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Ranjit Singh
Kottakkal, Kerala.
January 19,06.
Eleven years ago, my wife, Surjeet, complained that she had pain in her right knee. At that time, we lived in
India in our newly built house in sector 44 of Chandigarh. We were comfortable with our high bracket income in the
booming real estate industry. Money was no problem to us and, therefore, I had no fear as I could afford to get her
the
best possible treatment. As a first step, I took her to a young lady doctor, practicing in our residential neighborhood.
Her response was a signal of fear to me. She told us that it was arthritis, an incurable disease, caused by
degeneration. The patient has to live with it, taking pain-killers, controlling body weight and resting when in pain.
Time passed by. Surjeet did not feel much because of her healthy physique. In the year 1995, we moved to New York,
a different climate, different weather and a different environment. There were no domestic servants to give her
helping
hand in housekeeping; spells of winter with snow and blizzard, everything was conspiring to increase her pain. I would
watch her restlessness, with pain at night. But I was helpless. Visits to doctors, dozes of painkillers like Tylenol extra
strength, Celebrex, Ibuprofen, Vex, coupled with physiotherapy and even injections in both knees-nothing were
helping
her. All what the doctors advised, she did, including exercises and change of type of shoes-from sandals to sneakers.
One day, I had shock of my life. She came back from hospital. The doctor had given her a stick to walk with. I knew,
we
were ageing but never felt, we were growing old. A new development was getting slowly visible. My knees had begun
paining, too. Arthritis overtook me faster. A few hours sitting on chair would cause swelling in my feet. Stiffness in legs
began hampering my walk. Within a brief spell of time, my walk became unstable; knees began cracking. Whereas,
Surjeet could still walk without a stick for some time, I could not walk without it, at all.
With no decline in our intellectual, emotional and physical activities, I began fearing that the increasing pain and
advancing arthritis would push us into disability and inaction, a state of body and mind, I did not like to envision.
Throughout our life, we have been social, group-oriented and hard-working business family. Sitting long hours in a
car
and with our son on the steering, the whole family, would go 400-500 miles a day to explore and see places in U.S.A,
living in hotels far away from New York, eating in restaurants and hiking in places, as far away as California, Florida or
Maines, were our main pleasures. I feared that perhaps those days were gone for ever. And perhaps, I would not be
able to realize my long-cherished dream of traveling through the world, doing free-lance journalism.
Visibly, both Surjeet and I look normal; we can talk well, can work long hours; we go to parties, to movies; I attend and
address political gatherings, enjoy writing, and attend to my mortgage business. But I had begun living with a fear. If
not halted, arthritis would halt us. Unfortunately, doctors tell us that humans are helpless as far as arthritis is
concerned.
One night, we were having dinner at home.A young girl, Divya Mathur, a close friend of our daughter-in-law, was our
guest. We were discussing pain. She wanted us to meet a man, she called “Uncle Danny”, living in an apartment in
her
coop building He had been treated in an ayurvediv hospital, somewhere in Kerala, India. But I, never, had faith in
ayurvedic treatment. If allopathic medicines administered in marbel-floored blocks of New York hospitals could not
relieve us of pain, how will a hospital, somewhere in a remote village-town of Kerala, do it? But when it is a matter of
pain, we, humans go to any length. Divya fixed an appointment and drove us to the person, she wanted us to meet.
He is Mr. Dennis Daniel, a retired Air-India customer-relations Manager, who retired from the New York office at
the age of 64, three years ago. He is now stationed at New York. When we met Daniel in his apartment, we saw him
walking straight and did not give the impression that he had ever been unwell at any time, in the past.
Sitting on his sofa, in front of us, Daniel told us that he was not like we were seeing him that day. “I could not lift my
leg
without support. It took me five minutes to reach the door to open it if someone called on me. I could not, even, put
the
key in the lock to open the door.” He stood up. walked brisk, brought a bicycle and began working on it freely.
Inspired by Mr. Daniel, we flew to Calicutt via Mumbai and reached Kottakkal , about 26 miles by taxi, with some hope
but more skepticism in heart. It was 6th January,2006 and 4.30 P.M.
DR, Francis was the first to visit us in our room # 307. His job was to talk to us on our problems and the treatment
we had undertaken earlier, and then to report and discuss with his colleagues and seniors.
Next morning, a team of four doctors, led by Dr. Ravikumaran, visited us. Treatment began the same day, which in my
case, consisted of medication and one hour massage by 6 young boys, who made me lie down, all bare, and rubbed
my whole body with 8 bottles of comfortably hot, medicated oil.
Evenings were free with us to meet and socialize with the under-treatment community in the park, lobby and canteen.
It
was perhaps sixth or seventh evening. We were sitting in the lobby, A Punjabi, Sikh couple came. occupied two sofa
chairs near us and greeted us with smile.
His name is Jagtar Singh and he owns a big, wood furniture-factory near London. He is one of those British
Indians who were ousted by Idi Amin from Uganda. He told me that it was his third visit to Kottakkal,Arya Vaidya Sala.
He had a message to give. "when I came first time. I was brought in a wheel chair and put into a bed of this hospital,
with support. When I came second time, I could walk by myself with the support of a stick. Now third time, I don't need
even a stick. Now I have developed the capacity to walk a mile or so, drive to work myself and make wooden furniture
with my own hands. I carry this cane, as the roads are rough here. As to demonstrate, he asked me to look towards
him and stood up straight, without taking support from the arms of the chair, he was sitting on. "So, have patience."
Smiling and greeting, the humble couple walked to the canteen. And I decided to listen to his story, soon and in full.
After three days, we met them in their room. The story that Jagtar Singh told us was a success story of the Ayurveda
system of medicine and stood in quite contrast to the allopathic and surgical methods of pain management.
"A few years ago, when I went to my village in Punjab, a blister in my foot began troubling me. The doctor cut the
swollen part and bandaged it. I went back to London but the wound became worse. I was treated there for that. I don't
know if it was related or unrelated to it, I began having pain in the lower parts of my backbone. The doctor kept
treating
me with painkillers. The situation worsened. I lost almost all flesh on the whole of my right leg and it looked like a
bamboo stick. It became so weak that to move it, I had to use both my hands to lift it up and to keep it where I wanted
to. Pain began increasing, flesh near the backbone reducing and weakness overpowering me. I stopped driving,
stopped working and was bed-ridden."
At this moment, Mrs. Jagtar Singh intervened. "His pain was so acute that he would not sleep the whole night. He
would
cry, weep, shout and would not like to eat anything. Even painkillers would give him slow relief. One day, he asked me
to give him an injection, by which he meant injection of death(mercy killng)." Mrs. Jagtar Singh continued, "How can a
wife see her husband dying? I would console him with the idea that a surgery, which is due soon, will cure him."
From here, Jagtar Singh picked up the story and began telling, "My surgery was scheduled within five months. I began
living with the pain, hoping for it to go, one day."
"Four months still to go for surgery, a friend of ours, jeweler by profession, came to visit us. He told us about this
ayurvedic hospital. I was put in a wheel chair and flown to Bombay and then to Calicutt and then driven to this hospital
in their ambulance. Just fifteen days down the time, my pain had become bearable. And after a treatment of 28 days, I
flew back, with wheel chair nowhere near me."
But the story does not end here. Jagtar Singh had started walking with the support of a stick. He decided to visit his
surgeon on the appointed day. In the hospital in London, a team of doctors put him on the examination table, checked
his leg that had begun gaining flesh, made him move his limbs and muscles, did an MIR of the back and made him sit
in the waiting room. And when they called him again after some time, it was just to tell him: "Mr. Singh, you are all
right.
You don't need any surgery. A miracle has happened on you."
Jagtar Singh is here for third time to keep himself fit, to face the challenges of age. He is 67 and works for his own
living. He owns a big factory, which his son takes care. But he daily drives to work in his Mercedes and works with his
own hands to manufacture in full, from cutting to nailing and to polishing and finishing, the holy "PALKI SAHIB", in
which
the Sikhs respectfully place their holy book, Guru Granth Sahib. The work gives Jagtar Singh, the feelings that he is a
normal human being with no deformities.
We came out of their room, thinking whether it was a miracle or miraculous treatment. We got the answer, the same
day. In the elevator, we happened to meet an Indian lady from Canada whose neck was immobilized after an accident.
She moved it briskly to show us that she had improved after just a week long treatment. Of the 150+ people under
treatment, we happened to meet, greet and talk to more than ten, all of whom were at some or the other stage of
recovery. One evening in the canteen at dinnertime, we got a seat at a table, one chair of which had been already
occupied by a young man in his 30s. He was Bijoy Dey from Calcutta, trainer of a company’s marketing team.
Addressing my wife who was sitting in front of him, he said: “Auntie Ji, I could not look up, down and sideways. I could
walk only baby-steps. All this happened after I fell down unconscious while teaching a class and was hospitalized for 3
months. Doctor advised me surgery of the backbone, ordered me bed-ridden, warning that if I walked fifty steps, they
would be the last steps of my life. After 3 months of hospitalization and no results in sight, I came to this ayurvedic
shrine(he stressed the word shrine). After twenty eight days of treatment, I went back to Calcutta and joined my job.”
In gratitude, Bijoy wrote a 65-line poem “Why Only Me?” in which first he complained to God. Why he alone, was
targeted for all that pain and misery. But when strength and normalcy returned to him, instead of thanking God, he
thanked this ayurvedic hospital. A few lines from his poem:
“Doctors here are, real abductors,
Not of man but of pain….
Going deep in sea, corals are there,
Come to Arya Vaidya Sala,.relief is here.”
A message has gone deep into our psyche. P.S.Varier, Kottakkal Arya Vaidya Sala
is not only a hospital but also a temple of hope for all of those who suffer silently with
pain.
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