The curious case of the nosy healer

Quasi imaginary conversation with a ‘city slicker’.
Me: “What do you do when you are sick?”
Him: “Pop a pill.. stupid”
Me: “Umm.. what if there are no pills?”
Him: “Guess I’ll just have to go to the 24 hr pharmacy or go to the doc’s chamber”
Me: “Lets say there is no pharmacy, 24 hour or 2 hours. Lets say there isn’t a doctor’s chamber. Lets say there isn’t a damn doctor at all and lets say you’re so far away from the nearest pharmacy that it’ll take you two days just to reach there if you walk. And you will have to walk because, lets say there are no vehicles.”
Silence. More silence.
Him: “Lets say I hit you on the head with this <expletive> hockey stick? Would that be enough to shut your <expletive> <expletive> <expletive> mouth and your <impressive expletive> questions?”
Needless to say, I decided to quasi-stop the quasi-imaginary conversation. But think about it. Its not so far from reality as you may think. People staying in remote villages face such situations across the country, and since northeast India is especially badly connected with remote areas, our joke is their reality.
I meet a fair share of interesting people during visits to such areas, but none are more interesting than the traditional healers and masseurs found in these villages (see story on the ojha of Garo Hills). They are the medicine men and women of the villages, using a combination of herbal medicine, massage, acupressure, and folk remedies to put an MD to shame. You may very well use the ‘Q’ word and call them quacks, but the villagers will tell you innumerable tales of how people were cured and even ‘brought back from the jaws of death’ by them.
So, there I was in a Monpa village called Mukto, 80 kilometres from Tawang at my friend Sangay’s house. There was so much beauty around, I was overdosing on it. The buddhist ethic meant that you woke up in the morning with laughing thrushes hopping around and … and well, laughing at your dropped jaw (this is worth mentioning as the most bird-brained bird would think twice before coming anywhere near any village in northeast India, unless they wanted to end up as barbecue'). Live and let live really happened here. But I digress.
Sangay had hurt his back the previous day trying to lift something heavy, making his old hernia injury flare up again. The sub-zero temperatures at night didn’t help the cause. There was ‘supposed’ to be one government doctor in the village. As happens very frequently in remote areas, he was not interested in spending his time in a village and had been untraceable for the last few days. So, we had to meet meme Wangchu (pronounced maymay, meaning ‘grandfather’ in Monpa language).
As we wove through the small alleys separating the stone and mud houses in the early morning chill, Sangay turned to me and said “you may be surprised”. It was an understatement. We knocked and entered the dark room with just one small wood fire with a huge kettle perched on top of it. A man was bending over the fire with the traditional Monpa yak hair cap on his head. As he lifted his face up, I could see that his nose wasn’t a nose anymore. It was almost like he had started morphing into an elephant with the nose lengthening itself into a trunk.
 

After the initial talk and introductions, Sangay told him his problem. He rolled Sangay’s T shirt up and felt around for what seemed like pressure points and tangled nerve points. After identifying his target spot, he kept one finger on it and with the other hand lifted a burning log out of the fire. He spat once on his index finger, took the orange coals and pressed his finger into it. He kept it there for a very long time until his finger too seemed to be glowing and smoking. This glowing finger he jammed into the target spot which happened to be in my friend’s back. I could see Sangay biting his lips in the pain. Meme repeated this a few more times at two other points. The treatment was declared over, for the day. Sangay was advised to come everyday and get a hot jab in his back. His face wore a grim look. We were then offered some butter tea. As we headed back from meme Wagchuk's house, I asked Sangay how he was feeling . “Better. I think”.
The following day the pain returned and we had to ride a bike in zero degrees to the nearest town (Jang) only to find that both the doctor’s there too were away. And to top it all off, the only medical shop in the town didn’t even have a painkiller. But that's another story. I did do some research on meme’s condition and it seems like its a bad case of Rhinophyma. I remembered him lifting his nose up to drink his butter tea. It didn't seem to bother him half as much as it was bothering me. Atleast he was there, when nobody else was. The people of Mukto sleep peacefully knowing that doctors may come and go, but meme Wangchuk will always be there for them.
PS: I was pleasantly surprised to see that there was an attempt to have a meeting of all the ethnomedicine practitioners in Arunachal recently. I hope meme Wangchuk went for it. Read about it here: www.ias.ac.in/currsci/10mar2010/607.pdf

In Absentia

Picture taken at Upper Siang, Arunachal. One of the few reasons that led to PFA and subsequently HIT 

After what seems to be an interminable pause, this blog is finally back. What do I have to say in my defense ? Let me try, but before that listen to this :

The best part about procrastination is that you are never bored, because you have all kinds of things that you should be doing.

Lest you start getting any ideas from the above statement, let me assure you that I have been suffering from two very serious forms of psychosomatic disorders that have prevented me from discharging my duties to the fullest. One may be familiar to my fellow ecologists as PFA (Post Fieldwork Angst). It may also be referred to, in a casual and disparaging tone as PFFT (Post Fieldwork Full Tension) by those ecologists who are not affected by it. This disorder is brought about by the return of the affected persons to large cities after a prolonged stay in remote forests, mountains, islands and other such exotic locations. This condition has known to be more pronounced if the individual has been in a place where taxes on alcohol are extremely low. However this point has not been established completely. This may not be the appropriate forum for a discussion on the detailed prognosis and treatment of the disorder, however it is accompanied by extreme sensitivity to loud sounds, pollution, reports, meetings and most socially accepted forms of ‘work’.

After spending the greater part of the first two months of this year in some of the most beautiful parts of Arunachal Pradesh, and returning to Bangalore to experience the worst summer in many years. There was no way I could have escaped.

The second disorder is of a much more general nature and may be familiar to most people in my age group (please note how I did not say ‘your age group’). The condition is known as ANUS.

Actually not. I just made that up. ANUS stands for American Nihilistic Underground Society. No kidding. Check out their website here.

What was (is?) affecting me is known as HIT (Hyper Introspection Trauma). As a person recovering from a HIT, I am unable to introspect much on this disorder and I am sure you can understand that. You are free, however to form your own interpretations, but please be kind to me.

The good news is that its all behind me now. I will surely try to live up to the regular nonsensical quality of this blog and provide you valuable information on useless stuff that you wont find anywhere else.