How ginger battles winter illness and fatigue

Ginger is a remedy. We weren’t given throat lozenges, growing up. I envied the kids that had them in their school bag — round discs of sunshine-yellow Strepsils that were sugared and spicy and special because they were the only sweets the teacher would permit a student to suck.

We were given warm saltwater gargles to sterilise the throat. And then, when the soreness continued, a tincture of ginger, honey and lemon tea.

Mum made the tea on the stovetop in her smallest pot. Slices of fresh ginger thrown into a few inches of cold water and then simmered until the speckled root paled, its colour leached. And in the pot? Water turned the blush of a dawn sky.

Drink it up, she would say, and I would, but not without complaining of the spicy heat even honey and fresh lemon couldn’t blanket. The same complaint my own young sons now make to me.

Ginger attacks the sickness of physical fatigue and emotional lassitude that rises up from cold winter floors through the soles of rubber house chappals. I drink that tincture, once made by Mum, to raise my own frequency on days when it seems simpler to crawl back to bed and let the anchor of a heavy body carry me down.

Ginger’s beauty is its siren smoulder. A little raw ground ginger on the tongue is the flame that warms but doesn’t burn — soft and radiant heat that loosens joy like hot water thaws ice.

Guava simmered lightly in ginger-infused sugar syrup is a sweet starburst call to morning.

Generous shavings of fresh ginger to bolster ground ginger in a simple yellow daal shoots pinpoints of light through the lentils’ warm weight, when ballast, but not bulk, is required.

Milk steeped in fresh sliced ginger and warmed before bed is a gentle frequency lift that stops a tired body slumping too low into the black of night.

The trial we face with winter illness is in lacking the energy to battle. Fighting to wellness when energy levels are as low as a New Delhi December sky requires reserves already lost.

Ginger is courage — and openness in love. Ginger understands there is no need to fight for release from illness or fatigue, but to love the body through it.

I’ve been working a lot lately, and my youngest son, Ashok, has been missing me. Last night at dinner he raised his glass in a toast to my efforts for the family, thanking his father and his brother for their love in my daily absence. Then, my open-hearted eight-year-old burst into tears. He and I cuddled and smiled and laughed and cried until the tears stopped. Ginger is the son whose blinding bright love has him cry in sadness and in appreciation over his mother’s absence, and the mother who will let him.

Ayurveda prescribes this spice for digestion and respiration, physical states that have their emotional counter-balance in accepting and breathing. I turn to ginger as much for the latter as for the former. I find it easier to access physical healing via emotional channels. Understanding this link between who I am and how my body responds keeps me in appreciation of everything that the body does.

A body sick with winter cold needs its dual desires for sinking and sweetening recognised.

So when that body slows, I give it time. And I give it comfort without weight. Love without conditions. I give it contradiction — tears and laughter in my heart, and height and heft on my palate.

I give it ginger.

Also read: How black cardamom curbs sweetness to induce satiety (and guards against over-indulgence)