Dr. Arshed Iqbal Dar
Once you recognise something beautiful, you are bound to fall in love. Love is a beautiful feeling and only the living heart can feel such feelings. The speaker of living speech and the writer of living thoughts can attest those beautiful feelings because he is carrying a living heart and has eyes like the thoughtful poet instead of dead bulbs like the boss of cocks and bulls in the world of fools and horses.The story goes like this, as things stand now, nations are struggling in the covid-19 pandemic and are fed-up with the invisible creature and same is the case with my home sweet home. My father is a health worker and he is performing his duty with full dedication and sincerity. In order to avoid the physical contact with us, he has shifted to an isolated room outside our home. The love which he has created from his living heart for his family is clearly evident from his mental, social and physical set-up. The pandemic situation is very grave and the movement is restricted to respective house lawns only as our home sweet home fall in the ambit of red zone. First morning experience of this pandemic was a tea without milk and while having morning tea, my mother started a discussion related to black tea, she said your late grandparents were regularly taking black tea and they never complain headache or any disorder. My sister told me, brother you have transcribed on the last page of your 12th class chemistry reference book, that adding milk to tea ruins the health benefits of tea. I replied, yes my dear sister, it is now scientifically justified that black tea is good for health. It is abundant in antioxidants which protect the body from damage caused by free radical-induced oxidative stress and has a significant role in protecting cell membranes from oxidative damage, it improves intestinal microflora which are beneficial to the body and also prevent dental caries, several epidemiological studies suggest that black tea can prevent cardiovascular diseases and some cancers. I added, my PhD supervisor was also taking black tea on daily basis and he was always recommending black tea for many disorders.
Does this pandemic help us in making the sense of our own perception of the universe? And does this pandemic help us in understanding the true nature of cosmos? These questions deserve to be answered and I am eagerly waiting to come out of the red zone to preserve my green zone.
Finally, we realized our elders were gold and now the scientific investigations justify their traditional stuff. My sister smiled and prayed to almighty Allah swt to place her grandparents in the highest level of paradise and she said black tea is healthy tea and we must follow the trend of our grandparents. After sometime, my better half was preparing food for lunch in the kitchen, after finishing my first online class, I walked into the kitchen and saw shade dried dandelion ready for preparation on the kitchen stand, my little sister was following me and when she visualises the shade dried dandelion, she got upset and babbled I am not going to touch this grass. My mother replied, then move out of your lawn and touch the corona. I stopped the dispute between two lovely ladies of my home by saying- you know, this dandelion (Kashmiri Hund) is used as a herbal remedy to cure many disorders. As we know, herbal medicines are being increasingly utilized to treat a wide variety of diseases, though the knowledge about their mode of action is relatively scanty. So there is a growing interest regarding the pharmacological evaluation of various plants used in traditional system of medicine. My dear sister, scientific literature suggests that dandelion is helpful in gastrointestinal complaints, digestion, inflammation and angiogenesis, it shows hypoglycemic effect and is detoxifying in nature. Our elders were consuming all parts of the dandelion as food; not only this but the leaves and flowers were regarded as useful diuretics. She confessed and accepted the truth and hug her mother tightly by saying-Muma I am so sorry! I love you so much and now I will help you in the management of vegetable garden and we will make it living garden with healthy vegetables. After having lunch, I walked into my reading room, opened my laptop to start next online class to my students but unfortunately the speed was below the standards of online teaching and my online class got malfunctioned due to lack of Mbps nutrients. In the meantime, my father called me and said in a cracking voice that three of our close relatives are covid positive; I was shocked to hear the bad news and tears rolled down my cheeks. The news made me wonder and I opened my research gate account to search covid-19 and I came to know it is a bad news wrapped in a protein. In drawing things to a close, our first pandemic experience is filled with thoughtful lessons and I personally realised on the very first day that throughout the ages, humans have relied on nature for their basic needs for the production of food stuffs, shelters, clothing, fertilizers, flavours as well as medicines. Does this pandemic help us in making the sense of our own perception of the universe? And does this pandemic help us in understanding the true nature of cosmos? These questions deserve to be answered and I am eagerly waiting to come out of the red zone to preserve my green zone.
(The author is an Assistant Professor, Govt. Degree College Sumbal Sonawari (Jammu and Kashmir). Views of the author are his own, [email protected])
