Days pass. Life ebbs. Weeks roll into months and they end in the year. Past accounts are checked. New accounts are opened. But what about the balance sheet of joy in Life? When are the lethargic old habits to go? And when new ones, great ones to begin? In the past we destroyed health and therefore wealth. How about happiness in the future?
Just think! Hardly do we get the full measure from Life. Want of health stands as the foremost reason. We have spent rupees without deriving even pies worth of benefit. Diseases dance amidst us in dreadful chorus! Is poverty the only reason?
There are many crores of people who eat a full meal as against crores who go empty. Are they, who feed well at least, in good health? Hospitals are on the increase but the diseases too! The millennium in Health has not dawned with the shooting up of the medical bill, or the Doctors’ list or the bloating of the pharmacopia. The influx into thousands of hospitals of the sick has greatly increased. India is a land of growing economy. It cannot afford to spend even the little it does to foot the sick bill. Supposing these hard to get and inadequate millions of rupees remained saved …. Who could say? The famished could have one more meal in the year.
Our average age is 50. Our average income is not even a rupee a day. The one wage earner in the family in strangulated by a dozen rice-killing full-timers ! Jobs are hard to find. Meals are still harder ! This is our state. The lazy will call it fate. Should we not then weigh a hundred times the money spent, that may be spent on medicine? Why not utilise it in good food !
The country we lost for a long time to marauding hordes. But why sacrifice life at the dreadful altar of the palate? We were slaves pol ideally but why pawn our senses and manhood too?
Oh, do think please ! Just a little reform here and there; we can also lift our heads in pride and reach the canopy of joy. We are not uncivilised savages. There stand the experience and glorious literature of our Ancients, blazing out the road to health and strength. Eyes we have; but they do not see! Ears there are; but they hear seldom! And intellect, it appears dead when reason remains buried fathoms deep; why bear the burden of this blame? Is it necessary or honourable?
Reform your diet. Health will be within your reach. Death in youth will fade out. Poverty will follow suit. Not only these results, much better fate will be yours. The senses will get under control. Passion will subside. Bad Temper will vanish and life will become fruitful. These are not empty boasts. Our ancients reaped these rewards. Even now some are reaping these harvests in glory :
One shudders to think of the treatment meted out to the stomach. Some stuff-in, unwanted stuffs. Many bloat this into bursting sacks. Millions are there who without mercy, day in and day out, munch, munch and munch agains and make this organ writhe in restless agony. There are those who gulp in an eternal hurry. Countless are they who pour a perennial stream of medicines to keep good company with the wrangling mass in the stomach. And drink it is also alcoholic vomit of the rains and rots!
Deficiency diseases flay us in and out. Hunger takes leave. There are frequent eructations. The stomach aches pays back the inconsiderate owner in the same coin. The liver becomes lethargic. The loaded colon gets into a comfortable cinderella-sleep! The brain gets confused and dullened. The blood becomes impure. The body weight descends to weightless cotton. In some, heavy flesh rots and makes the owner a beast of burden. One cannot detail all that comes of wrong food and indiscriminate eating.