The rural India is usually looked down upon. People mostly have tanned skin. The infrastructure doesn’t quench our malls-multiplexes-mobiles hankering. The water is examined with suspicion (it is a misnomer though). It is very rare that we, the urban crowd, might shortlist a rural area as a picnic spot, unless that area has good hotels, bars, mineral water outlets, swimming pools, and so on, even though that rural setup is full of exquisite landscapes, refreshing nature, sumptuous greenery, and compassionate people.
However, these areas, which we ignorantly brush under our carpets for they fail to offer us the comforts we desire, are stuffed with copious natural resources and forestation that can satisfy our daily basic needs.
I remember my grandfather narrating a tale to me about a family in our native place that treated the villagers with leaves of various plants and trees. The wisdom had trickled down from generation to generation. This particular family had a peculiar research methodology. And the results never failed. Almost every ailment, disease, illness was perfectly cured with the paste of leaves they offered. There were different leaves to heal different disorders. Curiosity prevailed in the village for this proficiency of theirs until one day it was revealed to a close confidant who happened to be my grandfather.
“It is simple,” said the well researched and proven doctor “our families have been observing the monkeys for long. Most of the times diseases of human beings and apes are similar. Under certain circumstances, monkeys ate the leaves of particular plants or trees. This pattern was studied for long. And thus based on hard gathered observations and sampling analysis, leaves having particular medicinal values were selected for treatment”
Indeed a genius thing that would mock at the medical science research going on in closed hi-tech ultra-modern costly research centres. Imagine the number of cute white rats that could have been spared.
One such worthiness of rural India that I recently came across is the medications that people (tribes) from these bucolic areas practice. No chemicals involved, just pure natural elements derived from plants and food products. It is indeed a wonder that these illiterate people have the innate quality of recognising the exact plant rich in medicinal value. Very apt; quite adept.
One of my friends practicing medicine as an intern in Buldhana district had told me interesting tales about the medicines people used there.
The tribal population, poor and backward socially & economically, had the abundant wealth of knowledge about the medicinal properties of the natural vegetation around and items of daily household use like coconut oil, milk, turmeric powder, jaggery, and so on. The tribes possess the inimitable erudition to heal around thirty one different human related diseases. This knowledge is the prized property of the population here and the elderly respect it to the utmost. The astuteness of medicinal plant species of these people might in future help large research organisations to develop new drugs for the welfare of the mankind. That of course if the flora and fauna are preserved in the right spirits.
Ever since the mankind has evolved, plants have been used for their medicinal values. It is a matter of pride then that these illiterate people have preserved that culture without any selfishness or asking for monetary recognition in return.
Consider for example, root extract of a plant ranbhendi mixed with curd is used to cure piles. Kidney stone can be cured in 10-15 days when treated with decoction of gokharu seeds and zingiber officinale rhizome. Powder of dried aghada plant added with honey can cure asthma in a week. Homogenised mixture of durwa, haral with honey when taken daily for a fortnight helps in maintaining youthfulness. Paste of amba kernels and fruit wall of Emblica officinalis Gaertn when applied to hair prevents baldness and enriches hair growth. Root powder of ashwagandha, askand with cow milk is used to heal nocturnal emission and strengthen the body. Leaves of chincha cooked with anthill soil are used to treat fractures. Intestinal worms can be cured by taking sitaphal seed powder with jaggery before meals for a week.
You will find numerous such examples if you go to explore wonders for tribal land. People from the tribal land have had continuous relationship with the vegetations, and thus have gained profound intelligence about the plants and their medicinal traits and that too at no cost. The tribes and people of the rural India have tremendous faith in their knowledge, their findings, and their timely proven medicines.
Today we are busy eroding the vegetations, devastating villages for our greed of constructing real estate marvels. The loss of biomass, organic productivity, insolvency of soil, mudding of water bodies are making things worrisome. We are busy acculturating and modernizing that will surely deprive us of the traditional information that the primitive indigenous societies have stored and nurtured for generations.
Nutritional supplements and herbal medicines have today become a craze of this generation. It appears and becomes nutritional or beneficial or enriched with medicinal values when it arrives from the foreign land packaged with “Made in USA” marks – is the psychology that we have developed, which unfortunately will only ruin our values, culture, and rich knowledge base.
India lives in villages. There reside the true Indians. You and I of today who munch a McD burger and sip a Coke are pseudos.
Next time when you take the bite of burger and find it as a pleasuring experience, imagine what contentment it will be bit a cashew fruit just plucked from the tree or sip coconut water from the coconut that just fell in front of your feet from the tall tree.
There is after all, a refreshing difference between the natural and the artificial.
- Amol Redij
