Dil Se

Sweety Singh is a down-to-earth ‘true’ Punjabi chef with no cream, colour or kaju to add to his preparations. Punjabi food is not just an extra-rich winter plate, he tells  MEENAKSHI RAO  at the GT Road street food festival curated by The Claridges No cashew. No cream. No colour. That’s not good Punjabi food, you would say. The rolly-polly chef Sweety Singh vehemently differs. On a round to talk to his guests, know their preferences and ask them if the food is to their taste at the quaint Dhaba restaurant at The Claridges, Singh tells you he serves only healthy Punjabi food. “Healthy does not mean insipid. Healthy means the real Punjabi food, not the bastardised version that is being sold out of quick restaurants all over the world,” he says. Meaning what? “If you go into the history of Punjabi food, you will find it to be a simple, healthy and everyday rural platter rich in nutrients. I am here to propel the original Punjabi food which has the love of a grandmother an...

As Chikungunya rages, turns fatal and makes a mockery of health and hygiene in India's Capital,  MEENAKSHI RAO  delves into the disease from a patient's point of view It was in the early 2000s that I first heard of the term Chikungunya . It had broken out in and around the Gorakhpur-Ballia-Basti belt of east Uttar Pradesh. Ah, I thought then. So here comes another one of those unknown epidemics from a region which has gained notoriety for large-scale populace ailments over the years. Though scores of people were hit back then, the blazing epidemic hardly ever made it to page one in any national English dailies, after an initial mention. In school, which was relatively nearer to this ailing area than Delhi, being in Lucknow, I had often learnt the name of epidemics from this chronic belt. Meningitis, I remember, was one such dreadful outbreak. Hordes, mostly children, died before the news died. Then there was Filaria, that Elephant Foot disease. It all used to happen do...

Alternative medication has been working on patients gripped by the current strain of chikungunya-like virus. However,  MEENAKSHI RAO  talks to reputed homoeopath  DR MOHAMMAD QASIM to find out how the treatment has to be completely customised to individual patients even though the symptoms are the same. Excerpts of the interview Why is homoeopathy working and not allopathy? This is because in allopathy only painkillers are being given. They may control the pain but the remnants of viruses remain in the absence of a healing medicine. Homoeopathy , on the other hand, looks for a diagnosis based on the body responses to the disease of every patient individually. Our medication identifies the virus and then prepares the body to tackle it. We heal clinically, hence we are more equipped to hit the virus. We prepare the human body to develop its own defence mechanism and then fight the virus. So we cure instead of merely containing. But chikungunya is a modern-day dis...