Alternatively…

A couple of weeks ago Jedi spent a few weeks with us taking a break from his bike trip around the country. And he’s one cynical …errr.. man who has fallen back on Ayurveda and alternative therapies. Which shocked me. The OA and I are great believers in alternative stuff. Mostly because I think its part of our DNA. This is not alternative to us. In India you grow up with ghar ke nuske and the lady next door suggesting totkas. If you ask me, allopathy was alternative when we were growing up and it was sacrilege to pop a pill for a headache. Probably where my own attitude to medicine comes from. I stay away from it.

Jedi’s better half Ananya, is in to pranic healing and she began distance healing on my knee. I have to admit I feel much better. Maybe it works, maybe its just faith. But then thats all that matters, isn’t it?

Anyhow, he watched the OA and me for those 2 weeks and grinned through it as he planned his trip to the hills. We were wiping noses, taking the kids swimming, walks in the deer park, feeding them meals, sitting with them for hours and helping them write their alphabet – and at the end of it he pronounced “So this is parenthood. You are now support staff. Officially.”

He was right. That is pretty much what we are. Our lives revolve around the kids and their needs. And while the Bean is being treated for eczema, we do have occasional outbreaks.

A few days ago a friend of the OA’s (his best man in fact) told him that he’d been coming to Delhi and being treated for his asthma, his wife’s asthma and their baby’s eczema through some alternative therapy. It’s partly accupressure and partly something else. Nambudripaad allergy elimination treatment.

The theory behind it is that there are blockages in your energy path and you just need to open them up for your body to be allergy free. First they test you for your allergies – with no blood tests! And then work on each allergen per day. The way to do it is to make you hold a vial of each allergen and then test your muscle tone and strength. If you are allergic, your muscle tone goes lax. The treatment then begins with accupressure and it’s one treatment per day. It calls for a lot of restrictions and constraints.

The day the Bean was treated for her allergy to B complex we had to empty the house of plants and she could not eat anything after the treatment. The entire process of rushing after work to this centre, treating her and getting back, takes up our entire day.

 We’ve had a lot of people openly disbelieve the Bean’s treatment (we’ve started the Brat too now because he has an early morning dust and cold allergy). And while we don’t care its still damn annoying to have people openly tell you that what you are desperately giving a shot is all crap. How rude is it to openly tell someone that their judgment and choice and hope are all wrong? My life has always been about foolishly learning from my own experiences rather than from others’ mistakes. Atleast it makes for an interesting life!

As parents we will do what we think is best for our child and if we can find some treatment that is non-invasive, gentle, steroid free and the rest of it, we’re going to try it. Because all we have to lose is some money and a lot of faith. If you don’t believe it will work, then you can’t believe it will harm either. It’s a controversial pseudo science called applied kinesiology. Take it or leave it.

This form of treatment believes that there are paths through which life flows in your body. Prana. And if there is a blockage you are prone to allergies. The process is tedious to explain so suffice to say I am the surrogate for the Bean who is kept still through the process by the simple method of bribing her by watching cartoons on the OA’s latop. The Brat, my chivalrous son is told that he has to give mama strength and he manfully sits there holding my hand and not twitching a muscle until he gets absorbed in a fly alighting on the table and lets go accidentally.

The next part is harder because each day brings different restrictions. One day they need to stay away from all traces of calcium which means they can’t brush their teeth and even need to be washed in boiled RO water. The next there can be no vegetation around them and we rush around dragging massive plants out of the house before they come in to the room.  

I am busy with a project at work. The Brat who is struggling at his new school to adjust to the newness needs help with his alphabet and evenings are spent making him practice his writing. And then this. We are truly now support staff and I say it with a wry grin.

We have houseguests as usual. And one maid is on leave while the other is to leave in a month to get married. The thing with running a home on a certain scale and a certain way is that it’s then hard to downsize. I have a house full of knick knacks that needs to be dusted, racks of books, plants to be watered, children to be managed while I am at work and an open house policy with houseguests around at all hours needing food and drink.

It is going to be a long while until they complete the treatment and I foresee endlessly long days ahead as the OA and I fit in the day’s work, sit to teach the Brat for a while to bring him up to the level his class is at (they’re doing cylinders and rhombus – did we learn that at 3?!) and then drive an hour across the city for an hour of accupressure sessions, come back, work some more and fall asleep over our laptops.

In all this I must point out a huge plus – I get free accupressure massages every session! Oh yes – there is a silver lining to every cloud.