Left with nothing to do the city corporation has once again begun digging my road. The dust, the persistent noise of its rummage, both are a respite out of sheer familiarity. The sneezes and suffocation bring a sense of normalcy. In this city we breathe cement.
This is Bombay Daak, and this is me after climbing a mountain on January 1st 2018. A quarter of an hour before I took that photo I was panting for my breath. A quarter of an hour after this, I slipped twice on ice and almost took three people with me on that snowy slope. It is a funny story now that I am still alive. In times such as that one you drop all atheistic tendencies and thank your stars. But when an incompetent and morally corrupt government leave your people gasping for breath you take no solace in the privilege of not being dead. Your lucky stars seem a burden. It is in such strange times that I write this letter to you.
Quite a few of you don’t reside in India, so I thought I should share this - Oxygen: A Personal Essay by journalist Supriya Sharma. In writing her personal torment she paints the picture of our collective misery that was April.
Taoist Haiku on Breathing
觀浪止息聞水聲
退潮靜心聽沙響
Observing the waves
I make my breathing circular
and listen within to the sound of the water,
As the tide ebbs I still my mind
and hear the sound of the sandNathan Brine, a Taoist teacher, translates and breaks down the deeper meaning of this Haiku by Lu Dongbin, one of the eight Immortals of medieval China.
Many of you might have read my takeover of This is My Newsletter early this year. In it I spoke of James Nestor’s book Breath. I was fascinated by many revelations in it. The book is packed with Nestor’s research into our breathing habits and how various breathing techniques can cure ailments.
But this is a newsletter, I don’t want to give out medical advice, that too those that were found in a book. Instead, I want to share some other beautiful things I discovered through the course of the book.
I had no idea about LUCA and how all our cells and those every animate thing around us evolved from it. The LUCA ate Hydrogen and Carbon Dioxide. Our cells eat Oxygen.
We have 25 trillion red blood cells and inside each of those cells are 270 million haemoglobin and each haemoglobin has space for 4 oxygen molecules. The sheer numbers.
We lose more weight when we are resting than through physical exertion. Over 80% of our weight loss is Carbon Dioxide."… Our calculations show that the lungs are the primary excretory organ for fat. …”
I learnt about George Catlin, painter of natives, author of books, and a top shelf human. Here’s a critique of his life’s work.
Got introduced to Mewing.
Samuel Norton had a collection of 1300 skulls. He collected them in the mid 1800’s and experimented with them to try and prove that Caucasian’s were superior to all other races. His theory was obviously disproved later but his work wasn’t lost, it earned him the sobriquet of the Father of Scientific Racism.
In a similar vein, it wasn’t until the industrial revolution and the introduction of soft processed foods that our teeth began to get crooked. This was discovered by Dr Marianna Evans using the skulls from Norton’s collection.
At these Himalayan ridges you gasp twice, once for the hills and then again for your lungs. Somewhere in this view, in some direction, distant and unseen lies the Swargarohini, the gateway to Heaven. Standing here on this lonely rock I don’t consider it a myth anymore. The legs are filled with acid and the lungs with ice. Every step is a step asking why. You take a moment, to catch this fleeting breath, you look around and see the answer.
Chandrashila, 2018.
There is but one clock in my house. It stopped working a week back. I can’t replace it because under this we won’t call it a lockdown lockdown keeping time isn’t considered essential. I suppose you could consider the delay on this letter on account of the same.