In Our Little Garden

It’s just a little patch but we love it. It’s green, everything’s organically grown and we do get quite a bit from there to put on our table. Summer in Pune, the city we live in – three hours away from Bombay, India’s commercial capital – is dry and scorching. So it’s only the larger trees that survive – everything else becomes brown and dry. Fortunately, that lasts for just two months of the year. Then comes the rain in June, armed with a palette of the most incredible shades of green. Almost overnight, there’s a miraculous change and we wake up to a garden that has been painted with hues no human can match! The very air changes – filled with moisture, Nature’s great refresher….. and it’s time to plant and to reap.

We have a bit of this and a bit of that. My husband, who hates the ‘manicured’ look when it comes to gardens, loves it when everything springs up lush and full of life. We have a gardener who thinks the same – I swear I’ve heard him singing to the plants! So let me take you on a tour, to be followed in a few days with some of my favourite recipes using what we get from our little garden.

Going Bananas

A banana plant bears fruit only once. Once the bunch of bananas is cut, you need to cut down the tree. The great thing is, there are always three or four young trees that grow around the root so the garden always has a surfeit of banana plants. They need a lot of water. Everything can be used – from the leaves which people used to eat on – now used only in traditional wedding feasts, the flower which you find at the end of the bunch, the bananas themselves, both raw and ripe and the centre of the stem. 

Overflowing with Passion

Passion fruits hang in bunches like orbs – green at first, then a wonderful yellow. The flowers are lovely and the pulp inside is a bright yellow-orange. The plant is a creeper and you get quite a lot of fruits from one plant with a sweet-tart taste. It hardly needs any looking after – just a fence or tree to grow on. There’s a lot you can do with passion fruits. 

Custard Apple Treat

The fruits from our garden may be smaller than the ones we get at the stores but they are also sweeter. Not everyone likes to eat this fruit because it means ploughing through so many seeds. If you have the patience, you’ll find that it really is a delicacy. They’re best eaten when they are slightly soft to the touch. They’re great in desserts too. 

Pink with Pomegranate

This tree needs a lot of sun and you get plenty of fruit from a fairly small-sized tree. Our fruits don’t have the smooth look you see in the shop stores but they taste wonderful and can be used in so many ways.

Papaya – packed with nutrition

The fruits have just begun to appear and we’re hoping we get a good crop this year. Both the raw and the ripe papayas are used – one in curries, the other usually as a breakfast fruit. It is said to be a great digestive.

Delicious Chikoos

They’re known as sapotas in most other countries but here in India we call them chikkoos. They can be eaten as fruit or pureed and used to make fruit shakes and desserts. You should wait till they are fully ripe when they are sweet and delicious. 

The flavour of Bayleaf

Some use them fresh, most dry them a bit and use them as a flavouring. All one needs to do is to cut a small branch, leave it in the sun for two days, take out the leaves and store them. The Indian bayleaf is used extensively in curry powders and in biryanis.

Green Living

I don’t know what these spinach-like greens are called – all I know is that they are great in soups, as a vegetable dish and in salads. The leaves are slightly fleshly, the flowers are a lovely delicate lilac.

The other greens that we love are the leaves of a creeper called Ceylon spinach. We use a lot of the leaves in cooking. They’re great as a snack too – dipped in batter and deep-fried.

Drumming with Drumsticks

The drumstick or Moringa tree supplies us with so much more than something to put on the table. While drumsticks (they really do look like drumsticks!) make a great vegetable, the leaves are used to make a vegetable dish. More than that, the leaves are very useful to get rid of a fever especially in a flu attack. A decoction of the leaves is used as a preventive as well as to treat flu. Almost every part of the tree is used by traditional medicine practitioners. 

Seasoning with Curryleaves  

It’s what we use to temper our curries. A few leaves and a few mustard seeds. It has medicinal properties and is said to stave off infection.

The awesome Neem

We let the leaves that fall be – they’re the best pesticide ever. Skin irritation? Wash with an infusion of neem leaves. Dogs with bad breath? Give them a twig of neem to chew on – it also prevents worms. Put a few leaves in the rice or lentils you store and in cupboards to keep bugs away.

Seasonal stuff

We grow a bit of this and a bit of that as well – some of them seasonal. Okra or lady’s fingers, eggplant or brinjal, tomatoes, lemongrass, fenugreek, turmeric, ginger, bitter gourd, lemons, coriander, beans.

It’s great to be able to get so much from this little patch of ours. With the homes around us coming down and huge apartment blocks being built in their place, will our little corner last? One can’t tell. To live hemmed in by ten and twelve storey apartment high rises is not very appealing. Till that happens, though, we’ll just go on enjoying all the goodies from our garden. 

In the year 3012

Jabber watched the sun bidding the world goodnight from his penthouse apartment. First the change in the intensity of the light, then the change in colour as the brilliant ball of energy put on its evening veil and became a red-gold orb you could feast your eyes on. It rested on the horizon for a moment and it was as though its many invisible hands reached out to paint the sky above it in the most amazing hues. Then, with a fluid movement, it was gone. There was another burst of colour before the night drew its black velvet curtain over this part of the globe. In a few minutes, the stars would dress up the dark – how they loved to do their bling thing night after night.

For the nth time he wondered why he was different, why he was probably the only one who could stand and stare and wonder, why he had these flashes of strange images when he was alone and thoughtful. Were they dredged out from somewhere deep within his subconscious or were they images flashed into his consciousness from somewhere outside? Did anyone else experience them or was it only him? He daren’t ask anyone because it might just be his death knell.

The Wockys were one of the chosen families, part of the inner circle in this brave new world. In the 1000-year history of his world, everything worked, everything was predictable, everyone smiled because life was good. In the distant past, lost in the mists of time, there was an age when there was chaos and confusion. Then came a new world order and here they were today, the perfect number of people who walked the planet Brillig with no deaths and no births. All that was in the past once the slithy toves gyred and gimbled in test tubes and threw up the perfect prototype for the race that was. When they were little borogoves, they were still mimsy – Jabber was, too, as far as he could remember but as they grew, they put away childish things, outgrowing those mome rath days and becoming the epitome of perfection.

There were vague recollections however. He remembered how he had to go to the SynthLab often when he was young. None of the other children his age ever had to. Snippets of conversation came back to him.

“…traces of the old human genome…”,

“…only a matter of time before we totally delete it all…”

“ …he’s clean, My. Wocky!”

The perfect moon cast its perfect rays all around the building, dipping its silvery, sliver-like toes into the room as the curtains swayed and parted in the controlled generated breeze. Damn! There it was again. Those pictures in his mind – he’d learned how to hide his secret from the world, even his family. He liked what he felt, saw and experienced.

“A vorpal sword? What on Brillig is that?” he yelled as a clear image unfolded in his mind’s eye. There he was, in a garb that looked so unfamiliar, resting against a strange tree. “Why, that’s me being uffish!”

Then, as he shut his eyes, the centuries rolled back and he knew he had been here before. The Tumtum tree, the Jubjub bird and he, with his sword, fighting off his alter-ego. The one with the jaws that bit and claws that caught. One, two! One, two! The fire in those flaming eyes was doused forever, there in the tulgey wood. He could hear the chortling on that frabjous day as he came back, triumphant, galumphing back to glory.

Jabber Wocky knew it was time to go to bed and time to shut out these images from his mind. Images from before the beginning of the world as he knew it. From before the time when the ideal man was born in a test tube and the ideal population was decided by a plastic race that never fell ill, never aged, never died. A though came unbidden to his mind. “Never lived?”

Latitude of Laziness

You’ll find it somewhere between the Tropics of Languid and Layabout and no, you don’t have to go looking for it. You just need to sit back, do absolutely nothing and sink into it. Welcome to Lotus-eating Land where you don’t even have to eat the lotuses (or is it lotii?? – who cares anyway?) if you don’t want to. In fact, you don’t need to do anything you don’t want to. Because this is where Nothing is something you do and do very well indeed.

Let’s take a closer look. It cuts through the ages, from the very young to the very old. It isn’t gender-specific and you could find the male and the female of the species though a larger number of males seem to want to migrate here. Or rather, they want to sink through wherever they are into any place here. You’ll find that the traffic moves very slowly and happily here, making the right turns into the boulevards of bliss and the lanes of listlessness.  Selling won’t work because the attitudes are fixed even though they exist in a bubble of non-action. This is the land where impatience and time-keeping are banned, never to enter its passive portals. This is where the gods of idleness and laidbackness are placed on a pedestal and worshipped. Where hymns of lounging and lullabies of loafing softly rise into the still air.

Now, for an even closer look. This is not a land for the faint-hearted. It takes courage to achieve the right to be here. It takes a certain strength of will to do nothing. So what you might find in a resident’s psyche is a do-nothing attitude that permeates the brain and makes it one wonderful indolent mass. Were brain-mapping allowed, there would be patches of procrastination in a sea of tranquility, with nary a stressful atom to upset the calm. Mind and body are in a beautiful state of balance with a perfect nothingness that makes them whole. If you were to view the Kirlian auras here, you would see gentle greens, sleepy blues and lazy lilacs. And you’ll learn that everyone lives by those simple words of wisdom, ‘Let it be!’

Pi: Dying And Googled

Some things were sacrosanct when we were growing up and Pi was one of them. It was well-ensconced on its mathematical pedestal and it looked like it had life eternal. Now whoever thought that it had feet of clay and would one day crumble and collapse? Not in our wildest dreams! But the times they are a-changing so rapidly and even the life and times of Pi must come to an end. Oh, how the hallowed have fallen!

                                                     

It all began with Bob Palais’ article ten years ago ‘Pi is wrong’. And a while ago, Michael Hartl resurrected the argument for a new circle constant. So what is right according to these new-fangled maths wizards? 2Pi or Tau as Palais’ followers have been calling it the last year.  According to them, 6.28 makes better sense than 3.14 and they are calling for a Tau Day which they want on the 28^th of June (6/28, see?) Arguments for and against are flying fast and furious and with the speed at which the world is changing, who knows? The Pi we thought was hallowed and everlasting could soon be history.

Maybe someone should have told the Google guys about it when they were bidding for the Nortel patents. Were they being too clever or were they really not interested and just having fun? They even bid $3.14159 billion at one point during the auction. And the other figures had mathematical connotations too – from Brun’s constant to the Meissel-Merten’s constant, these figures just confused many at the auction. The bidding went up to $4.5 billion and the consortium consisting of Apple, Microsoft, Rim and Sony got it. Looks like Google really isn’t serious about their Android venture. Maybe if they were keeping up with what was going on in the mathematical world, they would have gone up to the magical Tau figure of 6.28 and won it! 

Growing Up With Georgette Heyer

She’s been so much a part of my young days and she’s still like a familiar friend that I go back to when I need a laugh. Any book of hers I found, I bought. It’s a collection I wouldn’t part with for anything. For me, she’s on par with Jane Austen – and I discovered Jane Austen after I read Georgette Heyer.

Georgette Heyer has been dismissed by many as just another romance writer. You need to read her to know just how unfair that is. She couldn’t be more different from a romance writer like Barbara Cartland as chalk from cheese. This was the writer who brought the Regency romance genre into being – and what a wonderful, well-researched picture she paints of Regency England with words. Her books bring to life the Nonpareils of fashion in that era, all the nitty-gritty’s of high ton at its best, every little fashionable quirk from the late 18^th to the early 19^th century and the London of Almack’s, highwaymen, intricately carved snuffboxes, masked balls and curricles.

It all began for me at 10 when I was down with a bout of the flu and my mother came home with an armful of books from the library – one of them was Devil’s Cub and the author was Georgette Heyer. A few pages into the book and I was a goner – a Georgette Heyer addict for life. Decades later, I still reach out for a well-thumbed copy and the choice of titles depends on my mood. The great thing about her books is the incredible humour. Sure, there are the stereotypes that are found in many of her books. The masked villain, the stuttering young buck, the foppish old gentlemen, the beady-eyed dowagers.  The books always have a romantic angle – it is the structure around which the story is constructed. However, romance is not the crux of each book – just a barebones structure that allows for wordplay between the characters that assume an almost lifelike presence. Her research is meticulous – and whether it was the wars or the events of the time, even the fashion, she did a lot of painstaking work to make sure that each book and the period it was set in was as true to life as she could make it. From the elegance of Regency England fashion with its foibles, to the understated dress trends with Beau Brummell – she paints pictures so vivid, it’s just like being there.

In her historical romances, she hardly ever states what year it is – but all the inferences, the events, the fads are spot on. She could be seen in the libraries and the museums, taking down notes and she did her level best to make sure that even the speech and expressions were as true to the period as possible. Hers is Wodehousian wit taken out of the countryside and the gentlemen’s clubs to the lavishly furnished drawing rooms, card rooms and watering holes of London, Bath and Brighton – with a few quick trips to Paris.

In real life, she was probably more like Mary, the heroine in Devil’s Cub than Leonie, the young red-haired beauty in These Old Shades. To think that her first novel was written to amuse her brother who was ill – at the tender age of 17! She went on to publish 50 titles after that – and 2 were published after she died. Georgette Heyer was her real name and once she got married, she was quite content to be Mrs. Ronald Rougier and remain in the background, letting her books do the talking. In fact, many of her readers knew her married name only when her death was announced in the newspapers. Anyone who has read her books can’t just dismiss her as a mere romance writer. While Barbara Cartland might have been prolific, churning out books to a formula and rarely bothering about how authentic her background was, Heyer was meticulous and thorough.

Like Shakespeare, she used the ‘masquerading as the opposite gender’ so very well in some of her books like The Masqueraders and These Old Shades.  Like the plots of the Bard, this cross dressing made for some delightful and hilarious scenes in her books. She also tried her hand at murder mysteries and a few of her books are very in the Agatha Christie mould. However, swashbuckling romance was her speciality and she handled it as delicately as any of her expert horsemen protagonists – never too much to be racy, never too slow to be a bore. The ride was always punctuated with acerbic wit and fond humour of the best kind – and it made millions of her fans come back to read again and again.

Once Upon A Time In LollaLand

Once upon a time, where all good stories begin, there was a land where the good people toiled hard and were happy with what they reaped by the sweat of their brow. In the centre of the land stood their prized possession – the wonderful LollaTree. And why was it so wonderful? It was the LollaLeaf that they used to buy and sell whatever they wanted.

The LollaTree grew and grew and with it, the good people of the land prospered. There was a ritual that the LollaTree demanded though - and that was, every time they wanted a new batch of LollaLeaves, they had to insert a Glitto into the hollow in the tree. Only then could they harvest a new crop of LollaLeaves. The roots of the LollaTree needed to be nourished with Glittos which were mined from deep down inside the earth. The soil under the tree grew rich with Glittos and the LollaLeaves traveled far and wide, bringing wealth and prosperity to the land.

One day, when the Council of Power met, one of them said, “We don’t have any more Glittos to put into the hollow – what do we do?’ The Main One thought for a while. “Our good people have worked and toiled so hard – it would be wrong to take away the joy that the LollaLeaves bring them. Let’s just pretend – just this once that we have the Glittos. We will paint LollaLeaves exactly like the ones from the LollaTree and no one need know. We must protect our people.” So they made LollaLeaf substitutes so that the good people who worked hard could keep smiling.

“Only till we get the next lot of Glittos – then we’ll make up,” they said. And it was in the year three score and eleven. The months passed and the LollaLeaves were craved for all over the world. A year later, the Council of Power met once more and there was worry writ on all their faces. “Our people are happy but we can’t get enough Glittos for the LollaTree,” they said. The Main One smiled. “Then the Glittos will have to go. Look at how well our LollaLeaves are doing all over the world. Who needs the Glittos anymore?” So he sent the town criers all over the world to tell everyone that from henceforth, the LollaLeaf would be the measure of exchange without the benefit of the Glittos.

The Watcher who couldn’t speak watched and was very afraid. Where was this story going, he wondered? How could he tell the good people that they were not going down the ‘happily ever after road’? They were so sure they were.

With prosperity came chariots which were big and fancy and soon, the lio that was used to grease the chariots wasn’t enough. They needed more. So they went to the far off Land of Lio to get more and they could buy as much as they wanted with the wonderful LollaLeaves.

The first rumblings were heard in VinoLand, at the other end of the pond. They had too many LollaLeaves lying around so they wanted Glittos instead. “Take your LollaLeaves and give us an equal measure of Glittos,” they said. But there were not enough Glittos to give. They knew that today if it was VinoLand, tomorrow it would be others who would want Glittos instead of the LollaLeaves.

The Watcher wondered what they would do. Would the bubble burst? Would the world guess what a tangled web had been woven? The time has come, he thought. He was wrong.

The Council of Power knew they had to think fast. So they went to the Land of Lio and struck a deal. Every country that bought any Lio had to pay for it with LollaLeaves. Needless to say, the LollaLeaf grew even stronger and the sunshine of prosperity shone even brighter in LollaLand. When the people of LollaLand needed more lio for their own chariots, the Council of Power just went out and had more LollaLeaves painted.

They had so much now that they wondered what to do with them. “Let’s lend it to our people so they can buy themselves bigger cars, bigger mansions,” they said. “Let the people be even happier than they are!”

Till one voice from the province of Qira in the Land of Lio who had been a friend decided that he would allow people to buy his lio with another leaf. This would not be good for the good people so the Council knew they didn’t have a choice – they had to still his voice. They really didn’t have an option – it was his fault – why oh, why couldn’t he have let things be? He should have toed the line, not rebelled. Once his voice was stilled, the LollaLeaf was reinstated as the official measure of exchange – quietly but firmly.

The Watcher watched, sick to his stomach. He knew it was the beginning of the end. What would the good people do when they knew the truth? What would happen when the scales fell from their eyes? That it wasn’t the Lio but the LollaLeaf that was to blame?

Then came other voices of dissent. From the Land of Venez where their leader refused to sell his lio for only LollaLeaves. Then it was the leader of Nira, a neighbour of Qira and he did the unthinkable – he said he would accept all leaves from all over the world except the LollaLeaf.

The Watcher moved to a nearby hillock and watched as the LollaLeaf started crumbling. He watched as the scales fell from a few thinking eyes. He watched as the good people approached the crossroads – would they take the narrow long and winding road to the happily ever after? Suddenly in his hopeless eyes, there was a gleam – of hope. “Nothing is impossible,” he thought, “Not when the good people have the will to overcome. This too shall pass.”

Verily, verily, below the LollaTree, way below the levels of the Lio and the Glittos there runs the vein of Verity. If one digs deep enough, the springs of Truth will out, nourishing the land with cleansing streams, bringing new life and new hope.

Looking Back On LollaLand

All ‘Once Upon A Time’ stories unfortunately do not automatically end with ‘happily ever after’. The ‘happily ever after’ needs a lot of work to make it come true. So it was with LollaLand. There was a time when the LollaTree stood proud and strong in LollaLand against every wind that blew, knowing that it reigned supreme in the world. Once its Glitto nourishment stopped however, it was living on borrowed time. Buffeted by its gardeners, supported by the Council of Power, it still held its position of honour in the world but the writing was on the wall. Soon, there were whispers not of ‘What if….’ but of ‘How soon…???’

It was the year 2020 and the Watcher had been watching global events unfold. There were no best of times anymore – just bad times which spiralled down ever often to worse times and then slowly settled back to the bad. He watched as the world he knew was enveloped in a cloud of hopelessness, not knowing how to deal with what was happening. And yet, in his heart, hope was not laid to rest. He realised that there had to be a stripping down, a cleansing to start afresh and true.

It did not help the LollaTree that its leaves were losing their shine around the world. Nor did the rumours help – of devious plots to consign the LollaLeaf to history by growing a new tree with shiny new leaves. Of how these leaves were quietly shipped out to strongholds in DragonLand across the other side of the world to be held in safekeeping. Whispers in the wind, may of them untrue but underneath it all lay one fact – the LollaLeaf was fast losing credibility and its intrinsic worth.

It was all a chimera that was being put together for years by the powers that were. A bright shiny picture painted on a cardboard sky with a paper moon floating by. A backdrop for the well-rehearsed play that unfolded on the world’s stage – only the actors were so consummate, their spectators thought what they were watching was for real. Till one day, the scales fell away from people’s eyes because they couldn’t pretend anymore and everyone joined the chorus to dislodge the LollaLeaf.

The Watcher shut his eyes and rewound his thoughts to 12 years ago when the death knell had sounded for the LollaLeaf. It took two whole years for the LollaLeaf to get dislodged from its pinnacle of supremacy and it was just not rooted down enough to withstand the pressure the rulers of the other lands were exerting. So the era of the LollaLeaf came to an end and a new age began where the LollaLeaf was recognised only within the boundaries of LollaLand.

The clamouring grew louder. Why should we have the LollaLeaf lording it over all our leaves? they asked.  The rulers of DragonLand were the most vociferous because they had the largest stake in LollaLand. There was a time when they had bought bonds belonging to the Treasury House of LollaLand – would they just be papyrus of little worth when the time came to redeem them?

The world watched as the value of Glittos went up, up, up. In just one year, in LollaLand’s Glitto-making house alone there was a sharp surge from striking 140,000 a year to 710,000 a year. The only reason this was happening was because the faith in the LollaLeaf was plummeting.

“Let us have a common leaf that belongs to no land,” they all said. This was not something LollaLand wanted or supported but the tide was fast turning against it and there came a day when it had to go with the flow and say “Yes” to a new leaf: the GloboLeaf.

The GloboLeaf stood supreme in the world. Every leaf in every land was linked to it and the GloboLeaf did not need nourishing or be linked to a value source like the other leaves. It was intangible yet powerful because it was the touchstone of value for all the other leaves. The other leaves needed nourishment so that they could grow strong and valuable. They were all allowed different kinds of nourishment – some chose Glittos, some chose Dazzlers or other precious rocks, some even chose the land they owned. They could choose just one or have a matrix of many, just as long as their leaves were linked to the nourishment of something of value. The matrix of valuation was a bit complex but thus far it had proved to be transparent and above manipulation. Once upon a time, the LollaLeaf had been well and truly nourished with Glittos but that was history now.  Now, they would have to go back to the grassroots level and start growing anew.

The Watcher smiled. For ten years now, there had been a money system in place that made sense to everyone. Would it last? Would people remember the aftermath of the LollaLeaf bubble that burst and left so much despair in its wake? For now, things were good. Tomorrow, who knew? At the core of the heart of man, there was discontent and greed. There would be ways to manipulate and corrupt this system too. However, now was a great time and place to be. Tomorrow was another day.

Lollaland And Its Diminishing Glitter

All that glitters isn’t gold. Will the golden sunshine that bathed all of Lollaland through the years ever be felt again? Time was when the streets were paved with gold and the whole world dreamed of this golden destination where everyone seemed to live happily ever after. The LollaTree had seemed to be blessed with everlasting life and the LollaLeaf had been so powerful. When did the rot set in? It had been slow, insidious and behind the scenes.

The Watcher watched and hummed sadly to himself:

Where have all the Glittos gone

Long time passing

Where have all the Glittos gone

Long time ago

Where have all the Glittos gone

Gone to fraudsters  everyone

When will we ever learn?

When will we ever learn?

They built a huge safehouse to house the Glittos many years ago and it was guarded night and day – and guarded well. It was called Torf Xonk and it wasn’t just tough to get in, it was impossible. And the people of Lollaland felt safe and happy that so much wealth was kept secure by their leaders. And the golden sun shone down on its golden people and all was right with their world.

The first signs of everything not being right in the depths of this impregnable safehouse were felt two years ago when some of the Glittos were shipped far away to DragonLand in payment for goods received. Everything seemed all right but the usual checks were done. Small holes were drilled into a few of the Glittos to make sure that they were pure. Imagine the shock of the ones who tested them when they realised that what was gold was just a sheer cover-up and inside was inferior metal. And the markings on the fake Glittos showed that they had been in the safehouse for many years.

So who had taken out the real Glittos and put in fake Glittos in their place? How could they do it in a safehouse that was thought to be the most secure place in all the land? Who had access to the golden vaults in order to make the switch? And who had the authority to switch the Glittos without anyone knowing?

There were tears in the Watcher’s eyes. ‘The good people of the land who work so hard and are so loyal have been robbed by the very people they trusted, the very ones they put in power. The only way to right this wrong is for the people to know the truth and to demand justice. Will they do it?’ he wondered.

Then came the Keeper of the Global Glittos and he asked to see the Glittos that were owed to the ones he worked for. The more he saw, the more he doubted and he, too, began to smell a conspiracy where the Glittos had been quietly and sneakily replaced with metal of much less worth. He demanded an answer and that was his undoing. In order to keep him quiet, they wove a web of lies around him and as he was leaving Lollaland, he was caught and brought back in chains with accusations of wrongdoing.

The Watcher could not believe that in a country known for its bravery and honesty, there would be a few in power who would stoop to sex, lies and gutterscrape in order to frame a person who saw through them. He knew that a few were selling the country out and he prayed the people would open their eyes and see, listen and understand, seek and find the truth.

For too long, any dissent was met with the gun. In Qira, in other lands, at the heart of the conflict was the Glitto because that was what kept the LollaLeaf strong. Far away, an old enemy smiled and let a word fall here, a word there as to why the Keeper of the Global Glittos had been the victim of a conspiracy plot. According to him, the Keeper knew the truth – that there were no more Glittos in the safehouse and all that were there were fake. He knew because there were a few good men in the King’s court, who, under peril of their lives, whispered the truth to him.

This time, there can be no resorting to war, thought the Watcher. Maybe the time had come for the veils of deceit to be rent apart and for truth to shine again. And what of the Glittos? Why, man gave it its value and man can take it away. It’s the real values that you cannot take away. Values of truth, honesty, decency, charity. Suddenly, he smiled. There was hope, he knew because of the people - the people of LollaLand who were honest and hardworking and would get past this, too. He had to have faith that this would pass and the sun would come out and shine in LollaLand again.

Energy Elevators

You hit 40 and there’s that slight slowing down in everything that you do. If you’re lucky, it’s so slight that you don’t even notice it. Then you hit 50 and you know you’re walking just a little bit slower, you take a few seconds more than you used to when you answer questions and it takes longer to put a meal together. That’s just the passage of time. While you can’t really reverse the process of aging, what you can do is to increase your energy levels. Here are a few practical tips on how to keep your energy flowing even as the years creep up on you.

Straighten those shoulders

One of the main reasons for lower energy levels is those slouchy shoulders. Sit on a straight-backed chair, straighten your spine and push those shoulders back. When you are walking, too, tell yourself those shoulders need to go up and back. Suddenly, you’ll find your lungs expanding and a whole lot more air entering them. Ergo – more energy!

Stop holding your tummy in

If you have a large paunch, you need to tackle it with a combination of diet and exercise to get rid of the flab. Holding your stomach in is not the answer and can do more harm than good. When your stomach is sucked in, your diaphragm gets rigid and your lungs cannot expand to their full capacity downwards. Remember, pulling in of the tummy means less air and oxygen, therefore lower energy levels so keep those stomach muscles relaxed.

In some cases, the stomach is taut not because the person pulls it in but because of stress. The easiest way to ease up on the stress is to consciously relax the stomach. It’s amazing how you start feeling better almost immediately.

Walk light

As you grow older, you lose the spring from your step. Well, just put it back. Instead of going ‘thump, thump’, as you walk, follow the heel-toe drill. Let your heel land on the ground first then quickly and lightly transfer the weight onto your toes. This should be done in a fluid, bouncy motion. So you need to walk tall and straight and you need to walk light as well. You’ll find yourself walking faster and being able to walk a lot more.

Eat right

Don’t overstuff yourself – stop eating before you get full is the rule you should live by. Eat food that is good and nutritious – stick with fresh food and you should be fine. When you overeat and you eat food that’s rich and oily, you pay the price as you grow older. Your tummies function great when you are young even though you use them like garbage cans but with age, the tummy starts making its displeasure felt. Light meals just make you feel a lot more energetic. Otherwise a lot of your body’s energy is directed towards digesting the food leaving very little left for other activities.

Also remember to cut down on white flour foods and white sugar. Maybe now is a good time to look at alternative sweeteners – if you must have them – like honey or unrefined sugar.

Think positive

Easier said than done and you wonder why people keep saying that as though you can switch on what you want and switch off what you don’t. No – it’s not easy – not by a long shot. One of the best ways to do it is to try and fill your day with lots to do so there’s no time for those negative thoughts which wear you down and make you feel drained out. Here are a few tips:

·         Take up a hobby you like – gardening, cooking, photography – something to keep your mind and hours in the days occupied.

·         Join a group – people who like what you like. It could be something as simple as a group of friends who meet in the park every evening.

·         Try and smile more often, even when you are alone. It’s hard to think of depressing things when you’re smiling. And you’ll find the world smiling back at you.

·         Find friends you can laugh with and take in a crazy movie or play or pick up a funny DVD, invite a few friends over and have a great laugh over a couple of beers.

·         Sing out loud – when you work around the house, in the shower, in the garden. Your lungs open out and the energy flows.

·         Dance. Put on some music which you like when you’re alone and dance those blues away. It’s incredible how it just perks up you. Don’t go doing any fancy steps though, unless you want to end up with a plaster cast.

·         Do something totally crazy – like learning to scuba dive, taking off on a cruise all by yourself, learning an obscure language, joining a salsa class. It just makes you feel new and energized.

Breathe right

Last and by far the most important, you need to practice how to breathe right. Sometimes, this is all it takes to make you feel young and full of zest again. Shoulders back, tummy relaxed, let each breath go right in. Breathe in to 4 counts, hold for 4 counts, exhale for 4 counts then pause for 2 counts. Don’t let it be a strain. Just open up your lungs and breathe in as far as it feels comfortable. When your system is well-oxygenated, you’ll feel so good. You don’t need to go pay some guru top dollar to make you feel good – you can do it sitting all by yourself in your own home.

You can advance to a bit of meditation too. Sit in a quiet place and breathe to these counts for 5 minutes. As you breathe, concentrate on your breath going in and out of your nostrils. When your attention is on your breath, the chatter in your brain stops. It’s that easy and that simple. With a bit of practice, you’ll be meditating like a pro in no time.

That’s all there is to it. There’s absolutely no way you should let age get the better of you. You can be alive and energetic as the years go by if you only put a few of these easy tips into practice.