AmalA kural is a life in two lines. Out of the books I read, the talks I heard, and what I tested in my own body, I tried to compress what was left into two lines at a time. Those are these thirty Puthukural.
Twenty of them are what I learned for myself; ten came from my parents. For each I have given a short explanation, and a note on which part of this book it connects to.
It does not matter if you forget the other chapters of this book. It is enough if these thirty Puthukural stay in your memory.
1. Twenty Puthukural on health that I learned for myself
From four to six in the early morning is the Vata hour — the moment when the body prepares to clear its waste. At that hour the world asks nothing of you. Keep that one hour for yourself: water, walking, yoga, prayer. The other twenty-three belong to everyone else.
Chapter 3 — Vata, 2–6 in the early morning. Chapter 6 — method 27 (WWYP).
When the breath slows, the mind slows with it. Five minutes before bed — make the out-breath twice as long as the in-breath. That lowers the heart rate and prepares the body for sleep. Sleep that comes without a tablet is the real thing.
Chapter 7 — breathing practice. Chapter 3 — Kapha, 6–10 in the evening.
Holding the same total amount of food within a shorter window is the basis of intermittent fasting. It is in the long gap, when digestion has stopped, that the body burns its stores and cleans its cells. When matters more than how much.
Chapter 4 — the day-by-day schedule; no solid food after five in the evening.
The flow of lymph has no pump like the heart. It is the movement of the muscles and of the diaphragm that drives it. Sit still and the waste goes nowhere; it settles in the tissues and raises the acidity. Walking is not only exercise — it is drainage.
Chapter 7 — breathing practice. Parents' kural 7.
Air is Vata, heat is Pitta, water is Kapha — this is Ayurveda's doctrine of the three humours. Illness is not a thing but a loss of balance. Health is not the absence of disease but a state of self-sufficiency, says Michio Kushi. Medicine hides the symptom; a method restores the balance.
Chapter 3 — the three doshas. Chapter 10 — Jeyamohan.
Gandhi called the body the temple in which the soul dwells. You scour and polish a tool not out of attachment to it, but because there is work to be done with it. Losing weight is not the goal of this book — living with a clear mind is the goal.
Chapter 10 — Gandhi, B. M. Hegde.
The microbes in our gut outnumber our own body's cells. They decide digestion, immunity, and even mood. Fibre is their food; fermented food is their seed. Where there are no microbes in the soil there is no crop — and it is the same in the gut.
Chapter 10 — Nammalvar. Chapter 7 — the quality of the food.
Discipline is not punishment; it is a shape. A river without banks becomes a flood; a river with banks protects the town. The limit you set on food protects the body; the limit you set on conduct protects the mind. Both are two faces of one practice.
Chapter 8 — the definition of done.
Food beyond measure — protein and fat above all — thickens the blood. Thick blood cannot pass through the small vessels. Nourishment does not get in, waste does not get out. This is the reason for drinking a glass of water half an hour before a meal.
Chapter 3 — how to drink water.
Oxygen is needed for digested sugar to burn inside the cell. The cells of someone who breathes shallowly are left holding half-burnt fuel — and that is what exhaustion is. Besides, the movement of the diaphragm gently kneads the stomach and the gut and helps digestion.
Chapter 7 — breathing practice. Kural 20 is the other face of this same idea.
We teach a child to eat; we do not teach it to stop. With words like "a little more" and "finish your plate" we destroy the language of hunger. The very love that fed the child by pointing at the moon hands over the habit of eating without attention along with it.
Chapter 1 — moon rice.
Digestion begins not in the stomach but in the mouth. The enzymes in saliva start breaking down the starch. Food swallowed without chewing is a burden on the gut. If all six tastes — sweet, sour, salt, pungent, bitter and astringent — are present in a meal, the body will not go looking for more.
Chapter 3 — the rules for eating. Chapter 10 — Sundar Balasubramanian.
We lie to ourselves more than we lie to other people. "Just today", "from tomorrow", "it is only a little". This is the reason for keeping a notebook — you cannot lie to what is written down.
Chapter 8 — the review; the notebook.
Gandhi says that indigestion and constipation are the root of countless illnesses. If the gut works without rest it has no time to clean itself. One hungry day a week — that is the simple medicine our forebears set down.
Chapter 6 — methods 16, 19. Parents' kural 10.
The body is a fine chemical balance. The acidity of the blood has to stay within a very narrow range. Breath is its chief instrument of control — by altering the amount of carbon dioxide the body corrects it at once. Change the breath and everything changes.
Chapter 7 — breathing practice; why this works.
About seventy per cent of the body's waste leaves through the lungs, twenty per cent through the skin, seven per cent through urine and three per cent through stool. All of this is the work of the early-morning Vata hour. For it, the body has to be awake and upright.
Chapter 3 — what happens when you break the rhythm.
Food is a test that comes three times a day. Whoever wins it finds it easy to win over anger, over speech, over time. Fasting is not a practice in eating; it is a practice in will. What we practise on the new moon is not hunger but self-command.
Chapter 6 — method 20. Chapter 8 — discipline and pace.
What is sprayed on the soil comes to our gut by way of our food. What killed the microbes in the field does the same in the gut. That the health of the soil and the health of a human being are one is Nammalvar's central idea. Health does not begin in a hospital — it begins in a field.
Chapter 10 — Nammalvar, Carver, Hyman.
Dr B. M. Hegde says that what you eat does not kill you; it is the thoughts that eat you that kill you. The mind is the body's climate. Anger and fear raise blood pressure and heart rate at once. Forgiveness and gratitude are as powerful as medicine.
Chapter 10 — B. M. Hegde, Mark Hyman.
With fuel but no air, the stove will not burn. It is the same in the cells — without enough oxygen the sugar does not burn through, and settles as acid. Food is not the only reason blood sugar rises; shallow breathing is a reason too.
Chapter 7 — breathing practice. Chapter 10 — Sundar Balasubramanian.
2. Ten Puthukural I learned from my parents
My father and mother never studied medicine. But those ten Puthukural, written out of what they had lived and learned, are the seeds of this book.
Health does not lie in medicine but in four simple habits. Food in measure is fuel for the body; work is the way it is spent; truth keeps the mind free of pressure; sleep repairs the body. Fail in any one of the four and the other three will not deliver. Keeping all four every day is cheaper medicine than looking for a cure after the illness has come.
Throughout this book. Chapter 5 — the seven habits.
Sleeping your fill, and walking until your legs are tired — both of these are free; but what they give is beyond price. It is in the night's sleep that the liver cleans the body and the growth hormones are released. It is in walking that blood flow, the burning of sugar and clarity of mind are found. To anyone who keeps at both, long life comes of its own accord.
Chapter 3 — Pitta, 10–2 at night. Chapter 6 — method 27.
My mother used to say that if you pull the burning wood out of the stove, the pot that is boiling over settles. These are words that carry more than one meaning. When anger boils over, draw the breath in deep and hold it and the boiling settles by itself — the breath is the bridle of the mind. In the same way, reduce how much you eat and the inflammation burning inside the body settles too. Breath outside, food inside — whoever governs these two governs body and mind together.
Chapter 7 — breathing practice. My kural 2, 15.
Food eaten without work is not nourishment to the body but a burden. Sugar that is not spent turns into fat and wears insulin out. On a day when you have not sweated, even a handful of rice is too much. So work before you eat; eat only as much as you have worked for. This is not punishment — it is honesty towards the body.
Chapter 4 — the calories going in and the calories going out.
Pouring water over the head and bathing brings down the heat that has risen into the brain all day. Rubbing in sesame oil and bathing once a week gives moisture to the skin and the nerves and evens out the heat of the internal organs. When the heat is balanced, sleep comes, burning eyes stop, hair fall lessens. This is simple medicine kept up over generations.
Chapter 7 — abhyanga. Chapter 4 — days 21 and 28.
Chewing betel after a meal is not merely a custom. Betel leaf, areca nut and lime increase the saliva in the mouth and settle the acid that forms in the stomach. Digestion becomes easier, bad breath goes, phlegm subsides. In moderation it is medicine; add tobacco and it becomes a poison — that must not be forgotten.
Chapter 6 — method 8 (betel leaf water).
Sitting all day is the mother of today's illnesses. From stillness the movement of the gut slackens and constipation comes; waste stays instead of leaving and fouls the blood; because the muscles do not take up sugar, diabetes and cholesterol gather. Getting up every hour and walking for a few minutes is the simple guard against it.
My kural 4. Chapter 7 — breathing practice for anyone who sits for long hours.
That the cook's state of mind enters the food was our forebears' belief. There is a practical truth behind it too — where cooking is done without love and only for profit, the oil is heated again and again, old ingredients are used, cleanliness falls away. Food cooked at home with love is what suits the body.
Chapter 3 — "cooked by someone who is happy".
The cruelty of stomach cancer is not in its pain alone — it first stops the hunger, then melts the body, and at the end takes the life. The cause is usually years of continued wrong eating, tobacco, and late evening meals. The warning sign is simple: if hunger falls away, do not ignore it.
Chapter 5 — what to measure.
One fast day a week, an oil bath and prayer — these three together make a small cycle. Hunger rests the organs of digestion; the oil bath cools the body; prayer settles the mind. Rest for body and for mind on one and the same day. This is the model our forebears gave for the cycle method of this book.
Chapter 8 — the full circle of the cycle. My kural 14.
If these thirty kural had to be compressed into a single line: eat in measure, sleep deeply, breathe slowly, walk every day, go hungry one day a week, rest one day a month.