My India 13- 1950-55

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(4) Herbal Therapy: I am totally scared of herbs. Their effects can be mind-blowing.

[Aside: I share with Thurber, and perhaps RKN, their hobby of vividly bringing to Life dead-metaphors.

The first time I hear such buzz-words, I feel immensely enriched.

There was this crank, Dr. AW, (ME), loosely attached to MIT, who suddenly made his appearance in the placid KGP Campus around 1995. As usual, someone or the other, maybe Amalendu, introduced me to him as soon as he settled down. I was like a Thermodynamic Sink for all things and folks crazy. He set himself up in the Technology Guest House, before as suddenly disappearing one day after six months. The day I looked at him I was reminded of Rabindranath's Gora (Oh, well, my tryst with Bengal started a decade or so before I happened to land there. I read a very lucid English version of Gora a half-century ago when I was in my University at Waltair; we too were 'intellectuals' then. As Supratim says in another context, it looks as though I read it only yesterday. It made a terrific impression on my young mind. I guess that was when my weakness for Bengal Renaissance took over. 500 pages of close print went down in 5 days of continuous reading. Paresh Babu, Binoy, Sucharita, Labonya, Lolita (?), Anandamoyi, Gora himself, interminable arguments between Brahmo Samaj and Orthodoxy, Love Interests, Ganges Trips....).

AW was white, Jewish, 35, lean, thin, wearing dhuti, punjabi, drinking chai at Harry's, teetotaler, non-smoker, vegetarian, Indophile, self-confessed kanjoos, travel-bitten, writing articles on Samadhi and stuff, but lately in love with a non-Jewish Latino...just a character any novelist would love meeting for his next book. By and by he used to visit my Qrs for a chat and Tea and Idli. While he was there at KGP, he was attending a Course (IIT squeezed dollars from him too). Very likable, not at all brash.

One fine morning at Harry's, where I was quietly gathering wool, he approached me with a handful of 'Local Intellectuals' and invited me to join a 'Think-Tank' they were raising at IIT KGP. I got up, bowed repeatedly like Alice in Wonderland, curtsied continuously, smiled broadly and wanly till they left me alone.

'Think-Tank'? A brand-new addition to my poor vocabulary.

By now you know that I used to run away from Harry's at the sight of this crowd whenever it was on the horizon. Maybe you also know by now, I have a fairly fertile and dirty imagination. Images crowded my mind of these thinkers swimming like toads in a shit-tank, fighting among themselves like nobody's business. Gora becoming Kaala after every bout.

Then again, after a few years, Amalendu of all people, invited me to join a 'Brain-Storming' Session they were holding to get rid of the evil effects of the existing regime, maybe. Then and there I go about vividly imagining brainstorms like booming thunder, forked lightning, fireworks, Nor'Westers, broken glass-panes, maybe hail which follows relentlessly after every Session.

But, the first time I heard: 'mind-blowing' was extremely pleasant unlike the other two.

This cute and very lovely film actress (whose films I never watched though) appeared in one of those Reality-Shows on TV, where she was a 'special judge' for a dance-cum-song competition. Since she was only there for a one-off appearance, it was evident she would like to capitalize on the show, by being as sweet as she can, leaving the harsher judgments to the 'resident judges'.

After every piece, she would be given the mike for her comments and she would smile, throw her hair nonchalantly aside like a broom, look completely enchanted by the talent, lift her fair and lovely hands Heavenwards, but, utter one and only one word repeatedly: "Absolutely mind-blowing, Absolutely mind-blowing...!".

I guess by the time the Show ended, her sweet and meaty mind would have been blown to several bits and pieces, like what happened to the innocent bystanders in a queue for chat when the 'bombs' went off disconcertingly a couple of years ago.

Since then I am reminded of her fair face and foolish figure whenever I get to read or occasionally write: 'mind-blowing']

Well, as I was saying, herbs can be mind-blowing literally.

Poppy for one. During a particularly vulnerable decade at IIT KGP, I have seen with my own eyes at least half a dozen kids going to rack and ruin by this plant and its various derivatives. Ghastly.

But, as in homeopathy, in minute doses, it has medicinal value, particularly in stopping umpteen visits to the loo, with the pleasant side effect of drowsiness, a weak form of a little 'high'.

The less said about the other leaf, tobacco, in its various alkaloidal forms, the better. It is widely agreed that nicotine dependency is the hardest to get over (I took 15 years, that too by pure and simple blackmail).

Yet, hooka is prescribed for some digestive disorders and even women in UP, I am told, take it as a medicinal swig. I myself know that when tobacco reigns, certain forms of intestinal flora are incapacitated.

And, tobacco in the leaf form is a known cure for toothache.

Tobacco leaf is known to immobilize certain palatable fish. This was widely used to catch fish rather easily. Dump some tobacco leaves in their path in streams, collect the fish and go home. Tra-la-la!

Take Tea. A wonderful herb, if any. No one objects to Tea. I have several cups a day, with negligible side-effects; the main effect being a sort of subdued happiness and 'pick-me-up'.

But these capitalist bio-pharma multinationals are not happy that the Tea Industry is reaping all profits leaving nothing to them or their associates.:

So, first there were, as the Holy Bible would have it, Vitamins and everybody was prescribing them and making us gulp them in alphabetical order. Then there were enzymes, from the home-grown to the 'phoren' ones to tone up our weak systems.

Then one heard of antacids, then cortisones, then antihystamines, and so on and so forth enriching the poor man's vocabulary and emptying his purse.

The other day I heard of a new thing called: 'antioxidants' five times in a single day. Apples were supposed to be rich in them. Also bananas if you can't afford apples. So far so good. But I found a new thing called 'Green Tea Extract'. Each capsule costs Rs 10 and makes practically no difference. When challenged they say that 'antioxidants' prevent cancers of all kinds.

There comes a stage when 'Cure is cheaper than Prevention'.

I am happy with 'Brown Tea Extract' in liquid form, with milk, ilachi, hot and sweet, costing only Rs 4.

Herbs can kill. Really. Places with too many herbs, flowers, gardens etc can be deadly for a certain type of unfortunate individuals susceptible to asthma {'allergic bronchitis', if you want it in all its glory: a chronic lung disorder that is marked by recurring episodes of airway obstruction (as from bronchospasm) manifested by labored breathing accompanied especially by wheezing and coughing and by a sense of constriction in the chest, and that is triggered by hyperreactivity to various stimuli (as allergens or rapid change in air temperature) Mouthful of asthma}.

KGP for all its greenery is deadly for them, like one of our campus ladies. Once they run away to another place they are totally free from it and would never want to visit KGP again, like DM, my Project Student, who is a big gun in GR somewhere in UK (?).

Bangalore practically killed one of my friends, who was fortunately transferred to Varanasi at the last minute.

In our school compound in our Village, there used to be a plant, whose leaves were well-known to induce terrible itching when they are brushed lightly against the skin of your fore-arm.

Again, it is a medicinal plant in some formulations against resistant forms of skin infections.

Atharvana Veda, I am told, is full of herbal remedies.

And, in Hyderabad, Herbal means 'Beauty Aid!!



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