Living Lakes

Thousands of fish lay belly up dead in Ulsoor Lake in India’s garden city, Bangalore. There was a bund separating sewage from fresh water.  With the degradation of that bund, the oxygen levels fell and the fish died. Environmental degradation is destroying water bodies. There were 1000 lakes in Bangalore in the 80’s. Now there are only 200 lakes remaining. People go boating in the lake. They throw garbage into the lake. Apathy is the cause. How do we clean our water bodies of micro beads of plastic which enter our bodies through the food chain? Health, economics and ecology are all connected.  People sometimes feel they have nothing to do with the environment. But we are interconnected. What we do to water we do to those we love. Take responsibility. Lake authorities are pumping in oxygen to help solve the problem. You start watching the lake.

A Lake is an asset. Monitor the health of the lake in your neighbourhood. Gujarat has made lakes difficult to encroach. There were so many warning signs on the lake: Water hyacinth, higher temperatures and now the fish dying.  Lakes are converted into residential localities, untreated chemicals, cause irreversible damage.  We cannot afford this. Dissolved content in water oxygen is below 4mg/litre.  Over six hundred million litres of sewage flows into 3 lakes.  Drains open into lakes. Increased untreated sewage from 14 industries around the lake and fast urbanization are obvious threats. We need the environment more than the environment needs us, let’s do something about it.

The Detroit River which serves as a link between Lake Huron and Lake Erie was estimated to dispose off more than 700 million gallons of waste water daily and 150 million pounds of toxic polychlorinated biphenyl’s yearly, into the Detroit River. Steps have been taken to manage this pollution because the source point has been identified. But there are non source contaminants that seeÆp in through small diffuse sources like agricultural fertilizers, pesticides and manure. Even tougher is acid rain and leaking from septic tanks. This is far more difficult to handle.

The world’s largest fresh water Baikal Lake, in Siberia, has a volume of 5523 cubic miles of water (23,000 cubic kilometres) or approximately 20% of the earth’s surface water! Lake Huron is the largest fresh water lake in the world with a total surface are of 45410 square miles (117,611 square kilometres). But in terms of volume, it is much smaller: 2030 cubic miles.  The 25million year old Baikal Lake, is inhabited by over 2000 plants and animals. Over 40% of those life forms have not even been described yet! No wonder it is called the Galapagos of Russia. Over the last four decades the lake is becoming increasingly polluted.

Pollution of fresh water bodies not only makes water unfit for drinking, but also reduces recreational activities and reduces land value in the vicinity. Each of us as individuals needs to be aware and willing to spread the information about pollution. We also need to be aware of how our activities  are affecting the landscape and all the millions of living creatures in that environment.  We are responsible for our lakes and other water bodies.

Rekha Shetty

Water Warrior

Beware of Happiness Traps

Expecting too much from others.

• Not accepting yourself as you are; demanding too much of yourself.

• Not being content with anything.

• Feeling you are not contributing.

• Feeling excluded.

• Playing politics and being manipulative.

• Feeling you cannot prevent another’s suffering.

• Constantly craving for food.

• In a rush all the time.

• Excessively or often angry.

• Full of lethargy and inactivity.

• Having too much tiredness.

• Ignoring others.

Indigenous Health-Care Systems

The indigenous health-care system is commensurate with the traditional habits, lifestyle and value systems of a particular culture from where it has evolved. It cannot be effective if there is a radical change in the habits of that culture. This ‘patient–system– mismatch’ is very evident in the case of westernized American Indians who have lost their traditional healing capacities. On the contrary, the Keralites, for example, in spite of coming into contact with western culture, do not endorse its systems, and hold on to their own traditions. Perhaps that is why their age-old habit of using a high cholesterol diet has not resulted in an increased incidence of heart disease. The indigenous systems of medicine continue to have a stronghold in Kerala. All health-care systems, including modern medicine, are in agreement today over the issue that a patient’s psychological state has much to do with the healing process. Minor activities like taking part in a satsang, singing a tune you enjoy, and dancing for fun to your child’s delight can make you feel contented and allow the good chemicals flow.

‘The chief role of the doctor is, by various means, to induce the body to recover its trust in the Supreme Grace,’ said the Mother from Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry, decades ago. The contact of the patient with the physician is only an occasion to awaken him to the touch of the healer within.

How to Deal With Loss

How to handle failure, loss, death—how to solve problems in thegreat textbook of life? There is no use solving problems in other people’s books. Concentrate on passing your own exams. Your life provides you with a chance to achieve the highest in yourself, by using pain as stepping-stones to enlightenment.

No one can avoid bad times, but you can ensure that you look at this time as a time for growth and learning. When the mind numbing pain that immediately follows loss has subsided, you can take proactive steps to provide emergency attention to heal your body, mind and spirit.

Pour music into your soul. Touch people who love you. Explore new places. Reach into great books and study alternate futures. Pamper yourself and ask your loved ones for hugs. Meditate. Be silent. Plug into the universe. Let go. Let God catch you. Your sankalpa or intention must be pure. Be clear about your goal. Be non-judgemental. Love and seek to understand with tenderness. Learn and immerse yourself in knowledge. Learn all you can about your chosen field from books, internet, from people, competitors. Remain focused. Never give up. Never,  ever.Help others, motivate them! Let others achieve their targets. Say no to negative people and emotions. Everything life offers is prasad—blessed by the gods. Good and bad experiences, people who love you and those who hate you, are all sent here to teach you. Go on to achieve your highest potential. Look for the highest in others. Know your purpose on earth, the

highest that God created you to become Question injustice. Stand up for those who cannot fight, speak for those who have no voice. Speak gently and with love. Receive this prasad, compliments, gifts and encouragement with grace. 

Necessary Steps to Increase Personal Happiness

·         The world is in your drawing room, it is clamouring to change your life with more and more sophisticated toys. As a popular saying goes, ‘What separates the men from the boys is just the price of their toys.’ Simplify and go home to what you really need.

·         The world is like a buffet counter at a five-star hotel. Let’s not grab everything on our plates. Let us be choosy, so that we may avoid spiritual indigestion and physical exhaustion.

·         Let us replace stress with positive emotions that engender joy. Let us increase our Happiness Quotient (HQ).

·         Finding a job you love is one of the ways you can immunize yourself against heart problems.

·         A good marriage is a protective shield against heart attacks.

·         Merely avoiding negative emotions is not enough; one should consistently cultivate the positive emotions of love, compassion, courage and peace.

New Ways for Corporate Women

Woman managers need to appreciate that it takes heroic energy to rock the cradle and rock the corporate world. First pin a badge for bravery on yourself for attempting it. Then, promise you will not even begin to tread the path that leads to the joyless land of being a super-woman or super-mom. Enlist your men and families as willing accomplices in the challenging task of reconstructing a corporate.

Workplace that lovingly accommodates the needs of humans, for families, for music, poetry and time for just standing and watching the world go by! Be kind to yourself. Love yourself. Conquer fear and overcome the need for instructions. Pursue the ability to adapt and be a leader of proactive change. The New World is not for those who are what Nehru called unwilling victims, dragged to be sacrificed on the altar of change. Be leaders to be accepted as such. Banish forever your fear of being centre stage, your reluctance to accept that you are where the buck stops.

Relearn and re-install the software of the human heart that your mothers embodied. The New Woman of the past decade must not forsaken her heritage of loving and caring for the tough hard-bitten so-called ‘male boss model.’ Both men and women managers need to put the human being at the centre of all business processes.

Water and Flowers

The most beautiful and common expression of God as an artist, is seen in flowers. Today, Scott Kelly Commander of the International Space Station tweeted a photo of a yellow Zenia, outlined in red! Last year he grew lettuce in space!

Flowers and water have a symbiotic relationship. You need water and sun to grow flowers.  Consider the rose  All that is precious and rare must be protected. Like the rose. A rose will bloom only when it is cherished. When it receives the benediction of rain and sun. When it is wrapped in the love that guards it against pests and the harshness of the elements. It needs to be carefully and regularly watered. You cannot forget any more than you can forget to feed your gold fish.

If you do not want to lavish so much care on your garden, get yourself a gaudy patch of sun flowers which bloom with loud and careless gaiety. Happily insensitive to the most hostile conditions. But remember a rose can fill your days with a fragrance no sunflower can aspire to.

On the other hand there are other plants which will flower only when they are not watered. One is often reminded, especially by those who have never had firsthand experience, that hardship refines the soul. I found this difficult to believe until I started growing bougainvillea.

This hardy shrub flowers only when it is starved. In the midst of the hottest summer in April and May, it is not watered for a week. The leaves grow yellow and fall. The branches stand gaunt and ghostly in the pitiless sun. After these weeks of this stern discipline, it is watered twice a week.

One morning I noticed tiny buds blistering the tips of every stem. The I began to water them profusely.

Three weeks later the garden was a blazing dazzle of colour. Branches of multi-coloured flowers exploded on every branch in an incredible celebration.

Then, it rained. All the earth was green with rejoicing. But the flowers of the bougainvillea began to drop in great unsightly handfulls. Till not a single flower was left. Leaves covered very limb, but not a single flower appeared.

Somehow there is always something flabby in those who have never known the exhilaration of the struggle. There is a loss of the sharp – edged flash of brilliance that comes only with the conquest of unbeatable odds.

Achenyo Idachaitra, from Bayeku, a riverine community in Ikorodu, Lagos, Nigeria, has turned the deadly plant, the water hyacinth, into a thriving business. Living in a rural community, criss crossed by Nature’s bounty of running water, she watched God’s gift being destroyed. The fishing industry crippled chocked water ways and transport destroyed, by a devilishly beautiful plant, with gorgeous, showy lavender flowers, called the water hyacinth. The Igala language has given it an unforgettable name: ‘death to mother and child’ (Kp Iye Kporia). Others call it the Devil’s weed.

She took action:

a.        She got into the waterways and harvested the water hyacinth

b.       The stems were dried

c.       She then contacted the Sabo community, who taught her to weave the stems into ropes.

Malam Yahaya, who spoke only Hausa, taught her. Today she has a flourishing business which makes, pens, table ware, purses and tissue boxes from the water hyacinth plant.

The same killer weed is now called ‘provider of food for mother and child’. Flowers and water are beautiful and create wealth.

Rekha Shetty

Water Warrior