Organic milk? Duh!

It had been a long day. I had been in Cleveland since morning – music classes, a rehearsal, and a concert. The tired body thanked me when I accepted my friend Krishna’s invitation to crash at his place for the night. We decided that we’d spend the night singing and playing music. It was decided that we would fuel ourselves with some good ol’ Bru and milk. So, on the way to the crash pad, we stopped at a grocery store to buy milk. Krishna refused to purchase the lacteous at a gas station because “they don’t sell organic milk”. At that moment, I laughed at him. My brain refused to understand what he was trying to say when he mentioned something about hormones and antibiotics in regular milk, but it came back to me today when I heard a woman say that she thought organic milk tasted better than regular milk. This led me to research a little more about this and that is what this post is about.

Every time I shop in my dairy section, I see organic milk advertised at twice the price of my favorite 2% milk, and I always ask myself, is organic milk worth that extra money? However, if you were to look at the actual cost that goes into producing organic milk, the price would make sense, but the real question is - does it make a difference?

Before we go into that, we must understand what organic milk really is. Essentially, it has to do with the way the cows are treated. Let us see how organic milk is defined. In order for milk to be “USDA Organic”, it has to be produced by cows that meet four criteria specified by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).

1. Feed your cows the “good” stuff. Don’t let them eat stuff treated with harmful pesticides or fertilizers that are not organic.

2. Let your cows grow and lactate the way they would naturally do. Don’t inject them with bovine growth hormones (BGH) that artificially increase milk production. Don’t subject them to genetic mutation or irradiation.

3. If one of your cows falls sick and needs to be treated with antibiotics, separate her from her friends for a while. Let her not return to the herd for a year to make sure the antibiotics are out of her system.

4. Provide your cows with pasture access. Let them freely graze the way they would naturally like to do.

So now you know why organic milk is so expensive. Also, you would have noticed from the expiration dates, organic milk stays fresh a lot longer than regular milk. The reason is that organic milk is pasteurized using a different process. Regular milk is pasteurized by what is known as “High Temperature Short Time (HTST) pasteurization” where the milk is exposed to 161 degrees F for 15-20 sec. Organic milk is pasteurized by what is known as “Ultra High Temperature (UHT) pasteurization” where the milk is exposed to 280 degrees F for 1-2 sec and then is then subjected to Extended Shelf Life (ESL) treatment that involves microbial filtering. UHT pasteurization can cause Maillard browning of the milk, changing its taste and color (probably explaining why it tastes slightly different), but the flip side is that it kills the spores in the milk, allowing it to stay fresh for a relatively longer time even without refrigeration while not destroying other useful nutrients in the milk.

Now, all this starts a new line of thought – if you think of it, organic milk is not just about healthy milk. Consider this. Your cows must no longer eat toxic food. So they now no longer eat food made from animal byproducts, so the chances of illnesses transmitted through food are lower. They no longer receive bovine growth hormones (BGH) so they are less like to develop complications like mastitis (an udder infection). They no longer go through the vicious cycle of antibiotic treatments to cure these types of complications either. So your cows stay healthier in general. Milk production might actually increase and perhaps become enough to even out with the milk produced by the sicker cows that receive BGH. But it’s not just the cows that are healthier now. You start using organic herbicides and fertilizers. So there is at least one less person (you) that is contaminating water. You and your workers stay healthier yourselves. Mother Earth is happier. Another thought, albeit farfetched, might make Mother Earth happy is that UHT milk need not be refrigerated. This reduces the use of refrigerants, thus cutting down greenhouse gasses (I warned you that this thought would be farfetched!).

In any case, organic milk is advertized to be much healthier than regular milk, so let us analyze this aspect. As is obvious, organic milk is truly free of hormones and antibiotics. So now let us look at regular milk. Recombinant bovine somatotropin, commonly known as BGH, to which these “non-organic cows” are treated, promotes the secretion of an insulin-like growth factor (IGF-1) in their milk. IGF-1 survives the pasteurization process is passed on to those who drink this milk. However, BGH is a protein hormone. This means that if any BGH appears in milk, the human digestive tract has enzymes and acid to destroy it. In fact, studies have shown that the traces of IGF-1 found in milk actually amount to only a tiny fraction of the IGF we all produce each day, and that one would have to drink 95 quarts of milk to equal the IGF-1 one normally secretes daily in saliva and other digestive juices. As far as antibiotics are concerned, it is illegal to treat a lactating cow with antibiotics. While it is assuring to know that “organic cows” that receive antibiotics are kept away from the herd for a year, it is also true that the milk from “non-organic cows” that receive antibiotics is not used either until tests show it is antibiotic-free. Tanks of milk are routinely tested to ensure no antibiotic content. So, unless there is some hanky-panky going on (there was some scary talk though about a study where 38% of milk sampled nationally was already contaminated by illegal residues of antibiotics and animal drugs), you can be pretty sure that your favorite 2% milk does not contain any antibiotics.

So that’s the story of organic milk. I sign off feeling more confused than before (readers are free to advise)…

Dr. M. Balamuralikrishna and traditional Carnatic music

I am a great admirer of Dr. M. Balamuralikrishna's music. Very often, people who attend his concerts or listen to his music complain that his exposition of ragas is too complicated and he makes even the most mundane ragas like Shankarabharanam difficult to identify. Even if one manages to identify the raga, one never knows when he will break into a seemingly easy and painfully scalar but yet intricate interpretation of the raga. A lot of people view his innovative style of rendition of certain ragas as something that is taboo as far as traditional music is concerned. However, I feel that very few people can reach the level of expertise required for such obscure interpretations of popular ragas (not to mention BMK's own interpretations of obscure ragas!). But I've always wondered why he does that when Carnatic music is already so well defined. And then today, I came across one of his interviews on youtube. Below is the text version of the same. I would love to hear what the reader thinks of this.

Interviewer: You have done over 400 compositions.

Balamurali gaaru: Yes

Int: Intially when you were doing that, the traditionalists, the purists, were a little outraged?

BMK: (getting a little irritated) I'm sorry?

Int: (now meekly) The purists of Carnatic music...

BMK: (interrupting) There is nothing like purists, you see. "Pure", "traditional"; there is no meaning for these. Nobody knows the meaning for these.

Int: (poor guy is still trying) But the traditionalists of carnatic music...

BMK: (interrupting again with fiery eyes) There is no tradition..

Int: (close to tears now) Okay, the Carnatic musicians were used to singing Thyagaraja keerthanas...

BMK: (mellowing down a little) Yes, Thyagaraja keerthanas... but they are not singing alike. Each one has his own way of singing; quality of voice and presentation differ for each individual. Otherwise, how can you identify that so-and-so is singing or playing? There is something always there. Tradition means the fundamental thing. Tradition means "sa ri ga ma pa dha ni", that's all. When you know it, forget about it, and you improvize. See, the tradition in those days is not the dress you are wearing now. But it does not mean you have gone out of the tradition, right? You always walk with your legs, talk with your mouth, see with your eyes. That is tradition. Tradition is the base. That base will never change. Everybody has one nose, two eyes, two ears, but each one is different. So you can't say that if someone looks handsome, it is not traditional.

Int: (has given up by now) Right, right...

BMK: So, you have to give importance to tradition as a foundation. Like a blue print of a house. The house is built on it.

Int: Absolutely..

BMK: (continuing) So that base is very important, but it does not mean that you should always remain at that level. That is how I feel abt the tradition. People who talk abt tradition or convention usually don't the meaning of what they r talking about.

The latest...

The large time gap between my last post and this one would have no doubt lead the reader to get the idea that I no longer am one of those chaps that involve themselves in blog post rambling as a measure to rid themselves of a certain lethargy. The reader is partially accurate because the aforementioned indisposition has eluded me (thankfully) for the past few months. I would however like to assure the reader that I do not view literary “traipsing” (if that is an appropriate term to use here) as something I do as a last choice of activities; I do enjoy writing!

Now, a lot has happened since my last post, but I will spare the reader from rubbing their face in every detail of my crazy life - I will simply “traipse” along presenting, hopefully, only the interesting portions of my activities.

The first important thing that happened to me in the last few months was the completion of my masters thesis. The degree of exhilaration that was involved at the conclusion of biomedical research in my student life can be a subject of empathy only to those members of the student community who are put to an ordeal defined by the following –

1. What you were originally interested when you joined grad school - 3%
2. What you think is cool but nobody will fund - 9%
3. Your thoughts on why you are doing what you are doing, more like soul searching - 14%
4. Your department's interests - 74%

A majority of the members of this community would agree to this kind of inhuman reduction their lives into undeniably ignoble existences (until the sweet release of “graduation”). However, I am also aware that there will be certain, more “elite” members screaming “get off the soapbox, you idiot” at me at this point. So, with all due respect, I shall move on to the next chapter in my life – the marriage.

As soon as I defended and submitted by thesis, I hopped on a plane to India. Awaiting me in India was a beautiful wedding ceremony followed by a reception of proportionate amplitude and splendor. The whole series of events was made a journey of pleasure and comfort by the lovely bride whom I knew right from the beginning was the woman I wanted to spend the rest of my life with.

Ahem…

Right, so the next important thing to happen in my life was the job. Again, I take the liberty of ascending on to the soapbox – If one has a desire to start a new job after graduation in a job market of today’s nature, one has to be prepared to be reduced to a grease monkey that tries to make a dysfunctional printer work by fiddling around with the ink cartridge even when the tray has no paper. The most unfortunate part of all this is that one is entirely aware that one is hardly touching the root of the problem (the paper tray) and yet one is forced to play with the ink cartridge (or the traditional application process) because the paper tray is locked and no one will give one the key to the mint (access to the hiring managers)! However, once the hands are greased enough, someone usually takes notice and one gets a job (unlike the printer that remains dysfunctional – that is the silver lining). Without delving into any further details, I finally graduated from being a grease monkey to having a job offer for the position of product engineer. It happened at the right time, and fortunately for me, the offer came from good medical device company. At this point, I was still staying in Akron and I had to move to Youngstown where the company is located. And I moved.

Youngstown! Refrain from judging the town based on its name. Apparently the town was founded by a gentleman who went by the family name “Young” and that’s how the town got its name. A limited excursion through the heart of Youngstown, however, will convince you that nothing here is young. This hit me when I came here first by a Greyhound bus and was greeted by a building with a board that said “city jail”. As one walks on the streets of downtown, one would see structures mostly of antediluvian architecture but sadly devoid of any grandeur because they are empty and as a result, shockingly unmaintained. One gets the impression, as one looks at the buildings and roads, that in its heyday, the town would have been a cheerful and busy place but one day something terrible happened and it all ended. Walking through the seemingly bohemian surroundings, one would see countless run down houses. There are a few handsome houses but they are empty and sadly run down. Strangely, there is nothing cheerful or homey about the kids that are seen playing on the streets or the women that are seen sitting in their verandahs smoking their cigarettes. You would see little office buildings with doors that are bolted, but only as a sign of vacancy because the roofs had collapsed and the windows were shattered. Occasionally you would see a signboard that says “Grocery store” or “Supplies” but with a broken building behind it. Every time I see such signboards, I cannot help but picture a probable homey history of that neighborhood. Every street corner is marked with a “Neighborhood crime watch” signboard that I have now become so familiar with. The weirdest thing about the town is the lack of sidewalks – you have GOT to drive to live here! And it’s not easy to drive either because the roads don’t have readable name signs. Well, a lot has been written about Youngstown and the reader may browse the internet to learn more, but now when a newcomer or a visitor arrives here and sees the “city jail” sign with an expression that is indescribable, I would simply say, “Welcome to Youngstown!”

Okay! There's a lot more that I would love to share with the reader, but I’m going to terminate this post here. More later!

M S Subbulakshmi.. will we ever have another one?

do i have the right to write anything about MS?

every time i listen any recording of hers, i feel that the sublime music ferries me to a different world. a beautiful and divine world. a world filled with bhakti. today, i was listening to her "bhavayami raghuramam" and felt compelled to write something about her.

what makes MS so special and endearing to everyone is that her music has the power to reach the heart of every person out there. she "connects" with the listener, and this is what makes her one of the greatest singers ever. i refrain from using the past tense because for me, MS is still very much alive. a lot has been written about MS, so whatever i write here is not something new. we don't talk about MS as just a singer. we talk about her as a great human being, an altruist in the true sense, the one with the god-given gift of a mellifluous voice. i also remember my grandmother telling me how people used to flock to MS concerts just to get a glimple of the queenly lady on the stage. however, her music resides at such lofty heights of both technicality and divinity that one doesn't need to know anything about her philanthropic nature, humility or anything else to fall at her feet and worship her. the profundity in her music makes everything else inconsequential.

for a long time i believed that sticking to the rule book of carnatic music while rendering krithis had nothing to do with the bringing out of either bhakti or bhava. as a kid, i never paid attention to bhava as such. as i grew up, all the people around me started telling me that i should put more emotion, more bhava, more expression into my singing. yet, my gurus never told me anything beyond clear diction, shruthi shuddham, swara shuddham, adherence to tala, and singing every sangathi twice. why? is it because they ignored bhava? they knew that bhava is something that cannot be taught, but is in fact something that comes along with the krithi. but the key is to render the krithi exactly the way it should be. and MS's rendition of every krithi is a standing example of this fact. her diction is perfect. her gamakas touch the exact frequencies at the exact speed and with precision. every sangathi is sung twice. every syllable of the sahitya falls perfectly at the same place in the tala, whichever sangathi she sings. the shruthi is perfect to digital accuracy. the tala metre is unwavering. and the bhava comes along with it. this is something that i realized after i started listening to her renditions closely. you first need to have perfection before any bhava can come out. trying to put bhava into your singing without strictly following the rule book will do nothing but dilute the krithi and do no justice to the reason the composer composed it in the first place. you definitely need to "feel" the lyrics when you sing a krithi, but the expression will never come out if you don't sing the sangathis perfectly. i remember my teacher telling me that if MS sang a krithi now and sang it again 20 years later, it would sound exactly the same. i looked at my teacher with a bewildered look because at that time i didn't know if this was a good thing or a bad thing. but now i know. my teacher meant to say that the perfection would still be there, and so would the bhava.

her raga alapanas are perfectly structured. but a great exposition of a raga is something more than structural perfection. her exposition of the raga goes beyond the nuances, brikas and raga bhava. there is a certain grandeur in her sancharas, a certain augustness in her improvisation, and above all that, she makes it sound so easy. the brikas are there, but there are no "acrobatics", because she doesn't need any. the magic is already there. the same thing applies to her niraval as well. again, every syllable of the sahitya falls perfectly at the same place in the tala, and the sahitya bhava co-exists with the raga bhava. and above all, there is balance. nothing is in excess, be it swara kalpana or niraval.

what i have written about her now is nothing. but then, i don't have the right to talk about anything else. this is all i understand. for me, MS stands for tradition, purity and divinity. she is loved by one and all. she might not be amongst us today, but her music is so powerful that she is still alive.. very much alive...

And I am back...

Loneliness and boredom are the two main driving factors behind a blogger's urge to blog. I do not fall into the category of people who write blogs that contain "messages for the people". My blogs contain only one message; Lalit Subramanian is bored.

I take this opportunity to "fill the gap" for the sake of the reader, who, I believe, would not, in my next post, like to grope in the dark to pick up the strings that I never left. I mean, the reader always wants clarity. He does not want to learn new facts without knowing the status quo. So here goes...

At first, let me bring to the notice of the reader that I am not ignorant of the fact that I have hitherto not made a clear distiction between "blogs" and "posts". Let me not go ahead without acknowledging this fatheadedness on my part. I accept my ignorance not too blithely.

Alright then. I am now in the US of A with an F-1 visa. Technically I am described as "an alien authorized to work". This description has fascinated me in many ways. The "alien" part is very true, except for the fact that when I came here I looked at my surroundings as alien until this description made me realize that it is me that is alien to the surroundings and not vice versa.

The "authorized to work" part is more intriguing. It seems to me to be a very apt description of my current way of life. It looks as if I am here mainly to work rather than study. My statistics professor would agree with enthusiasm when I present him with figures like 6 hrs of work against 2 hrs of classes each day. Besides, I work at a food court, where the job fails to provide any food for the mind. But should I be complaining? It is this food court that takes care of my living expenses. Moreover, it is this job that has given me a graduate assistantship this semester. So "I am glad that I am this fortunate".

I have successfully(?) completed one semester and am almost midway through the second semester. I have taken 3 courses this semester. Currently I am so overloaded with homework that I have reached a point where I have stopped bothering about deadlines. I have actually started to dare forego deadlines in order to indulge in other activities such as sleeping and eating. And I do this purely to maintain my mental integrity. One hardly wishes to spend one's entire future in a lunatic asylum.

Has anyone of you tried writing a decent sounding blog when you are in class listening to a professor talk about a squid axon? Let me stop here before I lose it completely. I trust the reader is now sufficiently acquainted with the status quo. Adios for now...

as i set foot on US soil (part 2)

i trust that the reader has returned after a restful sleep, an invigorating shower and so forth to read this augmentation of the tale that i began relating in my previous blog...

as gayatri pointed out in her comment, i endeavored to maintain a nonchalant (for the want of a better term) disposition throughout the tense wait at the airport, chiefly by "cracking silly jokes" as put by gayatri very simply and effectively. and although her levels of patience must have soared to new heights, i am sure she would agree with me that the technique was more than effective in lightening the atmosphere. in fact, i even remotely remember the presence of a song on my lips as we rode to the hotel and checked in.

however, the atmosphere did not remain light for too long. it was one of those instances where one inadvertantly makes oneself look like a fool. imagine this scenario. A and B check into a hotel and are allotted rooms P and Q respectively. A agrees to meet B in 30 minutes at room Q so that they can proceed together to the buffet room for dinner. A then goes to his room, shaves, showers, dresses and leaves the room to meet B as planned. suddenly he realizes that he has forgotten the exact digits that Q is comprised of. you will now know exactly why i alluded to the instances that i alluded to when you learn that A knocked on the doors of rooms such R, S, T, and so forth trying to locate B, getting educated in pejoritives in the process, only to finally find B already on her way in the elevator to the buffet room!

dinner wasn't too bad, and the bed wasn't bad either. morning saw me fully reconditioned for the day. everything went smoothly as we checked in our bags and things and waited for the announcement to board the flight through cleveland via cincinnati, until we were told by the airline official that the flight was full and we couldn't get in! and our bags had already gone with the earlier flight! the events that followed consequently were dramatic and have been arranged chonologically below:

1. we look at the airline guy in disbelief.
2. the airline guy (let's call him mr. asterix, just for convenience) looks at us with a serious face but with a small sadistic smile playing on the corners of his lips.
3. a second official walks up and expresses concern, but simply walks off.
4. we try to plead our case.
5. we are told by mr. asterix that the boarding passes that we have are "standing" tickets (believe me, this is exactly how he described our boarding passes) and there is no way he can get us on the flight.
6. all of us see the flight taking off.
7. we look at each other in disbelief.
8. mr. asterix smiles.
9. a third official walks up and mumbles something about a direct flight to cleveland scheduled to leave in 5 minutes, and walks off.
   
10. we plead to mr. asterix to put us on the flight.
11. this time, ol' asterix looks at us in disbelief (tit for tat i guess... it was some relief!).
12. ol' asterix makes call to the captain of the flight and learns about exactly 2 vacancies on the flight.
13. good ol' asterix starts running.
14. we take the cue and copy him. we run in the order: good ol' asterix - self - gayatri.
15. as all of us achive a speed that would embarass athletes, a bus looms large. the automobile presumably was to take us to the imminent flight.
16. the automobile performs the function descibed in point #15. we reach the airplane, but only to see the door closing!
17. our dear pal asterix jumps out of the running bus (a proclivity i had hitherto observed only in passangers at indian railway stations and bus stops) and knocks on the door of the airplane.
18. the door opens (believe me.. all this is true) and we get in.
19. before asterix bids us good bye (read the following carefully because it shall be of importance later) he takes away our boarding passes.
20. the door closes.

the reader would now assume that all was well. i don't blame the reader. there is absolutely no way one would anticipate at this juncture that the flight would get cancelled and the passangers would come to learn that there were no other flights to cleveland departing that day! apparently someone had fiddled with the cargo door because of which it wouldn't close!

we found ourselves back on terra firma. an intense discussion between me and gayatri brought us to believe that we were practically helpless. more so because of the absence of boarding passes (refer above to point #19); we couldn't even prove to anyone that we were actually on the flight, even if we were to fight our case with the officials. there was only one thing that we could think of, namely, hunt for our old friend mr. asterix and reclaim our boarding passes.

and believe me, JFK is not the place to be in when you are in such a situation. we had to run all the way back to the terminal at which we had begun the running to get into the flight (refer above to point #13). i do not remember the exact time for which we were running, but it seemed like eternity. we did finally reach our destination and we also found good ol' asterix, but only to learn that he had destroyed the boarding passes long back!

following good ol' asterix's advice, we retraced our path to the place where we had gotten out of the flight. after about an hour's wait, we heard the announcement that the door had been fixed and the flight was reay to depart!

and the reader would again undoubtedly assume that all was well. i again do not blame the reader. we were not allowed to enter the flight because we didn't have boarding passes on us! a long discussion ensued after this, the participants of the discussion being the airline official (who denied the possibility of the presence of a mr. asterix who would do all that mr. asterix did), self and gayatri (who tried to convince the official otherwise), and co passangers (who finally convinced the official about the existance of a mr. asterix and the truth in our words). we finally entered the airplane. the flight took off and we reached cleveland.

popular television soaps owe their success to "fast-forward"ing the story. as usual, i shall emulate the makers of these soaps. my next blog will not be a continuation to this story. the events shall be more current (hopefully). the reader may now breathe more easily...