A Day in an Authentic Ayurvedic Clinic

The Arya Vaidya Chikitsalayam and Research Institute in Coimbatore, India

If food is medicine than I will surely be cured of all that ails me now. Ayurvedic cuisine (South Indian vegetarian style) is pure, simple and delicious. Everything is prepared fresh, with herbs and seasonings (very little spice), a wide variety of vegetables, lentils and grains. Meals are served in my room where I can eat at my table or on the terrace outside my room, overlooking the garden.

For breakfast I had milk tea, fresh papaya and idli, fluffy rice cakes with two sauces—onion and coconut. Mid-morning I got a glass of real buttermilk, a powerful Ayurvedic medicine, and sometime later, a small cup of fresh vegetable soup.

Lunch was Kichadi, a flavored rice stew served with five little bowls of fresh vegetables: a mixed vegetable stew in coconut sauce, carrots, okra, squash, lentil stew, a vegetable soup, and a little sweet rice pudding for dessert.

Check out the picture of dinner below. If I could get such food in West Hollywood I’d become vegetarian.

At 3 o’clock Vimala showed up dressed in a bright magenta sari; she brought me to a special room with a wooden table and massaged me for one hour with warm medicinal oil. Afterward, she washed me, as though I couldn’t do it myself. She made a thin paste with graham wheat powder and water to scrub my skin and remove the oil. Then she rinsed me with warm herbal water and dried me. I felt like a baby.

I found a thermos of milk tea and a plain cookie waiting for me in my room. I’m supposed to lie down and rest after the treatment.

Three doctors have come to my room today to examine me and ask me about my ailments. They look at my eyes and nails, listen to my pulses and frown at the sight of my tongue. I tell them I want to be young and beautiful; they say they’ll do their best.

They confer about my treatment, give prescriptions to the pharmacy for various herbal medicines and potions which are prepared specially for me and brought to my room throughout the day: a small paper cup of hot, black, nasty liquid at 6 AM, then another not-so-nasty after breakfast medicine, a not-too-bad before lunch medicine, and a vicious one after lunch.

At 6 PM I get a small potion that is so foul tasting the pharmacist stays to watch me drink it to be sure it doesn’t get dumped. Then there’s the after dinner drink that tastes like cough medicine and at bedtime a few spoonfuls of some herbal remedy that with little stretch of the imagination could be chocolate mousse. I got thick black jam to nibble every 30 minutes to combat the nefarious effects of Delhi on my lungs and throat.

Soon my oil treatments will intensify, with four to six ladies massaging me at the same time, pouring gallons of warm medicinal oil over my body, pushing out toxins, renewing muscles, softening bones, restoring imbalances, strengthening, rejuvenating—not doing me any harm.

I respect the wisdom and knowledge of my doctors who devote their lives to study and practice the ancient Ayurvedic system of holistic and natural healing; I submit to their treatments, take the medicines, and let them do their best to help me.

In the morning, after intense drum banging, symbol clashing, horn blowing, bell ringing and ecstatic chanting, the bare-chested, bare-foot priest from the Hindu temple on the grounds of the clinic came to bring me a leaf covered with flowers and some yellow paste as a blessing. The racket from the temple goes on throughout the day and has the potential of driving me insane, but I’ve decided to give in, relax and enjoy it.

At dusk, Krishnamurti walks around the grounds with a smoldering smudge pot; he carries it into my room filling it with smoke, blowing it into corners, to ward off mosquitoes. A million birds outside go crazy around this time, like in a Hitchcock movie they shriek and cackle like maniacs. I don’t know why.

I notice a Western man who sits all day on the terrace outside his room. He’s French, my neighbor tells me, has some terrible nerve disease, was carried into the clinic on a stretcher three weeks ago and is now able to walk. I love stories like this.

The daily two-hour rainstorm has abated, the electricity has just gone out; here comes dinner, and there go the drums, bells, horns and symbols. I can’t imagine how insane this place will be in a few days when Deepavali, the Hindu equivalent of Chanukah, begins. They’re already exploding fire-crackers non-stop in the town at night; the streets are lit up like Christmas.

There’s never a dull moment in India.