Selfish search for solutions
As a teenager I had never visited doctors because my family was not the pill-popping kind. We never had cause to visit doctors or clinics. In fact I remember a neighbour’s raging fever being taken care of by my mother’s intervention. Simple home remedies, commonsense and trust in nature was all that was needed. Therefore my idyllic world-view took a real hit when I became a mother  and that too in a foreign country. I was inundated with advice from parents, relatives, friends, and doctors telling me how to care for my child. Even then I wondered, why this confusion? Surely I wasn’t the first woman to have a baby?
I realised soon enough that babies grow inspite of, not because of the way they are managed. My cranky, colicky boy was a bundle of energy and difficult to manage. But I firmly believed that God (or nature if you like) had intended that rearing infants is a joyful task, and I intended to make it so. I soon became aware that doctors’ answers to simple queries didn’t make sense. Giving a newborn an antibiotic because of a rash picked up in hospital, asking me to stop nursing asap, sleeping him in a separate cot  all this was unacceptable. Luckily commonsense information fell into my hands in the form of La Leche League’s manual on breastfeeding (llli.org) and Health for the Millions by Dr. Herbert Shelton (American Natural Hygiene Society). These books initiated me into learning and respecting nature’s laws.
Indeed looking back, I realise I owe a lot to intelligent, needs-based reading. Soon after Dr. Robert Mendelson’s classic, Confessions of a Medical Heretic confirmed the importance of what I had learned from my earlier reading. Then after reading Ishmael by Daniel Quinn in the 1990s, I became aware that it was not by accident but by design that people in the ‘civilised’ parts of the world have been made dependent on stifling societal structures and are penalised if irrational laws are not obeyed. Today I consider myself extremely fortunate to have stumbled upon the life-changing books of these and other brilliant authors.
Since then there’s been no turning back. I have learned to take charge of my life, as a consequence of which the freedom I experience today is often exhilarating. It isn’t just health freedom but also freedom from other societal traps such as consumerism, frivolous and/or tainted media, refined foods, licence to pollute, unfair division of natural resources and public goods, and the politics of it all. There’s freedom and security in being aware that one can minimise personal consumption despite society and the media telling us how much more we need of everything to be happy.
On the contrary it is possible to be happy and content without the great majority of goods and services pushed in your face all the time. As Mahatma Gandhi often stressed, minimisation of wants is not only health-giving but also provides a sense of freedom which flows from an inner belief that God/nature has provided  and will continue to provide.  for any eventuality.
In my youth I was a fan of Ayn Rand’s "virtue of selfishness" school of thought. Now I have become aware that my selfish needs of freedom and natural motherhood made me search for a better way of life. Daniel Quinn also demonstrates how community living survives because of selfish interests. For example, you look after other people’s children because of your need to have others care for yours another time. In the same way as we nurture our children in the expectation that they will take care of us in our old age.
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o if we want a clean city, we have to get the cleansing job done. If we want a pollution-free environment we have to take the first step towards reducing carbon emissions. Ditto if we want to live a healthy and stress-free life, we must initiate the process to switch to natural lifestyles and ensure the food we ingest is organic and free from adulteration and pesticides. Yet passion is required to make things happen. Each individual is endowed with God-given energy to set what irks us right. We need to transform ourselves into agents of change. That’s how great solutions are found. Selfishness and our need to survive are great motivators of change. Pure, natural selfishness enables you to find solutions to your problems and allows others to enjoy the benefits of your solutions.
In the quest for solutions to my problems, I have embarked on my new life as an organic farmer because it pained me to see the seeds of food we ate being thrown away. I was convinced that such ‘waste’ had the potential of being used as seed or at the very least, as organic manure to enrich the soil which is our wealth. Secondly, I wanted to feed my family organic vegetables. Organic food is not just good for my family but also for Mother Earth. It is a part of my freedom quest. I am certain that from this selfishness many benefits will flow to the community.
Today I feel I have been given a piece of earth to care for and nourish. I believe I have a mission, to ensure it isn’t left to the mercy of effluents and harmful elements. I intend to restore it to its natural, rich organic state, capable of taking care of generations to come.
(Kavita Mukhi is a Mumbai-based eco-nutritionist and director of Conscious Food)