Moong dal chilla for breakfast with a smoked tomato chokha like chutney for breakfast made at home by #kayteecooks The batter is packaged and bought online by K from Nature’s Basket. She doesn’t remember the name.
Sangeeta Khanna in her book, Pakora, and her social media pages has shared a lot of chutney recipes. She’s a big advocate for using chutneys from both a health and taste context. I agree with her though I must confess to being rather plebeian in my love for ketchup but packaged condiments do come with heaps of sugar etc. So caveat emptor.
Do check the Instagram feed of Marina Balakrishnan @thatthalasserygirl She’s a big one on making on fresh Keralite chutneys.
First day in a long time when I didn’t wake up too early because of pain and taking a pain killer to sleep again. Maybe the afterglow of watching the 83 victory last night on @disneyplushotstar What a fabulous movie. I was 9 when the real thing happened and had fallen asleep at night. 🙃 Pain and fatigue are there today but as they used to say in one day cricket, singles matter too. Oops that’s too close to shingles! 😅
Shingles is a more polite sounding word for herpes zoster which I got as a fallout of herpes. An ailment earlier associated with stress but now coming up post covid worldwide.
I don’t know if it’s just me but I am surprised to see such low awareness and talk about herpes especially given how widespread it apparently is. Fun fact but when my doc said herpes, I was shocked as I thought it was a VD!!!😳 Since then so many of you have told about how you or your near or dear ones have had it at some point and sympathised with me saying how painful it gets and no, it’s not a VD. I think I confused it with syphilis! 🙈
In my case I am given to understand that a drop in immunity levels and spike in sugar levels caused by Covid 19 led to it. Prompt diagnosis, medication, focused attempts to bring my sugar levels down by meds and dietary changes; and neem leaf baths brought it under control and the rashes are largely gone. The pain remains. Often bullet shot like in the affected areas. And fatigue. Some of which could be post covid related, plus I did take a lot of meds and had fever for five days too. When I wake up in the morning the legs feel weak and often there’s sluggishness during the day.
‘Rest. Ease into things,’ people tell me. I am resting. I have no option. Chanting, yoga nidra and reading help me unwind. Playing with the boys of course. Above all the fact that K is home. We picked up an eclectic range of books from Title Waves the other day. No food or recipe books. Mostly fiction. For me what’s important in a book is that it should not bore me. Unless I am reading it for work. Or even then. I picked up a book of a collection of articles by Gavaskar. Cricket from a time I can relate to. We met Scooby on the way back who came running to me and flopped on my feet. My first non doctor outing since I was diagnosed with herpes.
I am lucky to be in a position in life where I can rest. As a freelancer working in corporate earlier that’s a tough cross to bear but the past few years have taught me to reorient myself and embrace my new life. I actually do have an article to write and am in the midst of a very, very interesting project where the folks have been very understanding and you know what? If I’d worked somewhere and was really unwell, I’d have taken leave in any case. That people seem to be working through covid and other health related leaves in the corporate world today is another issue. As someone who is an outsider now, I feel that this is a ticking bomb which will implode at some point. Perhaps it’s only then that we will learn to value human lives.
If my headline was with apologies to Dire Straits, then this one is with apologies to the Boss but what they are asking for us a little bit of the human touch… is that asking for too much?
For a long while even I thought Herpes was like VD. Then one day I got to know of a little girl who got it. I was wondering what her parents were doing to her. Luckily, I kept my usually loud mouth shut. This was in the pre-Internet days, so no Googlebaba to consult!