Ram and Seema Chugh
We feel fortunate and blessed in having known you. Taking the first course with you created a new awareness within us about healthy eating and healthy living. My wife Seema and I had read a great number of books and listened to many lectures on healthy eating before we met you. We were reluctant to take your course assuming that there was nothing more to learn. We thought we had good eating habits and ate the right kind of foods.
Through your course and the manner in which you taught us, you transformed our thinking. Good teaching is not only how one transmits one’s knowledge to students but also the sincerity and the passion with which one transmits that knowledge and lives himself. You touched us immensely with the real life simple examples you used in conveying your points. Through those examples, you were able to penetrate into the minds of your students and in the process made a lasting impact on them. Such illustrations and examples do not come easily to most teachers. Being a professor myself, I believe it is the burning desire within a teacher to ensure that the students grasp the subject matter and then learn to apply it in their daily life. Assimilation and application are essential to good learning.
It is this kind of zeal with which you teach your courses. That is something rare and you have that rare gift. In my mind, I compare you with the role Rajesh Khanna plays in the movie Bawarchi where he dedicates his life to bring “harmony” among the families living in discord. During your travels, you see people all around you suffering with many illnesses because most of them do not eat the right kind of food for many reasons. Deep down this reality must hurt you. You wish to change this through creating awareness that healthy eating is essential to healthy living.
But you also know that changing people’s eating habits is tough, very tough. There are too many forces all around us to which most people succumb and become prisoner of those habits of eating wrong foods. In your own way, you are making a sincere and determined effort to change that. You have been doing it almost since the mid ‘70s. You have dedicated your life to this goal. In the process, you have touched and changed the lives of thousands of people all over the world. This is an accomplishment worthy of celebration.
The difference you have made in the lives of so many people including mine and that of Seema. We feel beholden to you and think of you almost every time we are having food either at our house or at a restaurant. We feel your invisible presence reminding us to “eat this but not that.” Thank you for coming into our life.
With gratitude and warm regards,
Ram and Seema
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