Some friends expressed surprise that I was 'brave enough' to trust a traditional bone setter with my knee. Majority indians incidentally go to the bone setters.
Many pay tributes to traditional knowlege. Talking of traditional knowlege is worth little, unless one is personally willing to engage with it. Till then its empty talk.
The first step in engageing with people is to have faith in them. A real faith. Educated india has lost that, largely. Its faith lies in the West
P.S. My knee is much better. Its the fouth day. The vaidya said 20 days to become as 'good as new'.
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| The Clinic |
Yesterday I slipped, fell, and the knee immediately swelled and started paining severely. It
could have been a minor fracture or a muscle tear. I applied some ayurvedic medicines and waited. As the pain worsened, I needed to act. The logical move was an X-ray and an orthopaedic to first 'be safe'.
In our village, for fractures people go to Kallur, 10km from our village. There the traditional bone setters apply their medicines and bandage firmly. The most famous place for bone setting is Puttur, also in our district. But Kallur is close to our village, and the family which traditionally practices this is well known. Our village people clearly prefer this process to the plaster of paris casts. They say with the medicines applied here the healing is much faster. Despite modern nurses advising people to avoid traditional systems, people choose to go here, based on experiance.
In Chennai too there a few small shops with the board 'Putter Bone Setter' in the poorer localities. I decided to go here now, and started looking for the leads. I also called up Dr. Girija, and she advised me to proceed to a bone setter, in keeping with her faith in local practitioners. She also said that we would now have our own experiance with which to advise patients ! She has earlier sent her sister to one such place, and the fracture healed well.
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| Vidyasankar Sundaresan The Muslim man with a skull cap sitting inside, the Jesus calendar on the wall and the obviously Hindu everything else... that's the ground reality of India. |
I got the number, called up and we set out by auto. It was a tiny thatched space outside the one roomed house the bone setter lived in. It was ramshakle place, but the small table reassured. It had what is traditionally used. There was a tray of eggs, some medicinal leaf powders and some oils, apart from the bandage cloth. |
| Breaking the four eggs |
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| Adding the leaf powder |
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| Applying the paste on the bandage |
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| Folding the bandage |
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| Tying the first bandage |
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| Tying the gauze |
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| Tying the second bandage |
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| Tying the crepe bandage |
I was told to come again after four days. And assured that the pain would decrease with each day.
In our village when the Kallur bandage is tied, the patient is advised to drench the bandage with sesame oil to help healing. As the oil is costly people dont have it usually. As we used to have it for cooking, people would come and ask us for it. I called the bone setter to ask him if I could pour sesame oil over it. The bonesetter told me to certianly pour and that it would help. I poured the ayurvedic oil specific for fractures Murivenna. I poured it many times over the crepe bandage.
By morning the pain was substantially lower. The next tying is to be done after four days. Totally four tyings. I had gone to the right place.
The place of the bone setter is what dances befor my eyes. Indicating utter poverty. How unvalued our own systems of medicines are today. And how despite everything they are struggling and surviving. And questions of what to do ...
I asked the son, who has learnt the skill from his father, to come and meet Dr. Girija. Ayurvda and local systems of health are together a vast inheritence which are what will sustain this country. Both are under attrition today.
We ordinary people always come here. The fracture heals much faster with the medicines they apply, but when they set the bone the pain can be severe. One needs the shakti to bear the pain. Also the allopathic places are for the rich. They will charge for an operation, and then they will fix rods. It will take a long time to heal. Then they will charge for another operation to remove the rods. Only people with lakhs can go there.
The government hospitals are worse. They will just do an operation and put you on a bed for months. You cannot even go to the bathroom. A attender will have to keep sitting with you beside the bed.
I had a severe tear in my arm muscle some months ago. I could not raise my arm above waist level. I went to Global, and they took 10,000/-. Then I went to Santosh and the doctor told me that for another 2 years I could not ply the auto. I thought that was the end of my life. Then another friend took me to this local bone setter place in Mandavali. Just three sessions of bandageing over a month. The third session the doctor told me to bring my auto and that I would have to start driving it. The autos only had a lever to start the vehicle, but the vaidyar sat with me in the auto and made me drive around till I could.
The vaidyar saved my livlihood and so my life."
The bone setting tradition is alive as it is the choice for the majority of people. As it is alive, it delivers well, and many richer people also go there. The traditional systems need to be preserved for the greater common good.
(After 4 days)
Some friends expressed surprise that I was 'brave enough' to trust a traditional bone setter with my knee. Majority indians incidentally go to the bone setters.
Many pay tributes to traditional knowlege. Talking of traditional knowlege is worth little, unless one is personally willing to engage with it. Till then its empty talk.
The first step in engageing with people is to have faith in them. A real faith. Educated india has lost that, largely. Its faith lies in the West
#Stakes
P.S. My knee is much better. Its the fouth day. The vaidya said 20 days to become as 'good as new'.
(After 15 days)
Today, on my 4th visit to Erza the bone setter, he took a look, bent my leg firmly, made me walk and said that another bandageing would not be needed. The ligament tear or cartilage tear or small fracture, whatever it was was well recovered, he said.
P.S. My knee is much better. Its the fouth day. The vaidya said 20 days to become as 'good as new'.
(After 15 days)
Today, on my 4th visit to Erza the bone setter, he took a look, bent my leg firmly, made me walk and said that another bandageing would not be needed. The ligament tear or cartilage tear or small fracture, whatever it was was well recovered, he said.
He said the residual pain would go with the oil he gave me, and asked me to use it for a week. He told me to walk but not overwalk ! When I asked if I could cycle, he suggested I be a little patient !!
In 15 says since that fateful slip, things are almost normal. As the village people have always told me, the medicines the healer apply speeds up the healing. I think it woudl have taken longer if I had just had a plaster cast.
(After 25 days)
I went to meet Erza today. My walking was normal and painless, but at some odd positions there was some twinge.
He had a look and tied the crepe bandage again firmly. He told me that the crepe bandage should not have been removed except while bathing. I had told him that I was only tieing during long walks, and otherwise left the kne free. I then asked him if I needed agother cast, and he said no. I asked him if I needed to pay and he said no.
I am reporting this because a common misconception among the rich is that the poor may overcharge, or treat unnecessarily sometimes. In my experiance I have encountered only integrity in the poor. The rich hospitals have a greater track of doing unnecessary interventions.
(A month later)
Had a fall today, and as the leg swelled up, there was the usual doubt if it was a fracture.
(A month later)
Had a fall today, and as the leg swelled up, there was the usual doubt if it was a fracture.
In long ago years years, I would have gone to an ortho,
and taken an X ray. Now I went to the bone setter.
He took a took, took a tug, dismissed that it could
be a fracture, and gave an oil to apply liberally.
Then as we got to chatting, he said how his son though well
versed in this, wanted to try for 'police'. And his wife bewailed how the skill
would die with them.
I gave them Dr. Girijas number. We need
to keep the next generation with us. These traditional healing processes,
infinite valuable, are also infinitely threatened.
(2 months later)
Another slip, a swelling wrist, an auto to the Puttur bone setter in his tin roofed cement hut.
A skillful tug, oiling, a paste applied on the bandage, and a neat bandaging with a splint.
While I was there another lady from a nearby house with a knee problem came for a rebandaging, and then an auto driver.
(2 months later)
Another slip, a swelling wrist, an auto to the Puttur bone setter in his tin roofed cement hut.
A skillful tug, oiling, a paste applied on the bandage, and a neat bandaging with a splint.
While I was there another lady from a nearby house with a knee problem came for a rebandaging, and then an auto driver.
The poor go to the traditional practitioners, with their depth of
skills. We educated take a long time to understand that our own
practices are far more effective than the western knowleges we have been
trained in.
It took me many years, and a village, and a wise doctor who trusted local wisdom completely, for me to recover my faith.
It took me many years, and a village, and a wise doctor who trusted local wisdom completely, for me to recover my faith.
( ... 4 days later)
Today when I went to the tiny shed where the Puttur kattu (traditional bone setting) goes on, with my cracked wrist, the place was full of people. I waited standing on the road, marveling at how space is used. Just outside their one roomed home cum clinic there was a moringa tree which gives greens for meals at all times. At it base were some creeper flowering shrubs to add colour. On the other side another small shed of a home had 3 pots. One with a papaya, and two with jasmine creepers.
After 15 minutes of surveying the vehicles on the main road I peered in over the shoulders of two burkha clad women to asses how long I would need to wait in the midday sun. There was a tiny child with puckered up face on her mothers lap, and the bone setter was gently wrapping the bandage up her arm as she cried. But the bandaging must have comforted her, as she quietened down to a whimper. The family of three women, a man and a child came out after paying. The father was an auto driver.
I stepped in then, but there was another young lady there on the bench, who removed her burkha, and stretched out her bandaged foot.
As the bone setter worked on applying a fresh bandage on her foot, we were chatting. With the easy camaraderie found in simple people. She had slipped at home and fractured her ankle bone, she told me. She went straight to Chettinadu hospital where they applied a mavu kattu (plaster of paris cast). For a month she sat immobilized with her feet up. Her daughter did all the house work. Meantime the tightness of the cast led to severe nerve pulls on the other arm. After a month when she went again, the hospital did another x-ray and advised a recast for another month as the bones had not set at all. She said they came away, refusing that. Then her husband told her that he had heard of this place where they do the Puttur kattu and they came here. She said that with the first bandage, the leg improved so much that she was able to walk around at home. She was told that she will need 4 bindings she said. Meantime the bandageing had been neatly done with a splint. She then told him about the pulling pain on the other arm. He asked her if she wanted a lehyam. She asked him how much it was. He said 200/-, and said there is also an oil that will help. She asked for 100/- of lehyam.
She left advising me to put another kattu on my hand if advised, and that hands and legs we always tend to overwork. She told me her name was Fatima as we parted.
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