Bad news, Bad news

A friend's sister, aged 29, was recently found to have multiple lumps in her liver through ultrasonography. The initial FNAC (fine needle aspiration cytology) showed only blood, so we were hoping the lesion would turn out to be a benign or infective one. But since the family was a little panicky, their doctor immediately referred them to a bigger centre without a repeat FNAC. And now I hear she might be having cancer of the colon which has in fact metastasized to her liver.

And just this week, one of H's close friend's mother was found to have cancer of the colon with metastasis to the liver.

A 22 year old man from Lunglei went to the doctor because the lump in his neck felt 'ugly'. They turned out to be malignant. Biopsy from his nasopharynx showed the cancer started from there.

A 14 year old girl from Saiha has lumps on her neck, which kept growing. Biopsy and CT scan showed she had widespread Lymphoma.

A 9 year old boy has a hugely swollen upper jaw. Investigations proved he has cancer of the maxilla.

We have 360 cases of cancer in Civil hospital, Aizawl so far this year (some duplication possible from FNACs, then biopsies). That is approximately 51 cases per month. The statistics are scary. And the saddest cases are the ones where the patients are still so young!

Homemaker extraordinaire :)

I spent last weekend trying to develop my homemaking skills. Somebody introduced me to homemade soya mayonnaise and I really loved the taste. So I looked up the recipe on the www and it turned out pretty simple to make.

I. Making the soya milk :

• Bought 1 kg of soya seeds from the market. They were mixed with little stones and other debris, so required a good cleaning.
• Soaked a little less than half kg overnight in water. This amount proved to be way too much, a quater kg (250gm) would be more appropriate for personal use.
• Next day, I blended the soya beans with thrice the volume of water in a blender. Since my mixie jar is small, I had to do it in several batches.
• I strained the whole slurry through a muslin (read cotton) cloth and boiled the milk for around 10 minutes.
• I got around 2 litres of soya milk.

II. Making the soya mayonnaise: 
  You need:

1.   1 cup of soya milk
2.   Half a tsp of salt
3. 1 tsp of lime juice
4. 1/4th tsp black pepper powder
5. 2 egg yolks (optional)
6. 1 cup of vegetable oil.

The procedure is simple. Blend 1-5 in a mixer. Add the vegetable oil a few drops at a time and blend till the whole cup is added to the mixture. Adding the oil slowly seems to be the most important part. If you add it too fast, the oil tends to float. I got 2 jars and a half from 2 cups of soy milk. Taste great!! Just like store bought mayonnaise, but better than the Funfood brand. Only problem is you can keep it only for a week or so.

I also made these moist chocolate cakes. I think they taste better than they look :P

And some pictures of Ruatfeli

With her new umbrella...

My take

It was disturbing for me to read that the Mizoram Law Commission was planning to reduce the age of consent from 16 to 14 years.      www.news.outookindia.com/item.aspx?687062

I don't think children at 14 have the required maturity to decide to have sex. Most girls would be undergoing sexual development, with development of breasts, menstruation etc at that age, and full development is said to be at 16 to 18 years. And boys are known to be slightly slower than girls! So even with our changing lifestyle and maybe a slight precocity seen in today's children, 14 is way too young, for males or females, to start having sex.

The argument for the cause is that men who have consensual sex with underaged girls are having to face charges of rape. In my book, serves them right! I don't think any self-respecting, God-fearing, NORMAL man would go around having sex with a 14 or 15 year old even if she happens to be a Lolita. An adult has to show restraint, even the face of great temptation. I don't think it saves him from being labelled as  anything more than a pedophile. And if there is sex between two underaged children, I don't think that makes it any more right. We as parents and adults have to simply try to teach children about the right time to have sex, and taking the extreme shortcut of reducing the age of consent is a terrible injustice done to all  future generations. Because a law once passed, will be difficult to change, if not impossible.

So what will be the possible consequences if this new age of consent comes to pass?

• Much younger children are going to start having early sex. Even with the present age of consent being 16, there are already many underaged children indulging in sex. When it actually becomes legal, we can expect 12 and 13 year olds to start experimenting with sex.
• More men are going to beguile and persuade innocent children to have sex, or rape them, and then say it was consensual in defense. 
• Parents will have to be even more careful and maybe even neurotic, about what their child is upto. I for one will not want to my children to have pre-marital sex, forget about sex at 16. And since even the most careful parents can never completely protect their offsprings, we would be living in constant fear in a world which is growing too fast, too complex for us.
• Studies say early sexual encounters lead to delinquency, poor mental health and adversely affect a child's entire future life. I don't think there is a study that says the reverse. 

So why encourage and legalise something which we already know to be harmful? Shouldn't we instead make sure the present law is carried out more firmly and stringently? The reason there are so many  orphaned children and  divorces in our state is that too many kids have sex without proper education, get pregnant, get an easy marriage and get an equally easy divorce.

Chick flicks

I love movies that make you cry. It is the only masochistic side of me, because anything else that causes pain is abhorrent to me. But put me alone in a dimly lit room, and play a movie that will squeeze my tear ducts dry, and I will be happily wiping my tears away.

We all have so many disappointments in life, inconveniences and little things not going your way. But when you're all grown up, you cannot cry at the minor stuff anymore. So crying at the heartaches and misfortunes of imaginary (or sometimes real) people is a soul cleanser for me.

'My sister's keeper' is a wonderful story about a sick teenage girl, and how she and her family members all respond to her sickness. All so believable performed and heart-wrenchingly told. I loved the little romance she experienced while dying of a terminal disease and all.

'P.S. I love you' is tenderly hopeful, in the terrible scenario of loving someone you love. I've been blessed with not losing a dear one, yet! And just the mere imagination of doing so scares me to death. I've always wanted to die before I lose anyone I love, because I am too cowardly to deal with the pain of losing someone you love. The finally of death and their consequent absence is way too terrible to contemplate.

"The lovely bones" is also beautifully made. The father's anguish and helplessness is something anyone can empathise with, especially if you are a parent. The surreal quality of the entire film, the hopeful desire to see the evil neighbour found out and arrested kept me entranced through the movie. I would only have arranged a more violent end for the bad man than the one he had.

Other tear-jerkers are 'Stepmom', 'Love story', 'Switched at birth', and the rest can't come to mind at present. If you haven't seen these movies, you should go see them. It's therapeutic to have puffy, swollen eyes at someone else's expense.