Go Local!

I hope you are all safe and healthy in this lockdown!

This lockdown gave me chance to spend time with my in-laws and get to know them better. I am surprised to look at their energy level and enthusiasm at this age. This made me think what would be the reason for their fitness at this age? Is there some kind of secret they have? While this lockdown is bothering us like hell, we can not go out, shop our favorite brands, missing fast food, can't hang out with our best friends, these people manage to stay happy and healthy.

When I started thinking about it, I noticed the lifestyle followed by them was far different than what we are following now. They are following the "local" way of life.

While in the name of fitness, we are trying out lot's of protein powders, different fitness routine, diets what they are doing is following the simple way of eating and going by our traditional way of fitness "Yoga"! and we are loosing our inheritable fitness ingredients "Yoga" and "Local Food".

For us eating out and partying is fun while for them meeting new people, talking to relatives and building relationships is fun and important.

Not only looking after our family and friends but also taking care of our environment is part of their life. We are cutting all the trees or even taking efforts to plant and take care of one while they are taking all the care to keep our environment healthy. How many of you still feed the birds or cook for stray animals? I guess very few because we have lots of reasons for not doing it. But they are following this tradition - cooking food for cows, feeding stray dogs, keeping food and water for birds, planting and taking care of trees, using cloth bags instead of plastic.

If you think, there are many activities which our grandmothers used to follow which we don't. With time, we adopted the western lifestyle, moved to cities, living in nuclear families, and forgetting about the meaning of environment, community, family, and started living for ourselves.

We still have time, to get back to our traditions and take India back to its royal heritage. Do yoga instead of going to gym, start eating food which is harvested in your region and follow our tradition -talk to your parents, grandparents and try to understand what routine they follow and what was the idea. You will get to know many things from them.

Inspiring from them, in my next travel journey, I will take you to the local traditions, festivals, habits of the people, and story behind it.

Stay tuned to this new journey! till then stay safe and stay healthy!