Monday Blues

Dr. Viyatprajna Acharya

It’s “Monday whites” for me….taking me back to my childhood days when I see my energetic mother up very early, taken a head-bath with a towel tied around her head and gearing up for morning Puja. She used to wear whites on Mondays and Thursdays, a practice that I’ve inherited from her. Whites for me is the source of all colours and fills me with divine force to work better.

It is amazing that each day of the week is linked to some or the other Gods and Goddesses and thus for Indians, each day is a special day. Monday is the day for Shiva Puja. Monday, also known as “Somavaara”- Soma= Moon, vaara= day. Since Lord Shiva adorns moon on his head, he is also known as Someswara and hence this day is dedicated to Him.

When my mother used to serve steaming hot raw rice, Dalma (Odia cuisine: lentil with vegetables and sautéed with Deshi ghee, red chilli and cumin seeds and on top sprinkled with fried cumin-red chilli powder), little bhindi fry and a small bowl of curd my hunger used to be doubled. Again, each item will be sprinkled with grated coconut that would have come as prasad from my mother’s temple visit.

When I look back after all these years in nutritional research, I find it to be one of the best-balanced diet. A diet that used to be easily digestible and with less-oil cooking. A Deshi ghee touch might be frightening for many but against the myths about Deshi ghee, it’s easily assimilable in to our blood stream, not getting deposited in the body tissues leading to adiposity.

Now …now…now…if I say Deshi ghee is good you should not be enthused to buy a 5 litre tin of it and consume over one month in a family of four. Obesity is about intake of more calories.

Mondays are for us is all about a new start, rather than ‘blues’ and it is considered as the first day of the week in Indian calendars rather than Sunday. Sadly, the youth today starts enjoying with parties, pub visits or distant travels from Friday evening onwards (a new terminology of ‘weekend’ concept was introduced along with IT boom in India) and instead of rejuvenating on weekends, they feel more haggard, tired and drained out by Monday morning and hence the ‘Blues.’

Dr. Viyatprajna Acharya is a Professor in Biochemistry at KIMS, Bhubaneswar who has done some original research on different edible oils and also has done her PhD on Obesity in young adults. She is basically a doctor who specialises in Medical Biochemistry and her arena of research is metabolic diseases, nutrition and cancer.