Before typing the first word of this book, I wanted to know what a reader would want from it. So I asked some friends to list their expectations. This was a diverse group of people; some had never heard of Ayurveda, others knew the definition but not much more, and still others had dipped their toes into the Ayurvedic waters but had hastily withdrawn them when they encountered the Sanskrit terminology. Here’s a sampling of what they said:
• “I’d like to see a book that doesn’t use any of those confusing terms.”
• “I want to know whether Ayurveda can help me live a healthier life — and if yes, how. In plain English, please.”
• “I cannot tell Ayurveda from chelation therapy, acupressure, and yoga. Please enlighten.”
And so on.
I hope I have been able to write this book to the satisfaction of most of my friends. For those, however, who still feel that Ayurvedic terminology gets in the way of making it easily approachable, I have this to say: I understand your wariness completely.
For me, the journey toward Ayurveda posed fewer obstacles, for I had some basic advantages. Ayurveda and I were born in the same country. Hindi, a language derived from Sanskrit, is my mother tongue. My parents — and, more than them, my grandparents — understood Ayurveda by instinct.
Hence, I grew up hearing the proverbial wisdom of the Indian village. Some of those proverbs were gems in rhyme — so succinct and so wise that they’re written in my mind with indelible ink. For example, my grandfather used to say, “A person who has a bowel movement once a day is a yogi [ascetic]. One who has it twice a day is a bhogi [taker of life’s pleasures]. And one who has it thrice a day is a rogi [sick person].”
My grandmother would not let us eat cucumber salad in the evening, reciting this haiku-like poem:
Kheera
Subah ko heera
Din mein kheera
Raat mein peera.
It means, “A cucumber eaten in the morning has the goodness of a diamond, in the afternoon it has the benefits of cucumber, and in the evening, it is a source of pain.”
Lunch was always given the highest priority. Come noon, my mother would want us to abandon anything we were doing — be it a math problem or a game — saying, Pehle pet pooja, phir kaam dooja (“first worship your stomach, then attend to other things”).
I don’t know how long ago these sayings were actually coined, or whether they came from Ayurvedic tradition at all. Whatever their origin, they later helped me understand Ayurveda and its aphorisms without feeling too surprised or skeptical. “Rise early.” “Scrape your tongue.” “Don’t read while eating.” These admonitions had always been part of my life; they were locked in my DNA, so to speak.
Even so, when I studied Ayurveda more formally it was somewhat of a daunting prospect. There were things that intimidated me about this system of healing:
• Its age. Ayurveda is, at the very least, more than 5,000 years old (some say it is a 10,000-year-old tradition, others say there’s no way of knowing how old it really is). But even 5,000 years is a significant period of time, considering that we can barely visualize life as it must have been as recently as one hundred years ago.
• Its scale. Ayurvedic knowledge comes to us from comprehensive texts called samhitas and nighantus. Each one is an ocean in itself, and ancient Ayurvedic sages were prolific writers. Sage Atreya alone wrote 46,500 verses, all in Sanskrit — a language so scholarly that it is hard even for an Indian to learn.
• Its terminology. Doshas, dhatus, gunas — would I be able to wade through the vocabulary?
• Its complexity. Ayurvedic healers seemed to have had dozens of guidelines on every little thing. Drinking water, for instance: don’t drink ice-cold water; don’t drink warm water, either, if you’re a pitta type; spice your water with cumin if you’re a kapha type, and fennel if you’re a vata; and so on.
But I am happy to say that my doubts and fears dissolved steadily. The more I studied Ayurveda, the more it resonated with my childhood years. Soon, I came to a delightful conclusion: Ayurvedic wisdom, in its purest essence, was a distilled version of my grandparents’ admonitions.
From that epiphanic moment on, I was able to see Ayurveda as the majority of Indian people see it. In India, most people don’t study Ayurveda. They live it in simple ways. When a child has a cold, her mother will steep some holy basil leaves in boiled water and have the child sip it at regular intervals. A sore throat is soothed with crushed black pepper stirred into honey. Food is cooked fresh, lavished with spices and herbs, then eaten hot. Because a daily bath is cleansing and healthy, many people accord it the status of a religious ritual — they will say their prayers and eat their first morsel of the day only after a bath. In these small ways, they live Ayurveda.
Even massage is an integral part of life in India; barbers-cum-masseurs are a common sight. Identifiable by the tool kit they carry, these barber/masseurs can be hailed on the streets. All they have to do is find a shady tree in the vicinity, and lo! A folding chair is pulled out, the kit is opened, and, a neat shave later, a relaxing head massage called champi is under way. At the other end of the spectrum are expensive herbal massage parlors, whose popularity is rising by the minute.
I hope that this book has helped you recognize that you can live Ayurveda, too.
In my own life, Ayurveda is a major influence; but I admit that my routine is often less than exemplary. There are times when I misuse my body — by going to bed late, watching TV too long, or slumping in my chair. When I’m rushed, I grab a muffin instead of stewed fruit. And I’m not above temper tantrums and arguments. But then, I don’t allow these slipups to make me feel unduly guilty, because I know that Ayurveda does not mean constantly judging or berating oneself.
On the plus side, studying Ayurveda has made me give up carbonated sodas, canned beans, and bleached flour. I haven’t tasted leftover food for many years now. I try not to bear a grudge. I’m learning to give people their space. And I have certainly grown more intuitive about my own body/mind needs.
Yet being a devotee of Ayurveda hasn’t meant that I never see an allopathic doctor. In fact, Ayurveda works wonderfully with Western medicine as a complementary — or, more accurately — an integrative system of healing. If a vaidya thinks that your blood pressure is dangerously high or that you have a suspicious lump, you will probably be encouraged to see an allopathic doctor. And if a Western physician combines knowledge of modern medicine with the timeless wisdom of Ayurveda, the result can be an ideal healer. Happily, several Western physicians are doing this today.
That said, one thing is for sure: if you live Ayurveda in your daily life, you might not need to see a doctor — any doctor — at all, or at least not often.
I said in the beginning of this book that, to me, Ayurveda is an ocean — not just because it is so deep and vast, but also because it gives so many different things to different people. Ships sail across its bosom. Divers plunge in to look for treasures. Tourists stroll its beaches and heal themselves with its mist, its brilliant sunsets, its stillness.
Take from the Ayurvedic ocean what you can. Even its tiniest pearls will make you richer.
Let me leave you with a blessing that was meant quite literally in ancient India, because Ayurvedic sages believed that we humans were programmed to live at least a century:
Shatayu bhavah! (May you live a hundred years!)