality or the use of drugs and in some cases to violence and crime or to the quest for new philosophies, cultures and even religions. This phenomenon of the search for the rediscovery of the meaning of life had had both a positive and a negative aspect. Its positive aspect is that many spiritually sensitive and intellectually alert young people in the West have become, for the first time, open to the spiritual message of other cultures and religions and there is much more receptivity to other spiritual worlds among them.
As for its negative aspect, it is that much of this openness turns to shallow emulation of often times inauthentic forms of Eastern religions and cultures to the detriment of what still remains of the once authentic Christian and Jewish traditions in the West and also the sudden appearance upon the scene of , what are called new religions. If the modern world marks opposition to tradition and religion as traditionally understood, these new forces represent in many instances the setting up of a counter tradition and counter religion and the dissolution of the traditional world view. Therefore, in a sense, they go hand in hand with the nihilism, relativism and deconstructionalism which can be seen in so many fields, especially in the philosophical and literary domains.
A young Muslim cannot understand the modern world and cannot continue to live as a Muslim in the modern world without understanding in depth, not only the various aspects of the modern lifestyle in its ever changing kaleidoscopic nature, but also the impact that this lifestyle has, often unconsciously, upon Muslims who may not be fully prepared to respond to the challenges which it poses for themselves as individuals and mot of all for them as Muslims who have dedicated themselves to Allah and have surrendered themselves to the Divine Will. Needless to say, it is this Will which has the last say because Allah's Will is always triumphant.
Not Living a Muslim Lifestyle?
By Samiya Anwar & M H Ahssan
There is more to a Muslim lifestyle, though, than glossy photographs in a magazine, no matter how attractive they appear. A Muslim lifestyle is altogether different from the ways of life of many of the people we live with. It is maybe because so many Muslims are living the kind of lives which are not really Muslim lifestyles, that the rest of the world so misunderstands Islam. Take, for example, the real case of the restaurant in North London. The sign over the door read, "Fully Licensed Halal Restaurant." In other words, the halal restaurant was licensed to serve alcohol! What sort of message does that give to non-Muslims?
Let us be quite clear. Islam is perfect and has nothing at all to be ashamed of. Nothing. Muslims, however, are not perfect at all. We all make lots of mistakes and we often settle for second best in the way we live our lives. Peer pressure is very strong and it is easy to give in to pressure from friends and others, who are urging us to relax the code of behaviour we learned at home or in the mosque. Very subtle advertising on the television or in the press shows us ways of dressing, for example, or styles of music that are not acceptable in Islam. Not going along with the crowd can make us feel left out and alone.
There are other behaviours, though, which go beyond this trend of fashions and music. Settling for that sort of lifestyle runs the risk of putting us outside the bounds of Islam. Every Muslim knows that drinking alcohol is haram. We all know, though, that some Muslims do drink, and some even drink alcohol to excess. Even worse, the trend of taking mind altering drugs, which is also haram, has become acceptable in some circles as just one of those things you do when you are growing up. Just as alcohol can lead to a lowering of our own self-control and, in its turn, lead us on to do other things that we know to be wrong, "mild" drugs can lead us on to more addictive drugs and to a lifestyle in which we need money to finance such an expensive habit.
In life, all people crave happiness and fulfilment. Some people will go to great lengths to achieve it. The great message of Islam is that true happiness can only be found in Allah. When we see football hooligans on television or read the alarmingly high levels of suicide or alcoholism or drug addiction in many countries of the Western, "developed" world, we see the results of people craving happiness where it cannot be found. Temporary "highs" will not answer the deepest needs of our hearts.
In the same way, relationships in Islam are governed by ways of behaviour. We have ways of being introduced to members of the opposite sex, for example. We have codes of behaviour for when boys and girls, men and women, are together. We have rules of courtship and ways of preparing for marriage. All of these are not just cultural baggage, as some would want us to believe. They exist for a very real reason. Casual sexual relationships may be quite common in some, non-Muslim societies, but Muslims have this code of behaviour to prevent such relationships. And it is not just to prevent freedom that we have such rules. Casual relationships do not bring happiness. Sexual activity before marriage, with one or many partners, of the same or the opposite sex, leaves people feeling used and taken advantage of. Films and soap operas may present such behaviour to us as normal, but it is not normal to behave in such a way, because using other people as sexual objects is to deny why they exist at all. It is to cheapen ourselves and to settle for second best in life.
Settling for second best is the worst trap we can fall into. Loving relationships are what we all hope to find in life. We all hope to find that special person we can one day settle down with and who will make us feel whole. That person will complete us and will complete our religion. Out of that union will come children, in sha' Allah. Settling for the kind of casual relationships we see on TV as normal, is not what Muslims want. It is not what you would want for your sister or your mother, is it? Islam has the highest respect for women. It also has the greatest respect for human beings and their bodies. Settling for second best and giving in to desires are not what will answer the deepest needs of our hearts.
Almighty Allah has given us, as Muslims, a way of life that does bring that happiness we crave. Islam teaches us that we must control bodily desires, like the desires for food and for drink and for sexual gratification, in order to become better people. Just remember, for example, how good it feels in Ramadan to fast for the sake of Allah and to deny our bodies the right to rule over us. Muslims are human beings like anyone else. They did not drop out of the sky. Sometimes it is really difficult to live a chaste and decent life, especially when all those around us are just doing whatever they want and behaving with no limits to stop them. Islam, though, is there to help us as much as to make rules to govern us. Islam brings the real happiness we are all after, if we will allow it to.
The consequences of living a non-Muslim lifestyle can be seen in any Western country. They can be seen in marriage breakdown and divorce figures. They can be seen in the number of unwanted pregnancies or in the high levels of crime and violence that exist in many of the world's big cities. They can be seen by the way people are discarded when they are no longer of any use. Islam, on the other hand, presents us with a different way of looking at life. It shows us that people are created by Almighty Allah and that they exist to serve Him and to find true happiness in doing so. Care for children and the elderly, respect for parents and for the place of women in society, all of these are what Islam holds up as being of importance.
“We are the world” is the voice of today’s young minds. They are comfortable with every thing of today and welcome the changes open heartedly. Religion is absolutely no bar. It is not that only a Christian or American drinks or night out often and not the other religions youth. Gone are those days when we hear any such news. Now, it is same with everyone. More to join this genre is the Muslims. Yes. In the present day of globalization and westernization, where everything is getting influenced and adapted, Muslims are no at the back. They are more of Muslims in every crime and hoax we find around us these days.
Now, more than ever, the youth is often regarded as the source of society's challenges and deficits. Who is responsible for all these parents, teachers or they themselves who are away from the true knowledge of the world? The underage drinking, drugs, sexual preferences and violence is what we find in the youth today
The decency and simple life of Prophet, the messenger of Allah is out of the brains and what is left is the new western culture. There are less of prayers (Ibadat) more of music in the houses. We are not addicted to reading The Holy Quran but hooked to the new gadgets. The Muslims are undoubtedly changed from years and welcome every change for the sake of entertainment and pleasure. It is all about making life’s simple and easy they say. But no they are heading life towards a baffled world where they are left muddle up.
I have seen many young men and women walk down parks and green lanes with earphones and portable music systems or cell phones, completely shutting out from the world. They don’t care of anyone or everyone. The lifestyle they portrays is only night outs, lounging in the pubs, tapping feet to the rocking music in discs, showing off 8 GB I-pods; N-Series mobiles, the latest bike, Levis jeans and Woodland shoes are the common lifestyle of the urban youth today. All these ’cool stuffs’ are essentials, if they don’t have it, then it will affect their “so called image” in college campus or their common hang-outs. This is the youth of today-unorganized with limited outlook and lack of aim in life.
The youth has forgotten that praying five times is a good exercise than any other weight loosing machines. A simple morning walk is better and outdoor games are much more vigilant than video games available in mobile phones and computers. No doubt, they are useful to us but Possessions and acquisitions may seem marvelous. But after a while, you do not own them, they own you.
Youth is getting a raw deal from the media, its entertainment industries and fashion designers who are said to be responsible to have created an image containing a more negative look for our youth occupying sexuality, violence, coarser language and revealing clothing. It is this which makes young minds turn to terrorist and cheat themselves in the name of religion. Is this true or another typecast question or anything else?
It won’t be anonymous to say that today the life has become a puzzle to many who doesn’t understand what is right and what is incorrect. They just move with the money. . It is not long ago India had several terror attacks and it is the youth behind every threat. It is only because they are confused. They don’t follow their heart but do what is wanted by others. “Anything for money” is the new slogan of every person.
We see these days youngsters running for IT jobs in spite of market being down, pink slips on rise. Everyone is ready to crush their minds for American labor. They are ready to miss the “good night sleep” of 5-6 days in a week and have snaps in the day but do their jobs honestly. There is a negative perception of this vibrant segment of our society, the American Muslim youth who work for American or abroad return or holding American Visas have to cope with threat of terrorism. Muslim youth often find themselves in unfriendly environments within their own communities, where activities and programs are not relevant to their needs, where their opinion doesn't count. They have to face the stereotype questions and where their voice is seldom heard.
What's wrong with today's youth is that the parent's are more interested in being their kids "friend" then being a parent. And this leaves them with more of freedom irrationally to do things they wish and every wrong becomes good as they feel of it being wanted. Wants are always unlimited. There is no limit to them. But it is important to fulfill the needs not wants. Today parents have no control over kids but kids do control them otherwise.
The recent beaten up girl by people in Mangalore pubs is no good to hear such a harsh humiliation from India. The women is said to be garment of men who is treated in inhuman way for catching up in pubs. Who is to blame here? Gals says they are above 18 and independent to hang out with guys and party at pub or whatever. Society has become more violent than it was, and young people are pushed towards adulthood faster than they were. This is Americanism not Indiana’s or Islam. The Muslims of today has left behind the religious books and teachings of Prophets and live life wishfully which is becoming more perplexed than ever. It is only we the youth responsible for all. Unless the Muslim youth realize that they are moving in a wrong direction, nothing can be done. There is a need to take initiative by every parent, every teacher to nurture best of religion and humanism in the mind of children so that they inherit the best of values which can only help us to see a better and change tomorrow in the coming years.
There is more to a Muslim lifestyle, though, than glossy photographs in a magazine, no matter how attractive they appear. A Muslim lifestyle is altogether different from the ways of life of many of the people we live with. It is maybe because so many Muslims are living the kind of lives which are not really Muslim lifestyles, that the rest of the world so misunderstands Islam. Take, for example, the real case of the restaurant in North London. The sign over the door read, "Fully Licensed Halal Restaurant." In other words, the halal restaurant was licensed to serve alcohol! What sort of message does that give to non-Muslims?
Let us be quite clear. Islam is perfect and has nothing at all to be ashamed of. Nothing. Muslims, however, are not perfect at all. We all make lots of mistakes and we often settle for second best in the way we live our lives. Peer pressure is very strong and it is easy to give in to pressure from friends and others, who are urging us to relax the code of behaviour we learned at home or in the mosque. Very subtle advertising on the television or in the press shows us ways of dressing, for example, or styles of music that are not acceptable in Islam. Not going along with the crowd can make us feel left out and alone.
There are other behaviours, though, which go beyond this trend of fashions and music. Settling for that sort of lifestyle runs the risk of putting us outside the bounds of Islam. Every Muslim knows that drinking alcohol is haram. We all know, though, that some Muslims do drink, and some even drink alcohol to excess. Even worse, the trend of taking mind altering drugs, which is also haram, has become acceptable in some circles as just one of those things you do when you are growing up. Just as alcohol can lead to a lowering of our own self-control and, in its turn, lead us on to do other things that we know to be wrong, "mild" drugs can lead us on to more addictive drugs and to a lifestyle in which we need money to finance such an expensive habit.
In life, all people crave happiness and fulfilment. Some people will go to great lengths to achieve it. The great message of Islam is that true happiness can only be found in Allah. When we see football hooligans on television or read the alarmingly high levels of suicide or alcoholism or drug addiction in many countries of the Western, "developed" world, we see the results of people craving happiness where it cannot be found. Temporary "highs" will not answer the deepest needs of our hearts.
In the same way, relationships in Islam are governed by ways of behaviour. We have ways of being introduced to members of the opposite sex, for example. We have codes of behaviour for when boys and girls, men and women, are together. We have rules of courtship and ways of preparing for marriage. All of these are not just cultural baggage, as some would want us to believe. They exist for a very real reason. Casual sexual relationships may be quite common in some, non-Muslim societies, but Muslims have this code of behaviour to prevent such relationships. And it is not just to prevent freedom that we have such rules. Casual relationships do not bring happiness. Sexual activity before marriage, with one or many partners, of the same or the opposite sex, leaves people feeling used and taken advantage of. Films and soap operas may present such behaviour to us as normal, but it is not normal to behave in such a way, because using other people as sexual objects is to deny why they exist at all. It is to cheapen ourselves and to settle for second best in life.
Settling for second best is the worst trap we can fall into. Loving relationships are what we all hope to find in life. We all hope to find that special person we can one day settle down with and who will make us feel whole. That person will complete us and will complete our religion. Out of that union will come children, in sha' Allah. Settling for the kind of casual relationships we see on TV as normal, is not what Muslims want. It is not what you would want for your sister or your mother, is it? Islam has the highest respect for women. It also has the greatest respect for human beings and their bodies. Settling for second best and giving in to desires are not what will answer the deepest needs of our hearts.
Almighty Allah has given us, as Muslims, a way of life that does bring that happiness we crave. Islam teaches us that we must control bodily desires, like the desires for food and for drink and for sexual gratification, in order to become better people. Just remember, for example, how good it feels in Ramadan to fast for the sake of Allah and to deny our bodies the right to rule over us. Muslims are human beings like anyone else. They did not drop out of the sky. Sometimes it is really difficult to live a chaste and decent life, especially when all those around us are just doing whatever they want and behaving with no limits to stop them. Islam, though, is there to help us as much as to make rules to govern us. Islam brings the real happiness we are all after, if we will allow it to.
The consequences of living a non-Muslim lifestyle can be seen in any Western country. They can be seen in marriage breakdown and divorce figures. They can be seen in the number of unwanted pregnancies or in the high levels of crime and violence that exist in many of the world's big cities. They can be seen by the way people are discarded when they are no longer of any use. Islam, on the other hand, presents us with a different way of looking at life. It shows us that people are created by Almighty Allah and that they exist to serve Him and to find true happiness in doing so. Care for children and the elderly, respect for parents and for the place of women in society, all of these are what Islam holds up as being of importance.
“We are the world” is the voice of today’s young minds. They are comfortable with every thing of today and welcome the changes open heartedly. Religion is absolutely no bar. It is not that only a Christian or American drinks or night out often and not the other religions youth. Gone are those days when we hear any such news. Now, it is same with everyone. More to join this genre is the Muslims. Yes. In the present day of globalization and westernization, where everything is getting influenced and adapted, Muslims are no at the back. They are more of Muslims in every crime and hoax we find around us these days.
Now, more than ever, the youth is often regarded as the source of society's challenges and deficits. Who is responsible for all these parents, teachers or they themselves who are away from the true knowledge of the world? The underage drinking, drugs, sexual preferences and violence is what we find in the youth today
The decency and simple life of Prophet, the messenger of Allah is out of the brains and what is left is the new western culture. There are less of prayers (Ibadat) more of music in the houses. We are not addicted to reading The Holy Quran but hooked to the new gadgets. The Muslims are undoubtedly changed from years and welcome every change for the sake of entertainment and pleasure. It is all about making life’s simple and easy they say. But no they are heading life towards a baffled world where they are left muddle up.
I have seen many young men and women walk down parks and green lanes with earphones and portable music systems or cell phones, completely shutting out from the world. They don’t care of anyone or everyone. The lifestyle they portrays is only night outs, lounging in the pubs, tapping feet to the rocking music in discs, showing off 8 GB I-pods; N-Series mobiles, the latest bike, Levis jeans and Woodland shoes are the common lifestyle of the urban youth today. All these ’cool stuffs’ are essentials, if they don’t have it, then it will affect their “so called image” in college campus or their common hang-outs. This is the youth of today-unorganized with limited outlook and lack of aim in life.
The youth has forgotten that praying five times is a good exercise than any other weight loosing machines. A simple morning walk is better and outdoor games are much more vigilant than video games available in mobile phones and computers. No doubt, they are useful to us but Possessions and acquisitions may seem marvelous. But after a while, you do not own them, they own you.
Youth is getting a raw deal from the media, its entertainment industries and fashion designers who are said to be responsible to have created an image containing a more negative look for our youth occupying sexuality, violence, coarser language and revealing clothing. It is this which makes young minds turn to terrorist and cheat themselves in the name of religion. Is this true or another typecast question or anything else?
It won’t be anonymous to say that today the life has become a puzzle to many who doesn’t understand what is right and what is incorrect. They just move with the money. . It is not long ago India had several terror attacks and it is the youth behind every threat. It is only because they are confused. They don’t follow their heart but do what is wanted by others. “Anything for money” is the new slogan of every person.
We see these days youngsters running for IT jobs in spite of market being down, pink slips on rise. Everyone is ready to crush their minds for American labor. They are ready to miss the “good night sleep” of 5-6 days in a week and have snaps in the day but do their jobs honestly. There is a negative perception of this vibrant segment of our society, the American Muslim youth who work for American or abroad return or holding American Visas have to cope with threat of terrorism. Muslim youth often find themselves in unfriendly environments within their own communities, where activities and programs are not relevant to their needs, where their opinion doesn't count. They have to face the stereotype questions and where their voice is seldom heard.
What's wrong with today's youth is that the parent's are more interested in being their kids "friend" then being a parent. And this leaves them with more of freedom irrationally to do things they wish and every wrong becomes good as they feel of it being wanted. Wants are always unlimited. There is no limit to them. But it is important to fulfill the needs not wants. Today parents have no control over kids but kids do control them otherwise.
The recent beaten up girl by people in Mangalore pubs is no good to hear such a harsh humiliation from India. The women is said to be garment of men who is treated in inhuman way for catching up in pubs. Who is to blame here? Gals says they are above 18 and independent to hang out with guys and party at pub or whatever. Society has become more violent than it was, and young people are pushed towards adulthood faster than they were. This is Americanism not Indiana’s or Islam. The Muslims of today has left behind the religious books and teachings of Prophets and live life wishfully which is becoming more perplexed than ever. It is only we the youth responsible for all. Unless the Muslim youth realize that they are moving in a wrong direction, nothing can be done. There is a need to take initiative by every parent, every teacher to nurture best of religion and humanism in the mind of children so that they inherit the best of values which can only help us to see a better and change tomorrow in the coming years.
Friday, January 09, 2009
Feature: Delicious Street Food
By Golden Reejsinghani
Food sold in these great metropolitans streets has gained more popularity then some of the swanky restaurants doting the city because the street food is not only irresistibly delicious but also affordable.
Whole Mumbai is dotted with people making food in the make shift stalls dotting the streets. On reaching hill road bandra your olfactory senses take control of your legs and lead you inexorably towards the aromatic aromas coming from the Elko arcade the famous shopping arcade of Bandra.Here you can taste the mind blowing Pani puri which is famous for its tangy taste which just explodes in your mouth with all its glory?
Other eats available here are dahi wadas, ragda patties, samosas, Pani Puri with tikhi mithi chutneys and tikis which you can wash down with cold and namkeen lassi. Or spiced sugar cane juice iced to perfection.
A little ahead is the Dahipuri wala who sells out of this world Dahi puri combined with sweet and sour chutneys and garnished with coriander leaves. There are also piping hot medu wadas, dosas and idlis sold here.
These stalls not only get page 3 people visiting the shopping arcades but people from all walks of life come to eat here. From lowly to the richest, from ordinary people to the businessmen to the filmstars.For everyone this is a Mecca of fine eating. From here you can walk up to linking road Bandra a road running close to M.M.K College is full of yummy street food. Here you get fantastic sandwiches. Which are dear to every young collegians heart? Every college student is seen converging on the stalls either munching sandwiches or piping hot vada pavs served with fiery hot chutney which can bring tears to your eyes and fire to your mouth.
From here you can go down to Bade Miyan behind Taj Mahal hotel whose kebabs are famous throughout Mumbai all the glitterati of Mumbai park their cars outside the stall and savor scrumptious kebabs and baida roti.
Bade Miyan is famous because of its kebabs. Like him Noor Mohammadi in Bhendi Bazaar is famous for the ‘ Naali Nihari’.Naali Nihari is a thick spicy soup which is made from Buffallo marrow cooked in a variety of spices and loads of ghee. It is served in the mornings with naans.People start their day in Bhendi Bazaar with Naali Nihari and Naan.
If you are a die hard egeterian then you should make a trip to church gate station here, you can savor a vast variety of omelet’s which are served here piping hot with pav or bread these will make your day once you have eaten them.
If you are the one who loves ice creams then you should head to the chow patty beach here you can get a variety of tasty ice creams available in many tasty concoctions like the berry,kachha kery, cream butter scotch etc.You ask for the flavor and you get it here
If you want hearty food then head to Sion Koliwada which can be termed as mini Punjab you get here delicious and enticingly flavored koliwada fish, prawn fry and tandoori chicken denizens from all over Mumbai flock here to get a taste of Punjab.
But the paradise of street food lovers is the Khau Galli at Kalbadevi.You get everything to eat here right from piping hot kachoris accompanied with sweet and spicy hot chutney to sizzling samosas chili hot pakodas to crunchy pattice,delicious dosas with sambar to steaming soft idlis with coconut chutney. Spiced Papads,tangy bhelpuris and many other chaats savories and sweets are available here prepared just in front of you and served to you with spicy chutneys and sauces and what is more you get all these delicacies at affordable rates.
You can wash these down with a number of flavored sherbets, juices, smoothies and ice creams. Mumbai is chockfull of street food every locality has developed its own khau galli specific to the character of population living there Street food is not only dirt cheap but also very hygienic.
These days the owners of food stalls have become very hygiene conscious because they know if they play hanky panky with the people they will loose their business besides unlike restaurants they serve freshest and best food.
They do not keep the food for the next day to serve in the buffet which mostly consists of dishes made on the previous day. I can write reams about this food but because I wanted to keep this precise I have written about the best and outstanding buys.
Food sold in these great metropolitans streets has gained more popularity then some of the swanky restaurants doting the city because the street food is not only irresistibly delicious but also affordable.
Whole Mumbai is dotted with people making food in the make shift stalls dotting the streets. On reaching hill road bandra your olfactory senses take control of your legs and lead you inexorably towards the aromatic aromas coming from the Elko arcade the famous shopping arcade of Bandra.Here you can taste the mind blowing Pani puri which is famous for its tangy taste which just explodes in your mouth with all its glory?
Other eats available here are dahi wadas, ragda patties, samosas, Pani Puri with tikhi mithi chutneys and tikis which you can wash down with cold and namkeen lassi. Or spiced sugar cane juice iced to perfection.
A little ahead is the Dahipuri wala who sells out of this world Dahi puri combined with sweet and sour chutneys and garnished with coriander leaves. There are also piping hot medu wadas, dosas and idlis sold here.
These stalls not only get page 3 people visiting the shopping arcades but people from all walks of life come to eat here. From lowly to the richest, from ordinary people to the businessmen to the filmstars.For everyone this is a Mecca of fine eating. From here you can walk up to linking road Bandra a road running close to M.M.K College is full of yummy street food. Here you get fantastic sandwiches. Which are dear to every young collegians heart? Every college student is seen converging on the stalls either munching sandwiches or piping hot vada pavs served with fiery hot chutney which can bring tears to your eyes and fire to your mouth.
From here you can go down to Bade Miyan behind Taj Mahal hotel whose kebabs are famous throughout Mumbai all the glitterati of Mumbai park their cars outside the stall and savor scrumptious kebabs and baida roti.
Bade Miyan is famous because of its kebabs. Like him Noor Mohammadi in Bhendi Bazaar is famous for the ‘ Naali Nihari’.Naali Nihari is a thick spicy soup which is made from Buffallo marrow cooked in a variety of spices and loads of ghee. It is served in the mornings with naans.People start their day in Bhendi Bazaar with Naali Nihari and Naan.
If you are a die hard egeterian then you should make a trip to church gate station here, you can savor a vast variety of omelet’s which are served here piping hot with pav or bread these will make your day once you have eaten them.
If you are the one who loves ice creams then you should head to the chow patty beach here you can get a variety of tasty ice creams available in many tasty concoctions like the berry,kachha kery, cream butter scotch etc.You ask for the flavor and you get it here
If you want hearty food then head to Sion Koliwada which can be termed as mini Punjab you get here delicious and enticingly flavored koliwada fish, prawn fry and tandoori chicken denizens from all over Mumbai flock here to get a taste of Punjab.
But the paradise of street food lovers is the Khau Galli at Kalbadevi.You get everything to eat here right from piping hot kachoris accompanied with sweet and spicy hot chutney to sizzling samosas chili hot pakodas to crunchy pattice,delicious dosas with sambar to steaming soft idlis with coconut chutney. Spiced Papads,tangy bhelpuris and many other chaats savories and sweets are available here prepared just in front of you and served to you with spicy chutneys and sauces and what is more you get all these delicacies at affordable rates.
You can wash these down with a number of flavored sherbets, juices, smoothies and ice creams. Mumbai is chockfull of street food every locality has developed its own khau galli specific to the character of population living there Street food is not only dirt cheap but also very hygienic.
These days the owners of food stalls have become very hygiene conscious because they know if they play hanky panky with the people they will loose their business besides unlike restaurants they serve freshest and best food.
They do not keep the food for the next day to serve in the buffet which mostly consists of dishes made on the previous day. I can write reams about this food but because I wanted to keep this precise I have written about the best and outstanding buys.
Obesity is Dangerous to Children
By Ayesha Jabeen
These children often suffer from low self-esteem. As a result these children are isolated and develop severe depression.
Childhood obesity is growing to become one of the most chronic diseases of childhood. It is not the only disease in itself but gives rise to various other serious diseases such as diabetes, hypertension, sleep apnea, cardiovascular diseases and orthopedic complications. It leads to morbid consequences in adulthood increasing the risk of premature death. Obese children are likely to suffer considerable psychological effects as well as social stigma and discrimination.
A child suffering from obesity has problems in mobility. Their lives are very painful because of the excess weight that they carry around constantly and hence unable to lead a normal life. People always ridicule them because of their weight problems. Some of them have great difficulty making friends and relating to the other children in their schools thus hampering their social growth. These children often suffer from low self-esteem. As a result these children are isolated and develop severe depression.
Certain factors are targeted as major contributors of childhood obesity. These include:
• Dietary patterns
• Lack of physical activity
• Heredity and family
Dietary patterns
Dietary patterns play a large role here, wrong eating habits, consuming more calories than required and burning less, eating lots of junk food and ignoring healthy food, untimely eating of meals, are all the factors contributing to obesity. In today’s world it becomes extremely essential that children are trained and equipped with healthy eating habits. Today’s society considers eating unhealthy food as a style of sophisticated life. With the advent of fast food and rush of the hour most parents have forgotten their responsibility of instilling good food habits in their children. It is never advisable for children to skip their three times healthy meals particularly breakfast which is the most important meal of the day. They should be provided with nutritious cereals and porridge at their breakfast time.
As much as possible they should not be given snacks between meals. It is a bad idea when parents reward their kids with food. Never let your child build up a habit of binging on food like fried snacks in his leisure or as a means of entertainment. While preparing meals for children ensure you cook it in a healthy way considering their likes and dislikes. Fried foods, sweets and desserts should be allowed in moderation. Teach your kids to develop a habit of eating fruits and vegetables regularly. Avoid processed foods as far as possible limiting them to once a while only when absolutely required. Do not bribe children with chocolates and sweets and do not make it a daily habit for them.
Today, it is estimated that a larger chunk of money is spent on food outside home, at restaurants, cafeterias, sporting events, parties, etc. people are prone to consume more calories when they eat out when compared to eating at home.
Beverages such as carbonated soft drinks and juice boxes also greatly contribute to the childhood obesity. A bottle of cola contains approximately 400 calories. The consumption of cola by children has increased by 300 percent in last 20 years. Scientific studies have documented a 60 percent increased risk of obesity for every regular soft drink consumed per day. Box drinks, juice, fruit drinks and sports drinks all add on to a significant problem. These beverages contain a higher amount of calories and research shows that 20 percent of children who are currently overweight are due to excessive caloric intake from beverages.
Lack of physical activity
Sedentary life style is making children lazy. They sit glued to computers and television for long hours in their free time. Parents and teachers at school should encourage children in taking up physical activities. They should play outdoors instead of sitting in one place being a couch potato. Report says only 50 percent of children participate in regular physical activities, 25% of them do not take part in any of the exercises. On an average a child spends two hours watching television and 26% of children spend at least four hours on television.
Heredity and family
It is known that genes play an important role in causing obesity. Children of overweight parents are more likely to be obese, if it is hereditary then it is not curable but the excess weight can be controlled to a certain extent through weight management program and taking the help of a dietitian.
The world statistics show that there are more than 5 million obese children in the world. The world statistics on obesity in children have become noteworthy enough that the World Health Organization (WHO) has become actively involved in researching and finding ways to treat and prevent the condition. A task force called the International Obesity Task Force has been formed to study the propositions of these world statistics on obesity in children around the world, to determine the best methods for controlling this issue. 300 million people worldwide are considered obese, and 750 million are overweight as per findings from this organization.
It is disappointing to learn that parents, teachers and health professionals are not taking enough efforts when it comes to the health and well being of our kids. The statistics in child obesity show that this condition has reached alarming rates, and doesn’t show any signs of receding . As much as 20% of the children and teens are considered obese. Each day is seeing increased number of kids who are at risk for diabetes, heart disease and high blood pressure. The child obesity statistics show that if parents, schools, government and health care professionals do not act quickly, the coming generations may see even more obese and unhealthy children. It is utterly vital that we take preventive measures today to see healthier generations tomorrow.
Today’s parents are very busy working out, partying and socializing as a result of which children are being neglected. It is not their fault if they are obese we are leading them towards it. As parents it is our bound responsibility to take time out for our children to cook healthy meals for them at home and adopt a healthy life style.
Child obesity is not a problem without solution there are numerous healthy recommendations that can be sought by health professionals. Parents should lead their children by example rather than forcing guidance onto them as kids learn by imitation and follow the actions of their elders. It is our duty to teach children healthy ways of eating and educating them about nutritional values, diet and exercise so that they can lead a healthier and happier life.
These children often suffer from low self-esteem. As a result these children are isolated and develop severe depression.
Childhood obesity is growing to become one of the most chronic diseases of childhood. It is not the only disease in itself but gives rise to various other serious diseases such as diabetes, hypertension, sleep apnea, cardiovascular diseases and orthopedic complications. It leads to morbid consequences in adulthood increasing the risk of premature death. Obese children are likely to suffer considerable psychological effects as well as social stigma and discrimination.
A child suffering from obesity has problems in mobility. Their lives are very painful because of the excess weight that they carry around constantly and hence unable to lead a normal life. People always ridicule them because of their weight problems. Some of them have great difficulty making friends and relating to the other children in their schools thus hampering their social growth. These children often suffer from low self-esteem. As a result these children are isolated and develop severe depression.
Certain factors are targeted as major contributors of childhood obesity. These include:
• Dietary patterns
• Lack of physical activity
• Heredity and family
Dietary patterns
Dietary patterns play a large role here, wrong eating habits, consuming more calories than required and burning less, eating lots of junk food and ignoring healthy food, untimely eating of meals, are all the factors contributing to obesity. In today’s world it becomes extremely essential that children are trained and equipped with healthy eating habits. Today’s society considers eating unhealthy food as a style of sophisticated life. With the advent of fast food and rush of the hour most parents have forgotten their responsibility of instilling good food habits in their children. It is never advisable for children to skip their three times healthy meals particularly breakfast which is the most important meal of the day. They should be provided with nutritious cereals and porridge at their breakfast time.
As much as possible they should not be given snacks between meals. It is a bad idea when parents reward their kids with food. Never let your child build up a habit of binging on food like fried snacks in his leisure or as a means of entertainment. While preparing meals for children ensure you cook it in a healthy way considering their likes and dislikes. Fried foods, sweets and desserts should be allowed in moderation. Teach your kids to develop a habit of eating fruits and vegetables regularly. Avoid processed foods as far as possible limiting them to once a while only when absolutely required. Do not bribe children with chocolates and sweets and do not make it a daily habit for them.
Today, it is estimated that a larger chunk of money is spent on food outside home, at restaurants, cafeterias, sporting events, parties, etc. people are prone to consume more calories when they eat out when compared to eating at home.
Beverages such as carbonated soft drinks and juice boxes also greatly contribute to the childhood obesity. A bottle of cola contains approximately 400 calories. The consumption of cola by children has increased by 300 percent in last 20 years. Scientific studies have documented a 60 percent increased risk of obesity for every regular soft drink consumed per day. Box drinks, juice, fruit drinks and sports drinks all add on to a significant problem. These beverages contain a higher amount of calories and research shows that 20 percent of children who are currently overweight are due to excessive caloric intake from beverages.
Lack of physical activity
Sedentary life style is making children lazy. They sit glued to computers and television for long hours in their free time. Parents and teachers at school should encourage children in taking up physical activities. They should play outdoors instead of sitting in one place being a couch potato. Report says only 50 percent of children participate in regular physical activities, 25% of them do not take part in any of the exercises. On an average a child spends two hours watching television and 26% of children spend at least four hours on television.
Heredity and family
It is known that genes play an important role in causing obesity. Children of overweight parents are more likely to be obese, if it is hereditary then it is not curable but the excess weight can be controlled to a certain extent through weight management program and taking the help of a dietitian.
The world statistics show that there are more than 5 million obese children in the world. The world statistics on obesity in children have become noteworthy enough that the World Health Organization (WHO) has become actively involved in researching and finding ways to treat and prevent the condition. A task force called the International Obesity Task Force has been formed to study the propositions of these world statistics on obesity in children around the world, to determine the best methods for controlling this issue. 300 million people worldwide are considered obese, and 750 million are overweight as per findings from this organization.
It is disappointing to learn that parents, teachers and health professionals are not taking enough efforts when it comes to the health and well being of our kids. The statistics in child obesity show that this condition has reached alarming rates, and doesn’t show any signs of receding . As much as 20% of the children and teens are considered obese. Each day is seeing increased number of kids who are at risk for diabetes, heart disease and high blood pressure. The child obesity statistics show that if parents, schools, government and health care professionals do not act quickly, the coming generations may see even more obese and unhealthy children. It is utterly vital that we take preventive measures today to see healthier generations tomorrow.
Today’s parents are very busy working out, partying and socializing as a result of which children are being neglected. It is not their fault if they are obese we are leading them towards it. As parents it is our bound responsibility to take time out for our children to cook healthy meals for them at home and adopt a healthy life style.
Child obesity is not a problem without solution there are numerous healthy recommendations that can be sought by health professionals. Parents should lead their children by example rather than forcing guidance onto them as kids learn by imitation and follow the actions of their elders. It is our duty to teach children healthy ways of eating and educating them about nutritional values, diet and exercise so that they can lead a healthier and happier life.
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