Category: Interesting Facts

Is it the Mind or the Brain?

· Leave a comment ·

“Your mind has always been empty. Isn’t it?”

An argument that went on to become a humorous statement saved the miseries of a fight. There was laughter around. A single comment about the state of “mind” was somehow the comic caper.

Mind can be humorous; especially when I look at the range of idioms and phrases to do with mind and brain.

“Clear your mind” and “don’t sit to pick my brains”. “Rack your brain” and “I changed my mind”. You had a “brainwave” and it was “mind-boggling”. But “don’t beat your brains out”, now “I’m in two minds”.

Indeed idioms are figurative for often when looking at their literal meaning, we may find them a matter to laugh at.

Science clearly identifies brain as “the three pounds of “convoluted mass of gray and white matter” in our heads “serving to control and coordinate mental and physical actions.”” “The mind is part of the transcendent world of wisdom and thought. Although the brain is the organ most associated with consciousness, the brain does not completely contain the mind.”

However, everything from being intuitive to creative and consciousness to awareness is the attribute of the mind. Little wonder then that mind needs clarity and emptying and it is very essential for our well-being. Mind can capture and rapture, and leave us dumbstruck in the passage of our own thoughts.

While working on clearing my mind of the thoughts boggling my mind, I’m left wondering as to why should someone be called “brainless”.

Meta? Aren’t We?

· Leave a comment ·

“Meta”!

The four letter word, a curious case that it seems, have a way with words. Appears to be a detached word, yet it defines existence.

My search for the word began with a few spam mails that had used ‘meta’, repeatedly. Surprisingly, online Merriam-Webster dictionary returned the definition “as river over 620 miles (995 kilometers) NE Colombia flowing into the Orinoco on Venezuela-Colombia boundary”.

While ‘meta’ prefixed words explain the situation as what goes “after” or “beyond” mostly, philosophy accepted the ‘meta’ reality as existence. Well, another dictionary explains it as a term “used to characterise something that is characteristically self-referential,” and is of relevance in art.

A friend, who has been in the field of content writing and marketing, explained it as a means to help you rank your pages in the search engine. “Basically it is the description about the page”. A well described page or content will reflect in every search.

Following the rules of content writing, careful repetition of keywords becomes a habit. A little help and some understanding of the technique, may lead to a page’s success on the search engine.

My passing thoughts seem to be getting jumbled in the process. Meta may be “about” and “beyond”. It may have references in being competitive as well as in human emotions. But isn’t it all about the struggle for existence? Aren’t we “meta” in our day to day living? I wonder.

Taste of Soursop

· Leave a comment ·

soursop

The fruit with prickles stocked in large quantities in the cart caught my attention. Though it is the season of  jack fruit, the fruit in offering looked a distant cousin of the same.

A close look spoke a different story all together. And the fruit vendor insisted that I buy one. To my ignorance, he added a chapter on the significance of the fruit, locally (Kerala)  referred to as ‘attichakka’, and “it is a healthy fruit for cancer patients.” As the Malayalam (language) name goes, the fruit is in fact a variety of jack fruit.

With a thick crust and custard apple like inner formation of white creamy edible pulp surrounding seeds, the fruit left a mixed taste of a tangy and citric custard apple.   Of course, the fruit did not fancy my palate, but my inquisitiveness led me to search. My quest landed me on Google, and with the information in hand I clicked the name ‘guyabano’. A further search led me to its English name ‘soursop’, called so because of its sour or rather acidic taste. In fact, its names were endless.

A native of South and Central America, the Caribbean and the Saharan parts of the African nations, soursop’s adaptability to the tropical climate has brought the fruit to the Southest Asian countries as well.

As a rich source of carbohydrates,  vitamins (mainly C & B) along with minerals such as potassium and dietary fibres, the fruit has become a staple with ailing patients. According to a well researched site , a research conducted in 1976 found a chemical in guyabano or soursop that is “10,000 times more powerful and potent than a drug used for chemotherapy called Adriamycin.”

To quote another site, “soursop consists of annonaceous acetogenins, which might stop the development of damaged cells just before they could become cancerous. {Also} soursop has demonstrated specific guarantee in eliminating cancer of the breast.”

Researches have also found its significance in various other treatments that include  regulating blood sugar, controlling hypertension, preventing anemia, and relieving pain and inflammation.

A fruit is a fruit anyway. Little wonder, the commercial market has utilised soursop to flavour candies, make drinks, and other  sweetmeat. Someday I hope to taste its other delicacies!

Going back to the fruit vendor’s information, the fruit comes to the market and gets sold out fastest, especially with the Regional Cancer Centre working in full swing and the families of patients taking good care of them. I looked at the humble fruit that hardly spoke but works wonders, definitely.