At the moment, I’m totally obsessed with making sourdough bread. Its taste and texture is just too enticing.

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I love the fact that it’s made by slowly letting the organisms in the air work their magic with flour and water. What you get is a wonderful crusty bread that has the most breathtaking aroma and an open, beautiful crumb. As I was sitting in my breadmaking class in lovely Goa, learning the perfect nuances of making bread, I thought to myself, ‘Life is much like making sourdough bread’.

We must be good to the mother starter, strong-yet- simple. She gives you great results if you treat her and feed her right, then treat the dough very gently with a lot of tenderness and love, the results will just be exceptional. As our sourdough expert, Sujit was explaining to us how we need to treat the dough, he said something that just stuck with me. He said, “Instead of chasing something all the time and wanting fast results, why can’t we just be the perfect welcome party? What is to come to us will, if the ground preparations are perfect.” Just like the water and flour mix, it just takes the right combination to attract all the organisms in the air, that will eventually react with it.

What happens next, is totally unique. 

The older the starter the better the sourdough bread. I kept thinking, it’s such a tragedy that we humans, who are the most intelligent of all species on earth, are the only ones, who find it difficult to embrace the cycle of life. Yes, we will age, and that’s just one of the many things that we get to experience in life, and yet, we meet it with so much dread.

How many of us are really happy with the wrinkles around our eyes and grey in our hair? You know this is totally inevitable. It’s something that is going to happen to each and every one of us. I feel that the laugh lines around our smiles, the crow-feet around our eyes, the lack of plumpness on our mouths and the grey in our hair have their own stories. Just like the stretch marks around a mum’s belly — they are our tiger stripes — that we carry as a reminder of a beautiful new life we fought to have. So why are we trying to fight a natural cycle instead of embracing it, loving it and revelling in its beautiful inner strength?

So, as I was baking my sourdough bread, and spending my day with mother starters, that have come down from over a century of being passed around, I felt we need to be a little kinder to the older people in our life, respect the fact that they come with a wealth of knowledge, if we are willing to have the patience to listen.

Be kinder to yourself, and know that every grey hair, every line and every wrinkle is beautiful, and comes with a wealth of mistakes and lessons, that are unique to you. Just like the mother starter that comes with years of accumulated strains that makes the most awesome, aromatic and delectable bread.

Mother Nature is so beautiful and respected for all the time she has spent on Earth, and how she changes with each passing season and embraces all changes and challenges. I strive to be like that, welcoming to all experiences in life and embracing any new phase in life, with joie de vivre. Don’t you?