Crash Landing on Ayurveda
By: Sakina Kapadia
Tags: Health, Lifestyle, Nutrition, Habits, Ayurveda

The other day, when I was on the phone with my sister and she asked ,why did you choose Ayurveda? I couldn’t remember, so I decided to trace back…

I didn’t get the cut off marks in NEET that are required to get into MBBS, so I decided to opt for BAMS, Bachelor of Ayurveda Medicine and Surgery. I got into it thinking, it’s a combined course and I’ll have to just study ayurveda to get the passing score, the rest of the time I’ll focus on modern medicine. I also read up on the internet about it ,and it said that the teaching medium will be Hindi, Marathi and English. Sanskrit will be taught in the first year as a language.

In my mind, I thought surely it’ll be just a bit of sanskrit here and there and most of it would have to be in English. And since the material would be in English, they couldn’t possibly teach us in Marathi or Hindi. So I entered my college, one of the oldest and best Ayurveda colleges in my state and it looked like an old forgotten building. I thought what could a place like this possibly teach me. Still, I went in and sat in my classroom.

The teacher came in, wrote a shlok, a verse in sanskrit on the black board and taught us in Marathi. The next teacher came in and did the same. And I waited for someone to come and teach us in English or even Hindi, but to no avail. They did ask how many people didn’t understand Marathi or were from an English medium school, and would sometimes try and teach us in Hindi. Yet, it often got me frustrated. Because there were just more shlokas to learn, sanskrit to understand and get comfortable with Marathi as a medium of teaching.

But in the midst of this, in the process of getting accustomed to this kind of learning process, I got acquainted with Ayurveda. And that’s what really helped me going. They taught me about the three doshas, vata, pitta, kapha and how they work differently in each and every person’s body. They taught me that every person, due to a person’s mental state, body structure and diet is different. And hence, every person, every individual deserves a different treatment. We learned the physiology and anatomy of a living being, and not merely just a body.

It was all very new to me. The kind of human body was taught to us since school was very different. Anyone would be sceptical and think, what is this and how is this even possible? But like the equations we studied in physics or the theorems of geometry, it had its own logic. And that’s why I guess its principles held true even after five thousand years of its inception. And slowly, a seed of Ayurveda was sprouting in my mind.

It was my professors, in college that implanted that seed in my mind and later my mentor who constantly watered it. But we’ll talk about him later. The professors that I had in my first year were truly incredible. They helped me to understand the subjects, the names of which I couldn’t pronounce. Be it our sanskrit mam, who took the pain of dictating notes like we were in school, be it the strict sharir kriya mam or another quirky professor who would explain to us everything by talking really fast and moving around a lot.

One of the sharir rachna (anatomy) and this professor of sharir kriya were the practicing doctors. So in every lecture, they’d tell us clinical cases that were or weren’t related to the topic. These cases really piqued my interest.

Some of them were funny, like that of a fifth grader who was depressed because he didn’t have a girlfriend or that of a man whose disease was caused due to regularly having vada pao fried in oil found near the railway station. Some of them, like being able to tell if a patient is pregnant by feeling their pulse, or treating a patient declared untreatable, inspired awe. In all of these cases what really kept me hooked was the depth that they had gone, to treat their patients, to go till the root cause.

I still hadn’t decided what field to practice, but a new door was opened to me and I leaned in to check.

***

“How many times do you pee?

What colour is your pee?

How many times do you poop?

What colour is your poop?

How much pressure do you need to apply while pooping?

Did you have any medical problems since you were an infant?

Did your mother have any problems before/ while she was pregnant?”

What? What kind of questions were these? Three months into my course, I thought let’s check this ‘Ayurvedic treatment’ out so I had come to a clinic of one of my professors. I was here for a regular check up for some acne and running nose, not to trace back my life to when I was a foetus. I didn’t understand the relevance of them asking my schedule, or if I ate only when I was hungry or what time I took a bath. I respected my professor and since I had to wait more than an hour for my number to come, I thought surely this stuff has some relevance.

I went in, he put a hand on my pulse, looked at my history. He told me not to have tomatoes, spicy foods and avoid non veg. Also not to have things like milkshakes or having tea/milk with food. I understood that the kind of food we have affects the levels of the three doshas in your body, but I didn’t really understand why. When he explained it, I just nodded my head, said,”Yes sir” and “Okay sir”, but really I was just faking it cause I didn’t want my professor to think I was a dud. I didn’t understand what the big deal was, I mean I had been having this food since I was a kid, surely my body was accustomed to it, why do I need to change it now?

Still, come to think of it ,I had been to so many doctors for my really old problems like running nose, various kinds of rashes on my skin, a bad stomach that reacted to everything, yet no one had asked me these many questions. All they did was hand over a prescription or recommend a surgery. It had worked fine till now for me, had got the job done, but now it had got me thinking. You see, to me it seemed like all these multitude of problems happened to me without any rhyme or reason. Now, it feels like finally someone is looking at the whole picture, not just parts of it and will find an answer for me.

And slowly and steadily I did understand the whys and hows. I don’t know how and I don’t know when all the pieces of jigsaw slowly fit and made complete sense. That’s the beauty of ‘Kala sanskar’, the effect of time on our brain.

It was really simple. We are made up of the food we eat. It’s that food that helps us grow from a foetus to a grown up. So, the properties of food we eat, will have an impact on our body. Like different kinds of wood produces different papers with various thickness and texture, different kinds of material make up different cloths ,different kinds of food make up different bodies. It is the properties of these food substances, hot, cold, heavy, light, sweet, sour, spicy, salty, dry, greasy, that decide the properties of our body. And that’s just a small part of the jigsaw.

The big picture is formed by our mental state, the mood in which we eat this food, the place where it is formed, the place where we live, the kinds of food consumed together, the ability to digest that food, if the food consumed before was digested and our routine like our sleeping pattern, exercise,etc .

For example, if a person goes in extreme weather conditions, like in really cold areas, our body begins to freeze. So to prevent that from happening, we eat hot food or sit near logs of fire. Similarly, when a person who lives in hot or tropical climate areas consumes food of hot potency, like eggs, meat, alcohol or spicy food, wishes to have food with cold potency. Yet, here we are demanding for that other cup of chai in scorching summer heat!

That is why when we consume food of the same kind constantly, or do anything extreme like extreme travel, extreme exercise, extreme junk combined with all the aforementioned factors, there is a collision of all of it in our body. Like that of extreme heat and pressure, there is a shift in earth’s plates and a volcano erupts. Because our body is ruled by the principles of nature. It takes care of itself when there is little turmoil, but often those small things build up and pile into something big , like you know global warming.

***

As this knowledge started to settle in my brain, I started observing people more closely. I observed what they ate, how they worked when they slept. A lot of times I’d see people eat simply because food was presented in front of them. I was guilty of that too. It was just another thing that everyone did and hence was considered normal. That led me to remember something a professor said, he said “Even if a deer walks past a lion, he won’t attack it, unless he’s hungry but a human will eat anything they’re presented with irrespective of that.”

It led me to think what our body would say if it could:

Body ,”Why are you giving me food? I didn’t ask for it!” Person ,”But I like how it smells and tastes!” Body ,”But now you’ve given me so much work to do! I was busy digesting your last meal, now I’ll have to digest this too!” Person looks around,”Well, yeah ,sorry.” The next day Person: “I’m so tired ,I need to eat food to energize myself.” Body, “Damn you fish brain, you are tired cause I’m working overtime! I’m still busy digesting your last two meals!” “But food will give you strength to work. I feel so good after I’ve had something!” Body *shrugs* After some time: Person, “I feel tired, my stomach is heavy, I feel like puking.” Body, “Well, I told you so.”

Our body wouldn’t be able to say anything and then we’d outsource the blame to something else: a virus, or a bacteria.It was a very human thing to do.

And as I saw old people, middle aged people, teenagers, children, were all patients of some kind. Their disease had a name, diabetes, hypertension, arthritis, some were nameless, like skin rashes, acidity, headaches. Some blamed it on the lifestyle, some on pollution, some blamed it on stress, but nobody knew the exact reason. They all looked on the outside, cause they’d never been taught to look on the inside.

Now when I looked at them, I found myself in possession of an answer key, that I could probably share with them, only if they extended a hand for help.

***

Among ayurvedic students there was a general practice of joining clinics since second year. It helped you to observe the patients , understand them, the course of treatment and do various practical procedures. One would argue, isn’t that the reason you go to college? But like I said it was an integrated course, and so the treatment given was also mixed, i.e mostly allopathic, partly ayurvedic. You could do your own ayurvedic diagnosis and give treatment accordingly, but you would need someone to show you how.

There was a fairly new vaidya with command over sanskrit and great understanding of ayurvedic texts. We asked if we could join his clinic and after talking to him once, I knew that this is my guru, my mentor. You see, even in one conversation, he had asked me questions that made me reflect deep into myself and my actions.

Going to the clinic helped me understand patients and their multitude of problems. Someone had said, in an ayurvedic clinic you’d get bored in two days as only chronic patients go there and they all have the same kinds of problems. They didn’t realise that chronicity covered a wide range of spectrum of illnesses.

With every new patient, my mentor took the time to explain the importance of avoiding the hetu, the route cause which had caused the disease, be it the food they consume or their routine. And still there’d be patients who would say that ayurveda has a lot of dietary restrictions. I understood where they came from, In our society following a diet meant that you have a severe illness or you are too old. Yet there were things that people never considered.

Our body is used to the type of food and lifestyle that our ancestors had. A hundred or two hundred years ago, our ancestors had food in accordance with what was suitable to the regional climate and availability. All the native dishes were prepared in accordance to that. Their life and sleeping pattern were governed by the laws of nature. They woke up when the sun rose and slept when the sun went down.

Now we live in a world where what’s on our plate in front of us didn’t exist on our ancestors plates a hundred years ago. Hum sab banjare hai, i.e we all migrate from the place of our origin to move to another city or country for work or marriage. We use technology to work in the night, sleep in the day. The climate around us is haywire. We expose ourselves to a climate that our body isn’t used to and continue to keep eating food that isn’t suitable for that particular climate or region. Every vegetable and every type of food is available anywhere now, you can have mexican food in India and visa versa. Idli, dosa, i.e south Indian cuisine is available in central India and chole bhature is available in the south. This extensive availability of food causes us to consume food that isn’t suitable to our body type or environment. And our society helps us celebrate it. Fast food restaurants give you offers, delivery apps constantly send you messages. Our festivities are grander than ever. We all want to have what the other person is having. Like the capitalist society that we live in, we all drive ourselves on greed rather than our body’s needs. And yet fail to even consider that our lifestyle could be remotely responsible for our ill health.

We never sit and reflect on our actions. Cause we never thought that there would be a need to do that. But now the need has risen and we have many unanswered questions to which we can turn to Ayurveda. Just like Dumbelodre in Harry Potter said,"Help will always be given at Hogwarts to those who ask for it.” In the same way, help will always be given by Ayurveda and its servants , you need only extend for a hand.