Focus Wellness

There is one person in every family who is subject to this. For many, it may be the only place of Zen, an escape from the mundane; but the moment they enter to answer nature's call or to scrub away a day's dirt and sweat, bang goes the knock on the door. Bang, not knock! Where is my wallet? Where is my toy? Questions accompanying the knocking goes on like these. The female as mother or wife is subject to this more often, with a few male counterparts also occasionally enjoying this adventure. This poor victim gets no time to freshen up, whereas others spend up to hours in the same place with a handheld gadget connected to high-speed wifi and no bangs to bother them. This member of the family is characteristic. For them, the cake suddenly turns too sweet when it does not suffice for the children if they ask for more than what was their fair share of the portion.  These members are easily spotted when they come for public functions along with their families. They are the odd man o...

As kids, our trips to the Ramakrishna beach at Vizag defaulted munching into roasted corn ears. The other delicacies of those days on display by the beach hawkers were puffed rice mixture and clean-cut slices of raw mango sprinkled with a rainbow of spices. The corn ears dressed in that secret spicy mix was magic to the taste buds of us kids. Life moved on with an uprooting from Andhra to my hometown in Kerala. We missed the sights and smell of those favorite beach snacks. Last week en route my daily commute, I was surprised to see a big heap of raw maize ears beside a roadside fruit vendor. It was a never before rare sight at my place.  How come such an abundance of corn all at once? And that too at a place where neither it is a staple nor a snack? Somewhere along the consumer end, few links were missing. It didn't take much time for me to figure out. Lockdown measures had halted all cinema theatres, multiplexes, and lo all the popcorn lay strewn all over the street as maize ears....

Hundreds of people walk into the professional life of a doctor, but the moment they walk out of the consulting room, they are gone from the mind of the physician. Those with which we cannot arrive at a conclusive diagnosis lingers for some time till we succeed at the right one. After all, it's the life of a person we are working on; the space for error has to be zero. There was this medium frame, tall, wheatish woman, who always used to narrate her complaints with a smile on her face. It was for a mild fever she consulted me years back. Having found relief in my prescriptions, she brought her grown-up children for various mild and moderate ailments. Never in her, any visits have I seen an anxious face on her. Smiling, smiling, and always smiling. In any case, anyone would conclude that this woman has a happy life, especially a great marriage. On one such visit, she asked me if there is any treatment for alcoholism in Homoeopathy? "Definitely" was my reply and enquired who...

In our daily lives, we search for examples and inspirations from books, social media, or whatsoever literature or visuals available. The truth is, the best models have already been here for ages. The coconut palm is one great personality whose traits can be an example of parenting. Parenting? Oh yeah! Very much.   This palm is a species whose seeds are dispersed by water. The palms growing by the shores of lakes and rivers gently slant into the water so that the ripe coconuts fall into the water to get dispersed off to distant places where they can grow into better palms.    If they had grown straight, the offsprings would never have got the opportunity to go elsewhere to grow into an equally or even a better strong palm and would have perished right under their towering shade. If the slant were more than needed, on the pretext of its kids' not feeling the pressure of falling into the water, the parent's trunk itself would have kissed the water during tides leading to its...