This was the St. Stephen's I knew, and none of us who lived and breathed the Stephanian air saw any alien affectation in it. For one thing, St. Stephen's also embraced the Hindi movies at Kamla Nagar, the trips to Sukhiya's dhaba and the chowchow at TibMon (as the Tibetan Monastery was called); the nocturnal Informal Discussion Group saw articulate discussion of political issues, and the Social Service League actually went out and performed social service; and even for the “pseuds,” the height of career aspiration was the IAS, not some foreign multinational. The Stephanian could hardly be deracinated and still manage to bloom. It was against Indian targets that the Stephanian set his goals, and by Indian assumptions that he sought to attain them. (Feminists, please do not object to my pronouns: I only knew St. Stephen's before its coedification.)
At the same time St. Stephen's was, astonishingly for a college in Delhi, insulated to a remarkable extent from the prejudices of middle-class Indian life. It mattered little where you were from, which Indian language you spoke at home, what religious faith you espoused. When I joined college in 1972 from Calcutta, the son of a Keralite newspaper executive, I did not have to worry about fitting in: we were all minorities at St. Stephen's and all part of one eclectic polychrome culture. Five of the preceding ten Student Union presidents had been non-Delhiite non-Hindus (four Muslims and a Christian), and they had all been fairly elected against candidates from the “majority” community.
But at St. Stephen's, religion and region were not the distinctions that mattered: what counted was whether you were “in residence” or a “dayski” (day scholar), a “science type” or a “ShakSoc type,” a sportsman or a univ topper (or best of all, both). Caste and creed were no bar, but these other categories determined your share of the Stephanian experience.
This blurring of conventional distinctions was a crucial element of Stephania. “Sparing” (or hanging about) with the more congenial of your comrades in residence — though it could leave you with a near-fatal faith in coffee, conversation, and crosswords as ends in themselves — was manifestly more important than attending classes. (And in any case, you learned as much from approachable faculty members like David Baker and Mohammed Amin outside the classroom as inside it.) Being ragged outside the back gate of Miranda House, having a late coffee in your block tutor's room, hearing outrageous (and largely apocryphal) tales about recent Stephanians who were no longer around to contradict them, seeing your name punned with in Kooler Talk, all were integral parts of the Stephanian culture, and of the ways in which this culture was transmitted to each successive batch of Stephanians.
Three years is, of course, a small — and decreasing — proportion of my life, and of course I was at St. Stephen's at an age when any experience would have had a lasting effect. But in celebrating Stephania I think of its atmosphere and history, its student body and teaching staff, its sense of itself and how that sense was communicated to each individual character in the Stephanian story. Too many Indian colleges are places for lectures, rote learning, memorizing, regurgitation; St. Stephen's encouraged random reading, individual note-taking, personal tutorials, extracurricular development. Elsewhere you learned to answer the questions, at college to question the answers. Some of us went further, and questioned the questions.
Politics has never been a noble profession, but in every democracy it is a necessary one. The quality of our politicians inevitably affects the quality of our democracy. Perhaps it is time for more Stephanians to set aside their preparations for the IAS exams and seek to serve their country in elective office instead.
49. Ayurveda Takes Off
“AYURVEDA GOES GLOBAL,” bLAZED THE HEADLINE in a leading Indian weekly. The cover story waxed eloquent about the West's discovery of this five-thousand-year-old Indian discipline, dropping the names of celebrities who have turned to our traditional remedies to cure their postmodern ailments — Naomi Campbell, Demi Moore, Cherie Blair, and the ubiquitous Madonna were prominently mentioned. “Ayurveda continues to grow rapidly as one of the most important systems of mind-body medicine, natural healing, and traditional medicine,” the article quoted a Dr. David Frawley as saying, “as the need for natural therapies, disease prevention, and a more spiritual approach to life becomes ever more important in this ecological age.” That sounds like an appropriately New Age sentiment, but tellingly, the article calculates the success of this otherworldly science in material terms: ayurveda, it seems, accounts for $60 billion of a $120 billion “global herbal market.”
And therein, if I may coin a phrase, lies the rub. There is no argument about the increasing popularity of ayurveda: clinics professing to offer ayurvedic treatments are sprouting like herbs in places as far afield as London and the Italian Dolomites, and “ayurvedic tourism” is already a significant money earner for our national exchequer.
Kerala has long attracted tourists to its abundant natural beauty, but these days even a glimpse of paradise is not enough to lure jaded international tourists. So Kerala has turned to the past to improve its present. It has resurrected the ancient life-science of ayurveda, which uses herbs and oils concocted millennia ago to promote health and longevity. The state is now dotted with about as many ayurvedic clinics as mango trees. No Kerala hotel worth its name fails to offer, at a minimum, an ayurvedic massage, with more esoteric treatments — a half-hour drip of oils onto your forehead, medicated oil infusions into your nostrils — available at most places. Even several five-star hotels, which not so long ago would have looked down at anything so desi, have cashed in on the rage.
But what exactly is it that they are selling? Tourist brochures show a winsome blonde in a bikini being massaged by a lady in a traditional red-bordered white Kerala sari, with jasmine in her hair and a brass lamp at her side. This is effectively packaged exotica: not ayurveda as a remedy for disease, but rather as an upmarket beauty treatment — a relaxation cure for the jaded. A five-thousand-year-old science has become the diversion of choice of the era of the fifteen-second sound bite. “Pamper yourself with the wisdom of the ancients,” the slogan might as well say.
“This is not ayurveda,” says Dr. Ramkumar of the venerable Arya Vaidya Pharmacy in Coimbatore, which offers the more traditional treatments. “This is a travesty of ayurveda. People are taking what is meant to be a total system of medicine and reducing it to a few superficial treatments. Ayurveda is meant to diagnose and treat the entire person, not one part of his or her body. And the principle behind our treatments is vital. Our massages, for example, are not intended for transient pleasure. In fact, massage is the wrong word for them — they are really oil applications. A doctor determines what are the right oils you need, and they are then applied systematically over a period of time. The benefit of the treatment comes from the oil, not from the rubbing. But instead it is the massage that is being promoted rather than the medicinal purpose of the oil.”
True enough. Professional ayurveds are also critical of the way in which the cosmetics industry has latched on to ayurveda. The hottest range of beauty products in North America these days — soaps and moisturizers, anti-wrinkle creams and conditioning shampoos — claims to be based on ayurveda. But it calls itself “Aveda,” a more digestible brand name, in order to appeal to a mainstream clientele. “Aveda,” snorts one ayurved dismissively, “that means against the Veda!”