Who is a quack?

I met two medical practitioners last Tuesday. One possessing an MBBS in Alternative Medicine and another a plus two (a revelation which I take as testimony to my skills in fieldwork than their audacity). Both were offering their services for a mere Rs.20. They worked among Bengali, Oriya and Assamese migrants in Kochi.
The idea of quack has interesting genealogies and is entwined with the rise of modern medicine and how it annihilated and devalorised other medical practices and traditions. But P. Sainath says that such practitioners could be killers in rural India where there is little access to health care. He particularly gives this example of a pregnant woman who died after too many saline drips administered by such a practitioner.
In Kochi, the single most disease that is cured by these practitioners is body pain felt after long hours of arduous manual labour. Usually a liberal dose of pain killer cures such symptoms. These workers work in quarries, plywood factories and chemical factories. Pain all over the body and chronic fatigue.
Why do these workers choose these practitioners instead of our not so bad government hospitals? They describe their ailments to these doctors who speak their language.
At one level, it demonstrates the need for affordable health care among migrants in Kerala. At another, it questions our perceptions of health care as malayalees where we seek the most specialized, preferably expensive doctors and hospitals.
The misfortune of falling ill and having to encounter the health system in an alien land is dreaded so much that the workers of Banma, Bihar when they went to work in the Delhi metro took the village healer, called guruji, who does massaging besides ritual forms of healing, mainly to ease body pain. Guruji is a handicapped person and has a tri-cycle. He does not work at the site. He lives off the fee he gets when he does healing. He gets food for free from the common kitchen of the workers from the village.
The practioners in Kochi are not ritual healers, they practice allopathy.
The Bengali practitioner says “I came here as a toursist and saw the suffering of Bengalis and decided to help them.”The Assamese practitioner is being promoted by a local medical shop which sends up Assamese customers who visit their shop.
After talking to some workers, I felt that they do not trust malayali doctors with their bodies, much less their ailments. “They keep using the needle too much”
The good doctor, bad doctor and the quack?

Laughing Unabated

The Hindu, 13 May 2009: Ajmal’s smiling and laughing continued unabated, a
day after the court reprimanded him. On Tuesday, the court once again chided the
accused for his behaviour in court. When the butts of the rifles were being
examined, Ajmal seemed to be tickled to pieces.
However, Mr. Tahaliyani took
strong objection to his laughing when details of Ombale’s death were being
mentioned. The judge remarked that at every mention of Ombale, Ajmal tended to
laugh. Ajmal stood up and said that this was not his intention.

Why is he laughing? It might seem gross disregard for what is going on or the seriousness of the crime he committed. But I do not think so.

I think he is genuinely amused by the name Ombale and even more genuinely tickled by the butt of the rifle. It might also mean that he crossed the threshold of the mirage called hope. Must be feeling immense freedom. Otherwise what could lead to this irreverant laughter?

I also get unduly amused by certain names however prosaic and ordinary they might sound. Ombale is not prosaic by any stretch of imagination and the fact that Ombale is dead does not diminish the potential of his name to amuse! So.. Ajmal. go on and laugh because you have nothing to lose!

There is no place for place! by hakim sanai translation by Ivan Granger

There is no place for place!
How can a place
house the maker of all space,
or the vast sky enclose
the maker of heaven?

He told me:
“I am a homeless treasure.
The world was made
to give you a place to stand
and see me.”

Tell me, if the one you seek
is placeless,
why put your shoes on?
The real road
is found by polishing, polishing
the mirror of your heart.

Untitled

Your music ploughs my heart

Setting sail in my veins

Cutting right through love and hate

Making them vapour and smoke

Boredom and Loneliness

This post is dedicated to understanding the difference between boredom and loneliness.

Boredom is when you feel that you have pursued an action or an emotion or a person enough and you do not know which is the action, emotion or person to be pursued next. Both these feelings have to be there i.e an enough and a more. I know this kid who said when she was three that she feels bored. She said it in malayalam. boradikkunnu. which translates literally into boredom is beating . So her father asked: where is it beating, darling? She said that it is in her stomach. That is true boredom, I guess. Anything you feel in your stomach is your truth. The problem is that we are mostly not even capable of truly bored. It is not a stomach boredom. You could also say that boredom can never be true because it is just not discontentment: it is discontentment plus a want.

Now, what is the nature of loneliness? Loneliness is when you feel that you are not enough. You need someone other than yourself. As you know, you could feel loneliness even when you are with someone. But basically you feel that you are not enough. You want the other to fill up your self. Is there true loneliness , a stomach loneliness?

So, boredom and loneliness are different. There will be some who would say that you are lonely when you are bored with yourself. I would beg to disagree. There is a "not enough" part in loneliness. You are not enough. And you need someone. Boredom is when you have had enough of something and you need more of something else. As you can see, this is not too subtle or anything.

So, how was your day? Were you bored or lonely today or are you a fool who thinks that you are living to make other people happy?

Lovely Video from Greenpeace

Notes on Swimming !!

I always wanted to learn swimming (apparently its compulsory in schools in many countries). One reason was the cool elegance of women when they wear swim suits. I assumed that it was swim suits which was the source of this elegance and not women wearing it. I made enquiries at the government swimming pool. An hour of swimming classes/swimming time just costs Rs.10! I felt that it would be criminal not to learn swimming when our government is being so generous! May be one of the last bastions of sircari generosity. Just before entering the pool I had to go through a security post at the entrance. I asked the security man whether they have women trainers here. He said there is one but it is not necessary that she will teach me. But I could ask her anyway, he said. Strange man, I thought.
There were two trainers standing beside the swimming pool. A man and a woman. I met the woman trainer who told me that I could buy swim suits from Parthas ( a popular textile shop). Also if I wanted to cover more (She pointed at the women who were in the pool who were not showing not even a drop of skin!), I could buy innerwear from a sports goods shop near Statue Junction.
So off I go to buy swimsuit in the evening with my sis in law. I bought a swim suit. I tried the swim suit on at the shop. I didn’t feel elegant at all when I looked at the mirrors which surrounded me in the trial room. Oh shit! I thought. I am top heavy. My legs do not suit the suit. They need to be more … what.. elegant. So basically, I went and bought the inners and tights as well. No skin showing for me, please. Kerala is bad. Men are bad. So I won’t show my body. I rationalized to myself. When I reached home, my mother commented that you could have bought a burqua instead of so many pieces of clothing. That would have solved the problem!
Morning 9.45. 9.45-10.45 is ladies’ time. I wear my swimsuits…in the dressing room of the pool. A woman who must be in her sixties wearing knickers and a loose blouse showed me where to change and also asked me to wet my body before I get in the pool. I felt ashamed of my layers of clothing. But she is old. I told myself. I went to the pool. There was a man with a long pole in his hand. He asked me to get in the pool. The woman trainer never turned up. He asked me to take a deep breath and breath out into the pool. I did it a few times. There was a girl and a woman who were trying to paddle. I seem to have impressed the trainer with my breathing out. He said that I could begin to try to be in the water. So I leaned on the poolwall and threw myself into the water and tried breathing out into the water by immersing my whole body. After a few times my mates marveled at my ability to trust water. They commented that I am a natural. One of them was water phobic. She was yet to breath into the water like I was doing even after a month of training. I felt good after a long time about myself. Man..I am so brave.
Later I discovered that the pole in the hand of the trainer is to poke my body parts when he wants me to immerse my head or if he wants to point out that my body is going stiff which he says is sure to sink one. That is, if any part of one’s body goes tense or stiff, that will bring one down and will not help one to float.

Teacher of knowledge and wisdom

My only memory of her is a yellow frock I used to wear to my kindergarten (henceforth nursery since that's how we used to call them in Kerala). I used to love it because she loved it. She was my first teacher. I guess she must have taught me rhymes, numbers and may be alphabets. My mother remembers that on my first day in nursery, I was so happy and liked her so much that I asked my parents to leave amid wails of children being ripped away from their mothers. After some months she left teaching to join her husband in the Gulf. I was heartbroken and wore the yellow frock to bid her farewell. Nursery was never the same and I stopped attending after a while.
New nurseries happened. I bid farewell innumerable times. Life moved. Usual and unusual things hardened heart and skin. I judged myself and others. I created and contributed to happiness and misery. I interpreted and analysed myself and others. I became convinced that “the other is misery”.
I have never understood any parting or meeting. Parting was relief, tears or numbness. Meeting was joy, dread or love. Are these beyond these emotions and feelings? I was going through many partings and failed to understand why they happened or what I truly felt. I had bowed down to God in my sorrow (not in belief). I trembled in my sadness and a curtain of tears fell over my eyes. I prayed because I was sad.
I met my teacher again. She recognized me, I did not. Amid all partings, I met someone whom I thought I had lost. This time she taught me the importance of being kind and respectful to oneself. She taught me to see and accept reality as it is. She taught me the importance of living and accepting the present. Not to worry too much about one’s own wickedness and virtuousness. She taught me the difference between knowledge and wisdom.
So where do partings and meetings happen? What do they mean? Each parting is a meeting and each meeting a parting? Something like that….

Worship

I cannot exist
Without you by my side.
The city has left me lonely in its high way,
I do not know my way back home or that to yours.
Answer me,
Whisper in my ear your sweet name which I have forgotten.
Write your curses on my body
But do not ignore me and leave me.
Be my shield and my sword.
(After reading Psalms: 143 and 144)