This extra week in Mysore is turning out to be very interesting. I began my eight-day Panchakarma on the 24th December. Yes, my Christmas present to myself! As said in my previous post Panchakarma is not necessarily all-pleasant, and since I chose Basti even less so. I will not go into fine details, suffice it to say that like the proverbial Christmas Turkey I have been basted in medicated ghee inside and out, as well as thoroughly tenderized and stewed in milk. After the basting and tenderizing I was fed a delicious lunch and then had some herbed, heated curd poured in a continuous stream onto my head for 30 minutes. This treatment, shirodhara, is most pleasant leaving you fully relaxed and peaceful; well worth doing. 

I decided to return to Dr. Kurma’s practice for these treatments, and in the previous post I explained that his centre is rather…well let’s say lacking in Western hygiene and organization. I have to justify this comment with an explanation. India with its 1.2 billion people, of whom most live in central urban areas like Delhi and Mumbai, certainly has a sewerage and garbage problem. In contrast, Mysore with its 1 million population is considered clean. Nevertheless the streets are littered with garbage, but it is the plastic that eventually is left behind. Before plastic there was no garbage. Folks would leave their waste at a central point within their street, then people would come and go through it and take what they wanted, then cows would come and eat what they could and the rest would get burnt. Now the plastic is left behind and it litters every corner of the environment. Cleanliness is confusingly relative here in India. Mysore inhabitants believe Mysore to be clean; that is in contrast to Delhi and Mumbai. When they walk off the streets into Dr. Kurma’s practice they consider this to be even cleaner. In the West we have fastidious authorities that monitor hygiene in our commercial outlets. Authorities paid by governments and insurance companies who are inundated with claims ranging from distress over finding a fly in ones soup to suing for accidentally eating a worm in an organic bunch of spinach. In India both might be considered a good source of protein instead…

So an Indian patient will step into Dr. Kurma’s centre and believe it to be a palace. We on the other hand will compare it to that which we are used to, which is a society that will only drink water from sealed drink bottles and certainly won’t share them; we now use hand sanitizers when ever we touch anything public and we are constantly searching for more effective ways to sterilize our environment. Eventually we will have to live in a bubble, as our immune system decides it is no longer needed. So Dr. Kurma’s is a ‘little’ slap dash when it comes to cleanliness. It certainly has room for improvement and Dr. Kurma realizes that as more Westerners come to him for the purpose of improving their immune system he must also find a good standard that will satisfy the Western sensibilities.  But to make a long story just a little longer, my treatments are going extremely well. My skin has begun to glow; I believe I look at least eight days younger and my digestive system is blossoming with newly acquired digestive health. I am also feeling a sense of calm, which in contrast to the clamping feeling of stress usually felt at home is quite an unusual feeling; and this is even despite that I am travelling with my 16-year old son. But that is a story for the another post…

Meantime I do recommend Dr. Kurma’s, but not if you are expecting thick cotton robes, Bach instead of Indian chants, the hushed tones of sterilized white clad therapists instead of smiling, occasionally giggling therapists with their ‘Indianess’ intact. What you will get is a warm welcome and excellent healing miracles. 

The Traveling Ashtangi