Amma has moved to an Apartment !
September 27th 2009 will remain a day when I felt 'orphaned'.....for my Amma died that day. September 29th will be remain for ever a day to reflect over 'internment'. I had never been at the demise and Christian burial of any of my dear ones. Not my grand parents nor my father. They were buried six feet deep by the time I could arrive home, from my place of work. Bereavement, therefore meant to me that, I missed the departed dear ones and just went about wondering at the phenomenon of death as an event that made people just vanish from sight without a trace.
Amma 'moved on' rather differently. She arrived home from a hospital a hundred kilometers away in a refrigerated glass-top casket in the dark and rainy early morning of 29th September, before any one in the
village of Eraviperur was awake. She wore a 'Kasavu' sari and her head was hooded by gold brocaded sari ‘pallu’. She looked smaller than what she looked to me all her life. For nearly forty years ( ever since I left home in search of a career ), she received me at my ancestral house when I returned home year after year, with cries of joy and complaining about my arriving later than she expected. That day I did the ‘receiving’, and she was silent. And I wept.
But such arrival in casket and dressed in ‘saaree’ are not unusual. What was unusual ( for me) was the way she got interned. No six feet grave was dug, and no wet soggy soil was dumped on her body. From home to Church and from there, after prayers by a Bishop assisted by a few Priests she went to the Cemetery on our shoulders and entered her new abode.....the top left 'cabin' of the 'Shankara-Mangalam' family Vault. Volt-Number-ONE. She being the sixth occupant of the same vault. She has eight other neighbours, (vaults), in the 10 feet tall multi-storied building.
The vault's shutter was closed, by her two sons, in the presence of close family members and priests. And Amma is there sleeping just as I have seen her in her room in my ancestral home. Except that this time she is a bit over-dressed for bed-time.
This time she slept through during Christmas. First time in my life, she did that.
Today is 1st of January 2010.....and I know I can go and open the shutter and see my Amma, touch her, if I really wanted to. She will not be smiling as usual, but she will be there all the same. That is not what I could say if she were buried six feet deep in a grave.
The spirit and life-force that drove Amma, I never saw any way from the day I was born to her at her age of 20. All I saw, loved, hugged, laughed-with, ate-with, wrote letters to, talked on phone with, travelled on holidays to, and maintained my invisible umbilical cord with, for sixty years, was HER BODY. And that is still there !! No
Wonder, in the long past, bodies were preserved and kept.
I really do not know if 'spirits' continue to exist after death or 'soul' goes to heaven, or to "The Mansions" that Christ said existed. But for me Amma meant her physical form, especially her smiling face and caring hands. I am here in flesh, because she existed in flesh.
And now I live, and often saying to myself: "Amma is there in her room I can go and see her any time I want ". That is comforting for me. I will see what happens to Soul , when I become a spirit. I hope I get a vault near hers, as there are nine of them, which get occupied in turn. We will then talk about small things and laugh big time till our sides ache; like old times, till she she says usual, “ stop it son, I am going breathless with laughter”........... My Amma has moved in to an apartment.
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Monday, January 18, 2010
Holistic Medicine--My Personal View
Personally speaking, my faith in medicine ( many streams of that ) can be summed up as follows, especially after my Bone Marrow Tranplant at Christian Medical College Hospital, Vellore, Tamil Nadu.
I have no faith at all in Homeopathy. I have tried it many times. It works mostly ( if at all) as PLACEBO. Placebo effect can be achieved (for example) by me giving my friend plain 'Maida' or 'Atta' tablets and convincing him that they are latest sure-fire drug for say sarcoidosis; and it will work to a certain degree and for some time, if he happens to have faith in me as a Doctor ( if I were one). But the effect will not last.
There is a Scientist in USA who has deposited One Million Dollars in a Bank which is available to any one in the world who proves scientifically that Homeopathy works. One of the TV channels aired a story of that some time ago, which finally concluded that about ten Homeo- Doctors who tried their best, failed to claim the PRIZE !! They just could not prove Homeopathy's efficacy.
Again, I do not believe Ayurveda has any cure for infectious diseases at all. Some ( just some) systemic diseases can have 'palliative' effect with it. No cure. My grandfather tried it for 20 years for Piles as well as for Rheumatism and I personally know that it failed miserably. Massages with Ayurvedic oils 'SEEM" to give relief due to the short term effect of the MASSAGE ITSELF ( massage improves blood circulation). The oils provide nothing but lubrication. Rubbing our skins with bare dry hands will irritate the skin as we all know; hence the oils.
Allopathy works. Yes, Allopathy has serious side effects. But in Allopathy there is this dictum of choosing the better of the TWO EVILS...that is (1) painful side effects or, (2) Death. We all know which to choose, without going to a Medical College.
Holistic medicine is a combination of all above three and some more ( including Prayer,Aroma Therapy, Crystal Therapy, Reiky, Vaasthu, meditation, Yoga, etc).
Even Vaasthu followers claim great medical wonders if we follow their advice, though Vaasthu is mainly about land and buildings and placements of furniture and so on. It is ( foolishly in my view) said to bestowe great mental abilities to even an embryo at conception. The father of, the world famous Bihari boy, who passed M.Sc Physics/Math at age 13, got the brilliant brain as per his father ( in a Televised interview),because the boy was conceived when his mother's head was in the North-East direction.
Prayer has booster effect, provided :- (1) the patient himself prays fervently with full faith, (2) his near & dear ones pray IN HIS PRESENCE, and he aware of it, (3) his friendly groups from his circles, (Church, School & College etc.) pray and he is made to know that they are sincerely praying for his recovery. Some Church members praying for the patient in some place in Timbuktu will have no effect on him. By the same logic when Reiky practitioners say their system can be effective from any distance, that is just too much to digest .
Two unrelated groups of Christian-believer-Scientists had conducted experiments about the effect of prayer on patients' condition, and proved that the patient's conscious awareness that some groups(s) are praying for him had positive booster effect on top of the effects of medicines or surgery. JUST PLAIN PRAYER WITHOUT ingesting say, Chloromycetin will not cure Typhoid. Nor fully blocked cardiac arteries, can be set right with only prayer,without bypass surgery or stent insertion done.
Holistic Medical Practioners are well meaning nice guys but the effectiveness they claim may be too tall. The simple deductive logic is that otherwise Mayo Clinics and Apollo Hospitals and CMC Vellore Hospitals of this world would not continue to exist and prosper.
Tito
Personally speaking, my faith in medicine ( many streams of that ) can be summed up as follows, especially after my Bone Marrow Tranplant at Christian Medical College Hospital, Vellore, Tamil Nadu.
I have no faith at all in Homeopathy. I have tried it many times. It works mostly ( if at all) as PLACEBO. Placebo effect can be achieved (for example) by me giving my friend plain 'Maida' or 'Atta' tablets and convincing him that they are latest sure-fire drug for say sarcoidosis; and it will work to a certain degree and for some time, if he happens to have faith in me as a Doctor ( if I were one). But the effect will not last.
There is a Scientist in USA who has deposited One Million Dollars in a Bank which is available to any one in the world who proves scientifically that Homeopathy works. One of the TV channels aired a story of that some time ago, which finally concluded that about ten Homeo- Doctors who tried their best, failed to claim the PRIZE !! They just could not prove Homeopathy's efficacy.
Again, I do not believe Ayurveda has any cure for infectious diseases at all. Some ( just some) systemic diseases can have 'palliative' effect with it. No cure. My grandfather tried it for 20 years for Piles as well as for Rheumatism and I personally know that it failed miserably. Massages with Ayurvedic oils 'SEEM" to give relief due to the short term effect of the MASSAGE ITSELF ( massage improves blood circulation). The oils provide nothing but lubrication. Rubbing our skins with bare dry hands will irritate the skin as we all know; hence the oils.
Allopathy works. Yes, Allopathy has serious side effects. But in Allopathy there is this dictum of choosing the better of the TWO EVILS...that is (1) painful side effects or, (2) Death. We all know which to choose, without going to a Medical College.
Holistic medicine is a combination of all above three and some more ( including Prayer,Aroma Therapy, Crystal Therapy, Reiky, Vaasthu, meditation, Yoga, etc).
Even Vaasthu followers claim great medical wonders if we follow their advice, though Vaasthu is mainly about land and buildings and placements of furniture and so on. It is ( foolishly in my view) said to bestowe great mental abilities to even an embryo at conception. The father of, the world famous Bihari boy, who passed M.Sc Physics/Math at age 13, got the brilliant brain as per his father ( in a Televised interview),because the boy was conceived when his mother's head was in the North-East direction.
Prayer has booster effect, provided :- (1) the patient himself prays fervently with full faith, (2) his near & dear ones pray IN HIS PRESENCE, and he aware of it, (3) his friendly groups from his circles, (Church, School & College etc.) pray and he is made to know that they are sincerely praying for his recovery. Some Church members praying for the patient in some place in Timbuktu will have no effect on him. By the same logic when Reiky practitioners say their system can be effective from any distance, that is just too much to digest .
Two unrelated groups of Christian-believer-Scientists had conducted experiments about the effect of prayer on patients' condition, and proved that the patient's conscious awareness that some groups(s) are praying for him had positive booster effect on top of the effects of medicines or surgery. JUST PLAIN PRAYER WITHOUT ingesting say, Chloromycetin will not cure Typhoid. Nor fully blocked cardiac arteries, can be set right with only prayer,without bypass surgery or stent insertion done.
Holistic Medical Practioners are well meaning nice guys but the effectiveness they claim may be too tall. The simple deductive logic is that otherwise Mayo Clinics and Apollo Hospitals and CMC Vellore Hospitals of this world would not continue to exist and prosper.
Tito
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