Natural Health

Taking care of Mother Earth

img:27:Kavita Mukhi Last month I promised to elaborate on how to be givers rather than takers all our lives. For thousands of years we have been draining the earth’s resources without a thought. If we don’t begin thinking seriously about reckless consumption, it may become an irreversible condition, if it hasn’t already. Simply because people pay for what they use doesn’t give them the right to unscrupulously fulfill all their desires. As Mahatma Gandhi said, "There is enough for every need but not for our greed."

It isn’t just not littering or using the reverse side of paper that makes the difference. We must become aware that each act of ours, however insignificant it may seem, can affect our environment — the earth we inhabit and depend on for our food; the air we breathe and the water we drink. It is as basic as that. Buying food in a supermarket, if we are city-dwellers, makes us forget the fact that even a pizza isn’t possible without grown wheat and tomatoes besides all the other ingredients that go into its making. None of the ingredients is produced independent of the earth.

Let me suggest some simple ways in which we can sustain and improve the earth’s health.

• Use daylight hours as far as possible i.e wake closer to sunrise; sleep closer to sunset. This way you use less electricity and are rewarded with better health

• Switch off lights and fans. Bear a bit of the heat. It doesn’t have to be Diwali every day. The use of air conditioners may keep us cool but it eventually contributes to heating the environment and global warming

• Minimise the use of microwaves. Not only do electric mixers and other kitchen gadgets reduce the taste of food, they negate the energy we get from it

• Avoid sprays, aerosol cans, extra strong detergents, and chemicals of all kinds. Think of ozone depletion and water polluted by chemical effluents

• Don’t use the flush every time you urinate. Flush once every few times rather than waste many litres of water with each flushing

• Conserve every drop of water. Don’t let the tap run while you brush, bathe or wash clothes and dishes. Using a tumbler or bucket makes us realise immediately how much water we waste because of the invention of the tap

• Walk more and drive less; exercise will improve your metabolism

• Use public transport as much as you can. It lightens the load on city roads

• Design your home in an environment friendly manner. Use local materials as far as possible including lime on the walls

• Furniture should be simple. Be sparing with wood and bamboo; they are valuable resources

• Consume organic food to ensure that at least some land is saved from the onslaught of chemical fertilisers and pesticides

• Wear khadi and hand-spun, organically dyed fabrics. Most machine-made yarns pollute the atmosphere during the production process. Likewise chemical colours poison our waters

• Plant saplings — as many as you can

• Recycle garbage; learn to vermi compost even in the city. Turn your garbage to gold. Turn to www.consciousfood.com to learn how

• Recycle everything you possibly can

The list could go on and on. Remember our lifestyle choices affect the health of the earth we inhabit. The bottom line is use less, need less, buy less. For this we need to be secure within ourselves without ever-increasing consumption. Materialism is a manifestation of emotional insecurity.

This applies to our food choices as well. For example when there were fewer people on earth and animals were reared naturally and allowed to nurse their young the extra milk was used for human consumption. Today, in a less than perfect natural order, the cow has become a milk machine, and even the milk available is not fresh; it is usually dried and reconstituted. The very structure of a city makes this inevitable. Consumption of pasteurised and homogenised milk creates health problems because homogenisation involves the breaking up of fat molecules which could block arteries. Without homogenisation, fat molecules are easily assimilated in the digestion process.

This simple example of milk illustrates that if a food or any other resource of the earth is used sparingly it doesn’t hurt anybody – neither the earth, animal and nor our health. But transformed into big business, even the simple process of food consumption poses a threat to the earth and its inhabitants.

An old red Indian chant goes: "The earth is our mother, we must take care of her". It is only when we do so can we realise the need to respect her. Today city life has removed us so far from our roots that we fail to make the connection between wearing a diamond, eating bread or using a car, and the health and well being of Mother Earth. Many of us haven’t seen a natural whole grain because it is refined, ground and packaged so comprehensively that we wouldn’t recognise it in its original form.

A very real solution, however long-term, was advocated by Japanese philosopher and naturalist Masanobu Fukuoka long ago. He urged people to move back into rural areas, to live close to the earth and practice natural farming.

Becoming aware of these linkages is the first step. Even if we can’t do much about our current lifestyles, just being aware of how blindly the earth’s resources are being depleted is a good start. Lifestyle changes will naturally follow dawning awareness.