Rice-free diet helps iron man Ranjit Seneviratne beat the blues
View(s):
Ranjit and his garden of vegetables and flowers. Pic by Indika Handuwala
IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN: There was no serpent and Eve was missing. Adam, however, was there in the form of Ranjit Seneviratne, a spry 81-year-old who has had the flu only once in the past 11 years. I touch wood (my head) as he imparts this amazing bit of news as we walk through his garden.
This small plot of land at the entrance of Charles Drive in Kollupitiya (from Duplication Road) is the secret behind the remarkable vigour and health of Ranjit. Not having a cold or a cough, or being run down by the flu for more than a decade is astonishing. He puts it down to not eating rice or any other carbohydrates. His diet is mainly made up of a mix of edible leaves, vegetables and fruit all grown organically in his Garden of Eden.
When Ranjit stood up to say he was Iron Man at a recent seminar on the state (perhaps plight is a better word) of agriculture in this country, the journalistic taste buds started flowing. This was a good story in the making and we quickly cornered him after the talkathon had ended to set up an interview.
Ranjit invited me home so that I could see the proof of the pudding. I couldn’t resist asking him a quick question: “No rice or any other carbohydrates for the last 11 years? How do you manage that?” I just couldn’t imagine a meal without rice or bread as a staple.
He laughs. “Of course, when I go to a party and the hostess has rice I take a little otherwise it will not be nice. Or if it is birthday and there is cake, I have a small piece. But as a rule I don’t eat any carbohydrates at home. Bread is a huge No-No”.
Leaves and small berries
So what do you eat? He asks me to pay him a visit at home. So a few days later, I stand on his long driveway munching away at bits of leaves and small berries as he shows me his organic oasis which surrounds an eco-home where every last bit of providence from nature, from the sunlight to rainwater, is used.
His driveway has two concrete tracks for vehicle wheels leaving three strips of ground for rainwater to seep into the ground while also allowing fruit trees and edible plants to be grown along the borders. At first glance it looks as if there are more than 50 varieties of both. I’m wrong, it is more.
There is a thicket of trees, everything from jak, avocado, nelli, sapadilla, ambarella, papaw, billing, sour-sup, Chinese guavas, murunga and star fruit. He keeps on rattling off the names of the abundant vegetation. On the ground huge gotukola leaves spread luxuriously, side-by-side with lemon grass, holy basil and red-stemmed ‘nivithi’. The green mukunuenna leaves are also deliciously tinged with red. Apparently any leaf with colour is the best variety. You don’t get this stuff at the Sunday Pola.
“This is a food garden as well as being a garden on which I am experimenting with techniques for mitigating the effects of climate change,” explains Ranjit while feeding me leaves and berries like some goat.
“When heavy rain falls I rejuvenate the soil with mulching using leaf matter obtained by pruning the trees and bushes and burying the thicker branches to increase water retention.”
He has rain-water harvesting systems which helps provide for a mini-ecosystem – the ground is tiered so there is maximum use of rainwater – to encourage a diversity of insects, birds and animals. The food waste from the kitchen is kept on open trays for around three days during which birds and animals feed, before being composted.
At the seminar, where experts portrayed a bleak picture on the food security of this island, I heard that the country has enough local rice stocks to last until June or July. Once again we will have to rely on imports – that is all of us barring Ranjit who will be happily gulping down a green smoothie made from a mix of leaves and herbs with a fruit or two thrown into the blender for sweetness.
Salads and smoothies
“I rarely get hungry even though I only eat salads and drink smoothies. Rice is not good for you because of all that carbohydrates which is turned into sugar. You can end up having diabetes or getting cancer because cancer cells feeds on glucose,” is Ranjit’s take on life.
“Preferably you must eat what is known as a fat-burner diet, where your energy does not come from carbohydrates but fats which you find in green vegetables and coconut oil. Our mallungs are full of coconut, likewise coconut (pol) sambol. Most importantly we had kiri hoda, like a soup made with turmeric, pepper and coconut milk.
“Turmeric which is good for you is easily absorbed by the body so we should be drinking kiri hoda every day. I feed my family and myself from this garden. I used to get a cough and cold frequently for I had a pocket (sore) in my lung. Doctors used to give me antibiotics and it was very debilitating. But after I started eating like this I noticed I didn’t get any coughs and colds. I then took an X-ray and the pocket was undetectable,” relates Ranjit, a marine engineer by trade.
His wife is another example of how an organic lifestyle can be a boon. She was diagnosed with diabetes some years ago. Ranjit relates: “The doctors said she would have to be on drugs for life. I thought what the hell. We are not machines where you have to check the pressure or check the water. We don’t need to do that for our bodies do it automatically. So I asked the doctors why she should be on drugs for ever and they couldn’t give me an answer.
“I went on to the Internet – thank God for the Internet – and found a book by Dr. Julian Whittaker titled Reversing Diabetes. I got a second-hand book from Amazon.com and started reading. I couldn’t get two vitamins which he recommended as they were not available in Sri Lanka but when I went for my daughter’s convocation in America I found these vitamins.
Great crop of hair
“I gave them to my wife and I used to go to this market and buy fresh vegetables and made salads and give it to her. Then one day she said ‘I’m very weak’, so we telephoned a doctor-friend of ours in London and he said maybe her blood sugar level was going down.”
That proved to be the case, so she was told to cut down on her diabetic medication from two tablets to one. After another week or two the same thing happened. Her medication was cut to half-a-tablet. After a fortnight, she felt weak again. The blood sugar levels were down again. She stopped taking her pills. Now she doesn’t have diabetes. But she still continues her diet of fresh vegetables, organic to boot.
Ranjit believes a drastic lifestyle change is a must for all of us, if we are to live long healthy lives, without any aching joints, creaking bones and coughs and colds, and dreaded diseases like cancer and diabetes. He changed his life around only after he had turned 70 proving the maxim that it is never too late.
“The body is a marvelous thing which is what I have discovered. I suppose if you’re badly ill it will take longer to be restored but I’m sure the body has all the systems to repair itself. All you have to do is to give it the right nutrients. He is living proof. A few years ago his shocked barber told him that his hair was growing again on his bald pate. “I said ‘don’t be silly men I have been losing hair for the last 20 years’, he said ‘no-no’. Now I can comb my hair,” laughed Ranjit running his fingers through strands of hair.
His diet is a natural detox and helps in today’s world where the air is poisonous, the water we drink has chemicals and poisons, and the food we eat is also loaded with chemicals.
“Research showed that the umbilical cord blood of the newborn baby has 83 chemicals in average. This generation of children in America will die before their parents. According to doctors the real lifespan of a human is 140 years. So we are shortchanging ourselves,” Ranjit is convinced.
Freshwater ponds filled with ‘guppies’ surround his home. When the sun falls on the walls of his house, jets of water spray the walls making it cool inside, a natural air-conditioning. Open French windows which circulate air throughout the house are covered with fine netting to keep away the dengue mosquitos which are anyway kept away by plants which have a natural insect repellent and are strategically placed at the entrance ways. He has three types of solar systems – hot-water, net-metering and a 12-volt battery which provides emergency lighting during a power cut.
He lives according to a simple equation – fresh organic food from the garden turned into salads and smoothies. I leave inspired and with thoughts of growing my own organic garden and eating leaves and fruit. But a few hours later that night, I succumb to temptation digging into a dish of seafood fried rice at a Chinese restaurant. I have become victim to the lure of the serpent.