Thursday, June 30, 2016

MEMO FROM NARA



It was when I travelled from Chennai to Coimbatore by AC chair car, I noticed a young gentleman, elegantly dressed in a t-shirt and jeans. He was doing some work in his lap top. He did not make a small talk with his co-passenger sitting in the next seat. I was observing him keenly. Mostly I do observe people when I travel by train or air. It is an interesting hobby. Some of these people are worth watching and others are not! We can learn many things from such men and women. Their behaviour, attitude, conversation, movements etc., are worth watching. It’s a time pass for me, at the same time a learning process.



Yes, the gentleman I was watching pulled out some eatables from his plastic bag which made a crack noise. The eatables were not the ones I expected; they were a bar of chocolate, some nuts and an orange fruit. He started eating them one by one while others were ordering for masal dosa, vada, somosa etc., What a contrast! Without messing up, he finished his eating and took out a bottle of water and drank half of it. He went back to his lap top again.



I tried to learn something from this gentleman, although I am a seventy plus year-old man. One thing I could understand was that not to buy eatables from the railway canteens which are generally not hygienic. The gentleman did not disturb his co-passenger by buying the stuff from the canteen boys.



The most important thing I noticed was his eatables. He ate chocolate, nuts and an orange fruit! I was thinking about these three items again and again. Generally, I find very few people who eat such sophisticated foods. I was thinking about it even when I reached home.



I used to read for an hour before going to bed. I took one of the posts received on that day and found that it was a report on food nutrition. There was a chapter on Chocolate is good for your brain.



I got more interested in going through this chapter first. The report said that chocolates are good for brain and heart health because of the flavanol content coming from cocoa. Similarly the nuts are supposed to bring down the cholesterols and they are good sources of manganese, a trace mineral required for human nutrition. Orange is a good source for vitamin C which is considered to be one of the important anti-oxidants.



Now I could fully understand why the gentleman in the train took those three eatables. By the time my wife brought a cup of hot drink which was not coffee, but it was a chocolate drink!