2 Reads: Shefaly Yogendra’s excellent post on “Women in Tech: what gives?”, and my own post, “Empowerment begins at home”, where I take one of Shefaly’s ideas and run with it.
Update: Excellent discussions going on at both these posts, so do check it out if you haven’t already.
I love the epics - the Ramayana, the Mahabharata - and all the hundreds of stories related to them. I love the way in which you can have different versions of them and say, oh, but in this version, Rama doesn’t really send Sita away. The epics have other uses of course - they are the stories that tell us what we (as a people) value, and how people should live.
The epics are in a sense the lessons that our ancestors have passed down to us. How wonderful is it that we should be able to draw on the learnings built up by people over a few thousand years of civilization? Few other peoples in the world today can boast of this. This is the sense of wonder that the epics evoke in me and make me proud to be Hindu - not in the narrow-minded sense of Indian culture is the best and we have nothing to learn from anyone else.
Recently, I gifted my dad a copy of Gurcharan Das’Â ‘The Difficulty of Being Good: On the Subtle Art of Dharma’, a book that I plan to borrow. It is a book that (I think) draws on the Mahabharata and places its moral lessons in the context of contemporary times.
Which set me thinking, is there a way to draw lessons from the epics in a more nuanced, less literal way than is normally done? One of the ‘big lessons’ of the Ramayana is that of absolute obedience to one’s parents, a lesson that must cause discomfort to most individuals living in modern times. Dasaratha exiles Rama to 14 years in the forest, in order to keep a pledge that he makes to Kaikeyi years before, and Rama obeys. Without question. Sita follows him into exile, although after much argument.
From a feminist perspective, it is possible to look at this episode as the maintenance of a patriarchal order where son obeys father and wife follows husband (rarely do the epics look at obedience to parents from a woman’s perspective).
Yet, another way to look at it is through the lens of affection. Does Rama unquestioningly accept exile not just because that is a son’s duty, but because of his love for his aged father ? Because that love does not allow him to let his father be an oath-breaker? Does Dasaratha’s own love for his son (which the epic mentions repeatedly) compel its reciprocation? From this perspective, the lesson is not so much about implicit obedience as about the power of love, although the former is what is usually taught us as children.
I have no ‘point’ to this post really, except that it is really possible to read the great epics in many more ways than one.
Ever wondered why we never hear of the ‘trouble’ with allowing young men to wear Western clothes? Why are trousers and shirts ‘normal’ for men, whether Indian or Western, while women must uphold the symbols of their cultures or religion?
Read more on clothing and control, over at Women’s Web.
Obesity and the health issues that accompany it have long been a subject of intense discussion in the Western world, where the abundance of super-cheap and highly processed foods has been linked to many health disorders. David Kessler’s, The End of Overeating is an important addition to the books written on the subject - why, we shall come to a little later.
Kessler has the background to take on this complex subject having served as commissioner at the US Food and Drug Administration. He is also a man who has grappled with weight issues, giving him a more personal interest in the subject.
One of the biggest strengths of The End of Overeating (and the reason why I called it an important book) is that Kessler articulates convincingly a position on obesity that moves it away from the issue of individual control and choices (’if you’re fat, you have no willpower, and you really ought to control yourself’). He acknowledges that while for a large part of America, calorie intake is outpacing calorie absorption, it’s not as simple as ‘having the willpower to say no’. (Kessler also acknowledges that a small percentage of obese people are obese due to other medical reasons and that ‘hypereating’ is not restricted to obese people.)
Kessler advances his position by taking a close look at the food and restaurant business, and how it gets consumers to eat larger portions, eat more often, eat at any place, eat at more locations, eat more indulging foods and eat mind-blowing combinations of fat-sugar-salt that make us want to - well, eat some more. He also goes to some length to explain how overeating can become a habit, by conditioning and by altering the stimulus-reward circuits in the brain. By indulging in high calorie foods, which offer a temporary but pleasurable sensation, we are primed to remember those sensations the next time we come across the same stimulus.
If all this sounds esoteric, think of a food experience that you particularly crave - perhaps a burger at a particular fast-food joint, perhaps a particular brand of chocolate and think about how hard it is to turn away from the treat it promises. That is what Kessler is talking about, and this book helps us to understand why we don’t just ’say no’. The first 3 sections, ‘Sugar, Fat, Salt’, ‘The Food Industry’ and ‘Conditioned Hypereating Emerges’ are all about dissecting the problem, and are the strongest parts of the book.
One quibble is that Kessler sometimes stops short of covering an individual’s story in sufficient detail, preferring to move on to the next of numerous chapters. For instance, in one chapter, he interviews Jerilyn Brusseau, the creator of Cinnabon, a cinnamon roll bakery that started off as a small store offering a ‘treat’, but is now part of the pandemic of chain stores rushing to pad your waist (and line your heart).
He goes on to end the chapter with, ‘Balance was something Brusseau once lacked in her own life. In her twenties, thirties and forties, she battled bulimia and anorexia. A chef and restaurant operator who lived her days surrounded by tempting indulgences, there had been a time when Brusseau lost all sense of when she was hungry and when she was full.’ Now, what is one to make of an ending like that? A gourmet bakery owner’s complicated relationship with food - yes, interesting, but why tell us about it if you are only going to throw in stray tidbits? Kessler does this when talking about people, but when he gets to the science, he is painstaking.
One suspects that Kessler would have done well to stop with this thorough analysis of the problem rather than extend the book to offering solutions as well. The next 3 sections, ‘The Theory of Treatment’, ‘Food Rehab’ and ‘The End of Overeating’ are somewhat disappointing in their generality when compared with the rigorousness of the first half. While there are a few useful suggestions, they don’t go beyond what commonsense suggests, nor are they buttressed with any studies or other information on their efficacy. They veer dangerously close to the ‘you can stop eating if only you try’ approach that Kessler disses in the first half.
Some of the suggestions don’t take the social context into account adequately; what of the fact that healthy eating in Western societies (especially the US) takes more money than eating junk food? What of the loss of cooking skills in many families and young people? Kessler doesn’t address these issues when he advocates healthier eating.
Nor is there a special focus on women and food, which is surprising, given the greater social expectations from women to maintain a desirable weight, and the pressure it creates amidst the constant food cues in the environment.
Despite these drawbacks, The End of Overeating is an interesting read for anyone who has struggled with weight or with the expectations of desirability in an increasingly appearance-conscious world. Those of us living in India can already see the wholesale import of Western brands and lifestyles into what was a slower and more wholesome way of eating. For us, it may be the Beginning of Overeating, but that is no reason we shouldn’t be better prepared.
Publisher: Penguin Books/Penguin India
Price: Rs. 399
Shouldn’t the planners of a syllabus think of what ought to be done to ensure that a student who passes the 10th grade knows the basics of a subject that he/she opts for in college? Why not make teachers accountable? No one questions a child’s right to education but is our education translating into knowledge of the right kind?
Over a Women’s Web, a lovely post on our educational system and what it is doing for students. Thank you, Hip Grandma!
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