One Heart to Live – Heart Care A to Z

Author: Dr A K Mukherjee
Publisher: Vidarbha Medical Foundation, Nagpur
Pages: 378
Price: Rs 200

Eisha Sarkar

At a glance, Dr A K Mukherjee’s One Heart to Live may be mistaken for a textbook for medical students. You turn to the back cover and you find the book is “intended as a quick learning tool for common man, medical students, physicians, pediatricians and cardiologists – who need quick and comprehensive information regarding the different aspects of heart diseases in human being.”

Never mind the grammatical errors (and there are plenty), One Heart to Live is actually a handy guide for those who are at risk of heart disease. It starts with a description of the heart’s anatomy and functions, moving on to the complications and risks associated with age, diet, lifestyle and habits. While a lot of information seems as commonplace as “Smoking is injurious to your health,” Dr Mukherjee does well to write about what you should do in case of emergency such as a heart attack and what kind of treatments and processes you shall expect at the coronary care unit (CCU). About the CCU, he describes:

“Advantages of CCU: Continuous monitoring the ECG provides facility to detect and treat life threatening ventricular arrhythmias like ventricular fibrillation. Facilities are available in CCU to reduce the acute mortality, immediate treatment of complication such as heart failure or shocked condition requiring intubation, ventilation or cardiac pacing.

“Disadvantages of CCU:
Fear due unnatural surroundings and high technology
Fear due to death of other patient in CCU
Fear may stimulate the sympathetic nervous system to cause arrythmias.

“How long to stay in the hospital?
A typical stay in the coronary care unit (CCU) will be two or three days for an uncompliated heart attack. If the heart attack has been ruled out, a stay in CCU may be only 24 hours. If complications occur, the stay in CCU can be extended to four to five days or even longer. Once you have been stabilised and acute events surrounding your heart attack have been treated, you will enter what most hospital call, “a step down unit”. You will stay there for 4 to 6 days, while you complete your recovery, and begin your rehabilitation from the heart attack.”

It is in descriptions like these where the book scores with the readers. Seldom, in this country, does the common man know what to expect in terms of procedures and processes at hospitals before actually getting to a hospital. One Heart to Live is a comprehensive text on the heart, its ills and its cures, tailored for an Indian reader.

Readers may find this book a little too technical. There are several instances in the book where the author has used a medical term without defining it for the layman. Overlook the shortcomings of language and prose and you have a fine book that can save you heartache!

Ecological Intelligence – Knowing the hidden impacts of what we buy

Author: Daniel Goleman
Publisher: Penguin
Pages: 276
Price: Rs 399

Eisha Sarkar

Green can also have some dark shades and we should know better to choose. It is this simple fact that is the central theme of psychologist-journalist Daniel Goleman’s Ecological Intelligence.

Which toy do you buy?
You are what you eat, but you can make yourself and the world a healthier place to live in by choosing what you buy carefully. “Our world of material abundance comes with a hidden price tag. We cannot see the extent to which things we buy and use daily have other kinds of costs – their toll on the planet, on consumer health, and on people whose labour provides us our comforts and necessities,” Goleman writes. So it’s the choice you make between an inexpensive small, bright yellow wooden racing toy car which may contain poisonous lead and the one that certainly doesn’t, that can impact not just your health but that of a whole lot of people and resources that go into making that toy.

Green’s not green
It’s not just the product that needs to be checked for quality, it’s it’s whole life cycle that should be under the scanner. Goleman scratches the surface and find out why ‘green’ does not always mean healthy, recycling isn’t about just newspapers and bottles and why our brain is not designed to warn us of the innumerable ways that human activity corrodes our planetary niche.

What’s Life Cycle Analysis?
Goleman digs deeper into Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) of a wide range of products, looking at the environmental and social ramifications that are usually “out of sight, out of mind,” guided by expert Gregory Norris. LCA analysis allows us to know how chemicals impact our health or that of the biosphere:

1. Cancer impact assesses an industrial process or chemical in terms of the expected pathways of carcinogens put into the environment, their persistence once there, the probability of human exposure to them, the cancer potency and just where in the supply chain all those cancer impacts come from.

2. Disability adjusted life years measure the amount of healthy life lost due to impacts from particulate emissions, toxins, risks on the job, etc.

3. Loss of biodiversity refers to the degree of species extinction caused by a given process or substance.

4. Embodied toxicity calculates how many problematic chemicals are deployed into nature over a product’s life cycle. It recasts what have long been thought of as “occupational hazards” – such as welders’ heightened risk of Parkinson’s disease from inhaling manganese fumes – as consumer issues.

A case for radical transparency
Goleman’s biggest contribution in this book is the coining of the phrase, “Radical transparency” which is the availability of complete information about all aspects of a product’s history, with the potential to drive consumers to make better choices. He explores different synergies between media that will allow a consumer to know what exactly he/she is buying at the supermarket by just holding his/her mobile phone next to the product’s barcode. The choice will be the consumer’s but this process will ensure that he/she will think about it instead of randomly picking attractive jars off shelves.

The verdict
Ecological Intelligence is a provocative book. It makes you think about products you use everyday – an organic cotton T-shirt, nail-paint, sunscreen (chemicals leached from sunscreen on swimmers’ bodies are responsible for bleaching coral reefs), mangoes, Coca Cola, and much more. Goleman tries to make his point with several examples, highlighting the good points of bad processes and bad points of good products. He doesn’t try to alarm you by exposing the ruthlessness of manufacturing companies but instead makes you realise how little you know about things around you. Terms such as ecological intelligence and radical transparency may sound like ‘green jargon’ but ultimately, it boils down to how you think and act. As Goleman suggests, “Make goodness pay.”

I’m Fine Spirit – Get Through Tough Times

Author: Ryuho Okawa
Publisher: Jaico
Pages: 95
Price: Rs 175

Eisha Sarkar

Spiritual leader and Happy Science founder Ryuho Okawa brings you a textbook for happiness. In 26 really short chapters, the Japanese author suggests how to get through tough times by removing “all the fetters and complications as if you were sweeping out the cobwebs with a broom”.

“Only if life were that simple,” you think wondering what he’ll tell you next. He eggs you “to keep the snowball rolling, even if pebbles and dirt get mixed in…Every situation you encounter and every person you meet in life is a teacher. If you can adopt this perspective, every encounter and all relationships you have will be a lesson that will benefit you.”

As you turn the pages, you actually start relishing the simple truths Okawa’s unfolded. You’ve known these all along and Okawa doesn’t teach you anything new. He just puts it in a way so that you can delve, deliberate and take decisive action. He urges you to be like a long-distant runner instead of a sprinter. “Sprints last a few hundred yards, but consider marathons that last twenty six miles. If you are no good at sprinting, then ask yourself if you have any talent for long-distance running. Sometimes, you must change your perspective.”

There are recipes for success and ways of how to handle failure. The book’s simple and can be used by people of all age groups and classes. The book’s about finding happiness in the simple ways of life in a rather tough, complicated world.

I’m Fine Spirit is refreshing. You’ll read the book at one sitting and probably keep coming back to it. Nothing works better than a few good words of encouragement when the going gets tough. The book offers nothing that you don’t already know but leave enough for you to think. Now, isn’t that self-help?

Why Men Don’t Listen & Women Can’t Read Maps

Authors: Allan and Barbara Pease

Publisher: Manjul Publishing

Pages: 300

Price: Rs 195

Eisha Sarkar

Why Men Don’t Listen & Women Can’t Read Maps – you really wouldn’t want to know, would you? But as you inch closer to the bookshelf to have closer look at it, you try to tell yourself that the book can’t tell you anything more than you already know. You then pick it up and flip through the introduction. You surprise yourself by actually reading a paragraph or two. And then you’ve got it safely tucked under your arm.

This is what ‘Mr Body Language’ Allan Pease and conference-speaker wife Barbara do to you with their book. It’s not one of those boring, dull relationship books that preach how you should behave with the opposite sex. Why Men Don’t Listen & Women Can’t Read Maps starts a conversation with the reader. Tracing the history of the two sexes back to the Stone Age where man was the hunter and woman was the nest-defender, the Peases reason it out why men are good at certain tasks – driving, engineering, sport  - while women are better than others – art, teaching, personnel management.

It’s all about evolution

They write, “Men and women evolved differently because they had to. Men hunted, women gathered. Men protected, women nurtured. As a result, their bodies and brains evolved completely different ways. As their bodies physically changed to adapt to their specific functions, so did their minds…. Over millions of years, the brain structures of men and women thus continued to change in different ways. Now, we know the sexes process information differently. They think differently. They believe in different things. They have different perceptions, priorities and behaviours. To pretend otherwise, is a recipe for heartache, confusion and disillusionment all your life.”

Wired differently

The difference between men and women is all in the brain, the writers note. Why men have better spatial vision, hence better driving, navigation and parking skills, and why women have better peripheral vision and hence can never be caught ogling at guys at a party is due to the brain chemistry.

Why women talk too much

How the brain functions is also responsible for why the sexes talk so differently, why women can multi-task while men find it hard, why men listen like statues or don’t listen at all.

The authors quote a study on Italian women to find out why men feel nagged. “Italian women are top talkers speaking up to 6,000-8,000 words a day. They use an additional 2,000-3,000 vocal sounds to communicate, as well as 8,000-10,000 gestures, facial expressions, head movements and other body signals. This gives these women a daily average of more than 20,000 communication ‘words’ to relate their messages…

“Contrast a woman’s daily ‘chatter’ to that of a man. He utters just 2,000-4,000 words and 1,000-2,000 vocal sounds, and makes a mere 2,000-3,000 body language signals. His daily average adds up to around 7,000 communication ‘words’… This speech difference becomes apparent at the end of the day when a man and a woman sit down together for dinner. He’s completed his 7,000 words and has no desire to communicate any more… she still has up to 15,000 to go!”

Homosexuality is an in-born trait!

The development of an XY foetus to a baby boy starts about six weeks from conception where the foetus receives a massive dose of male hormones called androgens which first forms the testes and then a second dose to alter the brain from a female format to a male configuration. The authors reason that if the foetus doesn’t receive adequate male hormone at the appropriate time, a baby boy may be born with a brain structure that is more feminine who will most likely be gay by puberty or a genetic boy may be born with a fully functional female brain and a set of male genitals.

Contradicting gay activists, the authors stress that homosexuality is not a matter of choice as they quote from several studies to prove that there’s something called a ‘gay gene’.

That the authors have given space to the sexual minorities in a book whose central theme is to explore the biology behind the stresses that damage man-woman relationships (PMS, remote control battles and promiscuity among others) is quite commendable.

The verdict

While several books now talk about differences between man and woman – most notably, Men Are From Mars and Women Are From Venus - this one goes beyond just stating the facts. The authors have explored differences in sensory capability, communication, sexual drive, academic ability and more with the intention of helping us understand why these differences occur. They also offer practical suggestions how men and women can cope with these differences and reduce stress in their lives.

Humourous, racy and packed with very good illustrations and information Why Men Don’t Listen & Women Can’t Read Maps is a good read. Learn you will, and if not, you’ll certainly have a few laughs!

Cooking with 1 Teaspoon of oil

Author: Tarla Dalal
Publisher: Sanjay & CO
Pages: 160
Price: Rs 250

Reviewed by Eisha Sarkar

A look at the paneer rolls wrapped in lettuce leaves on the cover of this book leaves you wanting for more. When it comes to tempting your taste-buds tastefully, India’s cooking queen knows it best. And this time, she promises to deliver with just one teaspoon of oil. Yes, you read it right – just one teaspoon.

It’s a promise well kept. For Dalal does more than just cut down oil from her recipes. “Cooking with 1 teaspoon of oil is virtually unthinkable when we speak about Indian food, because large amounts of fats like ghee, cream, butter and oil are used to prepare our daily meals… You’d be surprised that all such recipes that serve four portions can be cooked using one teaspoon of oil, while retaining their traditional taste and flavour,” she writes in the book’s introduction.

Dalal then runs through a series of tips about eating healthy and weight-loss. She asks you to set a realistic target to lose weight, record everything you can eat in a book and even reward your short-term weight loss goal with a movie (minus the popcorn, that is). And then she starts off with muesli. It comes as a surprise. A typical cookbook wouldn’t start with one of the most common breakfast cereals around the world. But this isn’t a typical cookbook. Dalal focusses on health and she makes it clear that the breakfast is the most important meal of the day.

Of course, if muesli isn’t your idea of breakfast, you can choose from the nutritious stuffed idlis, protein-packed poha (with sprouts), mag na dhokla and vegetable corn bake that Dalal serves up. For snacks she stresses on baking methi muthias instead of frying them, baking chaklis with just ’1 teaspoon oil to near perfection’ and even a low-cal chivda. She offers a platter of vegetable biryani, healthy oondhiya, paneer palak koftas in makhani gravy (yes, makhani without butter or cream), soya mutter pulao, tandoori mushrooms and more. And for desserts she recommends you tuck into low-fat kulfi with strawberry sauce (that contains just 10 teaspoons of sugar), sweet potato puranpoli or fruit sandesh.

Though Dalal has done well to add the nutritive values per serving, it would have been better if she would have given a comparison between a regular serving of a dish, say biryani, and her 1-teaspoon version of the same. Also, not all the recipes require the use of oil. So, if you’re expecting the same, you may be a little disappointed for Dalal has included recipes for coolers, desserts and salads as well.

Nevertheless, reading this book will be a positive step towards a healthy diet. Whether you use her recipes or not, you might just stick to the ‘half a litre of oil per person per month’ she recommends. Bon appetit!

30 Health tips

1. Don’t fry or saute foods in fat; use a non-stick pan with broth or try baking, broiling, poaching, roasting or steaming instead.
2. Season vegetables with herbs and spices instead of butter and sauces.
3. You can’t hoard physical fitness. At least three balanced workouts a week are necessary to maintain a desirable level of fitness.

4. Do not dive in for a swim if you cannot see the bottom of the water body or if it is less than nine feet deep.
5. Do not swim if you are full, you may become nauseated in water.

6. Always build some rest days into your exercise schedule. Give you body a chance to adjust to your new routine.
7. Read food labels carefully to find hidden sources of sugar. Avoid foods that list sugar, corn syrup or fructose.
8. Substitute soft drinks with club soda, unsweetened juices or plain water.
9. Don’t reward children with sweets. It will be good for their health.

10. Incorporate weight training in your exercise routine, but only after getting a clearance from your doctor.
11. At breakfast, put coffee in your milk instead of milk in your coffee. You will get 25 percent of the daily required dose vitamin D!
12. Whenever you eat fast food, drink two glasses of water afterward so that you can flush away the excess sodium.
13. Always eat a little dessert. Sweets such as biscuits and low–fat sweetened yogurts signal your brain that the meal is over, which might prevent those midnight cravings.
14. Research has revealed that onions are a top source of cardio protective elements called flavonoids. So go ahead and eat them but remember to brush after that meal!
15. High blood pressure and heart problems can cause dizziness that can lead to falls. Remember to get up from a laying down position slowly if you have heart problems or high blood pressure.
16.  Drinking 8-10 glasses of water a day can help reduce pain all over the body.  It helps flush out toxins, lubricates and cushions your joints, helps relieve congestion and keeps your body in balance.
17. Calendula is an excellent herb for diaper rash, sun burns, bruises and insect stings and bites.
18. Try to avoid lifting or carrying heavy objects.  When you do lift,  bend your knees and carry the object against your body.
19. Test your mattress.  Lie on your back and slide your hand under your lower back.  If there is large gap, your mattress may be too hard.  If you have to squeeze your hand in, it is probably too soft.
20. Peppermint, chamomile and ginger are time-honoured tummy remedies. They relax the muscles in your digestive tracts.
21. Lack of education is a strong predictor of cognitive decline. The more you’ve tried to learn, the better you’ll be at mental sit-ups in old age. Go ahead, tease your brain.
22. Enjoy your coffee, its antioxidants are good for your brain.
23. Regular aerobic exercise may be the single most important thing you can do for the long-term health of your brain. Aim for at least 30 minutes of physical activity every other day.
24. Breathe deeply from your diaphragm to ensure your cells get enough oxygen.
25. Change your hand towels often. Using a common towel may pass germs from one person to another.
26. Avoid taking over-the-counter medications. Suppressing the symptoms through medication may make you feel temporarily better, but it’s usually best to let your body heal itself.
27. Just say no. When feeling less than optimal, do less, stay home from work if you can, and don’t over-commit. Make your health the highest priority.
28. You can get dehyrdrated in winter too. Drink plenty of water.
29. Avoid heavily polluted areas and exercise indoors if you have heart or lung disease.
30. Avoid eating your children’s leftovers. Keep your calories in check.

Perfect Health

Author: Deepak Chopra
Publisher: Harmony Books
Pages: 327
Price: Rs 849

Reviewed by Eisha sarkar

If you’ve read Deepak Chopra’s books before, you know what to expect in Perfect Health – an introduction to Ayurveda, different body types, the significance and interplay of the three operating principles (doshas) and what you should do to keep them in balance. Then why should you read this one? It’s the bizarre medical stories that he uses to illustrate his point and the instances in the book where he draws parallels between the ancient and the modern form of medicine that make the book worth a buy.

When the body decides
Going beyond Western medicine’s treatment of symptoms, Chopra explains that the treatment of the quantum mechanical body (the quantum equivalent of organs and processes in the body) by Maharishi Ayurveda can bring about changes far beyond the reach of conventional medicine. Sounds deep? Here’s an example.

In the very first chapter of the book, Chopra mentions the case of one Timmy, ‘a perfectly ordinary-seeming six-year-old who suffers from one of the strangest of psychiatric syndromes – multiple personality disorder’. Timmy has more than a dozen separate personalities, each with its own emotional patterns, vocal inflections, likes and dislikes.

The author writes, “Timmy is particularly amazing because one of his personalities and only one, is allergic to orange juice and breaks out in hives if he drinks it… What is more, if Timmy comes back if the allergic reaction is present, the itching of the hives will cease immediately and water-filled blisters will begin to subside. This is a perfect example of how signals from the quantum mechanical body can cause instantaneous changes in the physical body… it appears that as molecules of the orange juice approach his white cells, a decision is made whether to react or not. This implies the cell is intelligent.”

While the author doesn’t elaborate on Timmy’s line of treatment, he does propose that we confront the possibility of choosing our diseases.

A fine balance
In Perfect Health, you take tests to learn your body type – Vata, Pitta, or Kapha, or a combination thereof and how to balance those doshas through diet, exercise, daily routine and seasonal routine. And then you get to opening the channels of healing, which encompasses encompasses panchakarma, meditation, primordial sound, pulse diagnosis, marma therapy, bliss technique, aroma therapy and Gandharva music therapy.

A good PR job
Now, if you think this book’s going to teach you any of the above, you may be disappointed to find the author repeatedly note, “needs to be taught by a qualified Ayurvedic doctor”. You may be further disappointed to find that all those oils, teas, raw silk gloves, aroma pots and diffusers will be available at “sources listed on page 317″.

Chopra treads the fine line between an author and a practioner. He gives you just the right dose of information to get you interested but doesn’t offer the remedy for your cures. He presents the benefits of Transcendental Meditation, for example, without offering any insights on how to perform the meditation. Want to learn? Chopra advises you to call your local Maharishi Ayurveda clinic.

Whether it works for him or not it’s difficult to say, but even some of the most positive reviews of the book make a note of the veiled advertisements.

The verdict
Like most of his books, Chopra’s Perfect Health is also tailored for a primarily Western audience so do not be surprised if you come across words like cayenne, romaine lettuce or persimmons. If you’re new to Ayurveda and want a handy guide, this book could be a start. The sensational anecdotes and medical facts spice up the text-bookish narrative. Particularly noteworthy are the illustrations by Stephan Van Damme.

Read this book for its stories, for those invisible people who suffer from chronic diseases and find miraculous cures in alternative therapy. He may be a pushy advertiser, but Chopra makes for a surprisingly good story-teller.

You Are What You Eat

Author: Tanushree Poddar
Publisher: Pustak Mahal
Pages: 180
Price: Rs 80

Reviewed by Eisha Sarkar

Rarely do you find nutrition guides that extend beyond their scope and serve up something that can both surprise and delight you. Yes, you know that garlic is good for you, but wouldn’t it be interesting if your diet book also told about how Egyptian slaves were fed garlic and onions to make them strong enough to build pyramids. How’s that for motivation? It is these nuggets of information that spice up Tanushree Poddar’s You Are What You Eat that make it not just another food guide.

We are what we eat
In the book’s preface, Poddar recounts, “When I was a little girl of five, I would fuss a lot over my food. I loved eating all kinds of non-vegetarian food and abhorred vegetables and greens, which my mom insisted on feeding me. One day, during dinner I was creating a big fuss, my father said, ‘You must remember one simple truth; you are what you eat’. At that time, my imagination led me to wonder if I would become a hen if I ate too many eggs or a pig if I ate too many sausages, both of which I loved! But know I know better. The simple old saying is a universal truth. We are what we eat.”

Yin and Yang foods
With this simple saying in mind, Poddar provides you with a book that aims to tell you “how your body responds physically, mentally and spiritually to your food habits”. She delves into food philosophies, illustrating the Chinese philosophy of Yin and Yang – the two qualities that balance one another and exist in every natural object and cycle.

Yin is flexible, fluid and the feminine side of nature, while Yang is active, alert and the masculine part. Yin foods tend to be more sugary and/or watery and/or cold and/or tropical in origin. Yang foods tend to be more meaty and/or dry and/or cooked and/or polar in nature. Cereal grains fall somewhere in between.

What you must know
Poddar does well to bring together food histories and facts in this book. She packs in a lot of information that makes it interesting for the reader to grasp and helps her drive home her point – eat a balanced meal and you’ll be healthy. Some interesting food facts:

• Hard to digest: It takes about 13 hours to digest raw vegetables, fruits and sprouts, while cooked vegetable and pulses take about 24 hours before the system is able to absorb nutrients. As for non-vegetarian and fried stuff,it takes about 72 hours
• TB remedy: Garlic has great anti-bacterial properties and was once used to extensively treat tuberculosis and fungal infection
• Food for potency: Oysters are nature’s most concentrated packages of zinc and hence are good aphrodisiacs
• Drink smartly: Fruit juices stir up toxins and acids in the body, thereby stimulating the processes of elimination. Vegetable juices, on the other hand, carry away toxic matter in a gentler way. Thus, fruit and vegetable juices should not be used at the same time
• Feelin’ hot, hot, hot: Oriental medicine uses capsicum, black pepper, mustard, garlic and turmeric to treat cold, sinusitis, bronchitis and asthma
• • Sweet temptation: A dark chocolate bar is the most beneficial followed by fudge syrup, baking chocolate, chocolate fondue and semisweet chips

The verdict
You Are What You Eat is wholesome – as much as the products the author wishes you to eat. Unlike most guide books that list do’s and don’ts this one makes reading about diets an enjoyable experience. The author lists benefits of every kind of food (non-vegetarian included which most Indian nutrition experts tend to miss), going into their histories and uses in various forms of traditional medicine – Greek, Roman, Chinese, Ayurvedic and Jewish. Yes, it does get repetitive at places, but the idea is to drive home the point of replacing those potato chips with carrot sticks in your drawer at your office.

The author has also done well to include tables of calories burnt in various activities such as gardening, tennis, tailoring, reading, running, etc, as well as on calorie content of various food items – raw and cooked.

If you’re looking to change your diet for the better, reading this one, will be a healthy start. It’s never to late to relinquish the demands of your taste buds in favour of good health!

Yoga – Yogasana and Pranayama for Health

Reviewed by Eisha Sarkar

Author: Dr P D Sharma
Translated by: R M Shah
Publisher: Navneet Publications
Pages: 155
Price: Rs 26

“The best way to express your good wishes… Give this book as a gift,” the inside cover says. And why not? Yoga by physical educator Dr P D Sharma tells you all about asanas, pranayama and meditation at the cost of just Rs 26. Now if only being in good health could be as easy.

The book starts with an introduction to yoga and how it “has the surest remedies for man’s physical as well as psychological ailments” in a world full of pollution, pills and pain. The author describes the eight stages of yoga as:

• Yama (social discipline): Contains five moral practices – ahimsa (non-violence), satya (truthfulness), asteya (non-stealing), brahmacharya (celibacy, actually implying moderation in sex in marriage) and aparigraha (non-acquisitiveness).
• Niyama (individual disciple): Rules of shaucha (cleanliness), santosha (contentment), tapas (austerity), svadhyaya (self-study) and Ishvara pranidhana (surrender to God).
• Asana (postures): Posturing the body in a particular way can bring ‘purity’ in tubular channels, firmness to the body and vitality to the body and the mind.
• Pranayama (breath control): Practising pranayama can help stimulate, regulate and harmonise the vital energy of the body.
• Pratyahara (discipline of the senses): Putting the senses under restraint and drawing them inwards can prevent them from “hankering after worldly objects.”
• Dharana (concentration): Helps the mind to concentrate on a particular object.
• Dhyana (meditation): Dharana unbound by time and space.
• Samadhi (self-realisation): The meditator, the act of meditation and the object meditated upon shed their individual characteristics and merge with one single vision of the entire cosmos.

Sharma then goes on to classify the various yogic postures or yogasanas – that range from the cleansing techniques such as Neti and Vaman Dhauti, to traditional meditation poses such as the padmasana or lotus position to very difficult forms of cortortion such as vrishchikasana (where the body assumes a pose that resembles a scorpion) to the utthita ekapadashirasana which requires a very flexible body and strong arms like those of a gymnasts. Of the hundred of yogic postures, the book describes 65, a tidy sum for anyone to accomplish.

The author has done well to describe the origins of each asana and has added the benefits that each can provide. You may find it strange that some asanas could help ‘cure’ wet dreams (the yogis practised celibacy), leucoderma, leprosy or elephantiasis, but what Sharma has put down in the form of a book is actually knowledge passed down through oral tradition for a couple of millenia. It may be contradictory to the findings of modern science, but this ancient healing system is still practised in India and abroad.

Yoga is an interesting book. It solves the purpose of someone who is keen to start yoga. Sharma has done well to mention which asanas should not be practised by overweight people (those who he ungenerously refers to as ‘fat’), pregnant and menstruating women, and those with arthritis or back injuries. Go on, read this one. But do not try any of the postures without proper guidance from a yoga practitioner and clearance from your doctor.

Life After Death – The Book of Answers

Author: Deepak Chopra
Publisher: Ebury Publishing (Random House Group)
Pages: 282
Price: Rs 495

Reviewed by Eisha Sarkar

Nothing sells better than death – in the literary world at least. Tons of paper have been devoted to murder mysteries, urban thrillers, war-time anecdotes, criminal psychology, after-death experiences and anything that speaks of the circumstances around which life ends. But is death all that gory? In his ‘book of answers’, Life After Death, mind-body medicine guru Deepak Chopra explores circle of life and death.

In order to make the understanding of death less complex (and more interesting), Chopra keeps drawing from the story of Savitri and Satyavan from “The Book of the Forest” of the Mahabharata. Yama, the Lord of Death, shows up in her front yard one day, waiting to take away her husband the moment he returns from work as a woodcutter. Savitri is terrified. What strategy could possibly turn Death away from his inexorable mission? Or can one really turn death away?

Chopra delves into Vedanta philosophy to answer questions on life and after-life. He explores the concepts of heaven and hell as described by Christian and Hindu beliefs. “The Christian brothers who taught me loved to talked about what life would be like in heaven, and for them God’s home was as real and solid as any building in Delhi. The swamis and yogis agreed with that but only because they believed that Spirit permeates every plane of existence… My Christian schoolteachers relished the idea that every desire would come true in heaven, and once again the swamis agree in their way… I wasn’t sure why people died in the Christian scheme. Some who died were loaded down with sin, it seemed, like criminals who have come to the end of their bad actions, while others died to meet God, eager that their time had come. In India someone dies after reaching the maximum evolution allotted to that lifetime; they have come to the end of what their karma can teach them.”

Chopra deftly moves through the ‘web of worlds’, with the help of numerous examples of near-death experiences (NDE). He finds a space, Akasha, where the spirits rest and where guardian angels are born. He draws from physics the natural laws of creation and uses them to explain the concept of eternity. Chopra finds that death is after all a part of re-creation, what Eastern philosophy often terms as reincarnation. Matter and energy remains constant. Cells die to make way for new cells. Lives end to make way for new lives. Death is more a function of space than time.

The book is heavy and needs to be read over and over again for better comprehension. Chopra does make an effort to make things easier by sharing his own experiences and those of others. In one of the more interesting sections on mind fields he talks about telepathic relationships between pets and their owners – where an African Grey Parrot in a room can actually ‘guess’ what pictures its owner is looking at. In yet another, he pulls out vignettes from Tibetan Buddhism – of lamas who’ve been reborn and who recall their ‘soulful’ experiences.

Chopra’s idea of writing this book is to bring in a fresh perspective towards death and its acceptance. Death is mournful, but thankfully, it’s not the end!