Purists sneer at what they consider the rampant commercialization of a hallowed practice. “Ayurveda is a holistic science,” one expert explained to me. “The oils, the herbs, the foods are all part of the treatment. It's not something you can dispense with a pill or an oil rub in an air-conditioned spa.”
The Arya Vaidya Pharmacy is doing tremendous work to popularize “real” ayurveda across the country — both former prime minister Vajpayee and former president Narayanan were beneficiaries of their treatments — but it is more of a challenge to get the word out around the world. Most countries — not just in the West — do not recognize ayurveda as a system of medicine, which makes it impossible to export medicines and oils except as “herbal dietary supplements.” Ayurvedic practitioners are also not recognized as doctors (though many of them have graduated from a rigorous four-year course taught by the Central College of Ayurveda in India), and as such would not be licensed to treat illnesses. This leaves them little choice but to offer the cosmetic treatments, especially massages, which have less exacting licensing requirements. An ancient science has been reduced to a modern fad.
“You wouldn't go for a bypass and ask the doctor to short-circuit some of the procedures,” says Dr. Ramkumar. “Why should you ask an ayurved to do so?”
The answer is that no one has a bypass for pleasure, but some ayurvedic treatments are indeed pleasurable, whether or not they serve a larger medical purpose. One August day, I drove up to the Tamil Nadu hill resort of Kotagiri to spend a blissful twenty-four hours at the Arya Vaidya Pharmacy's Ayurprastha retreat, the former palace of the Travancore Maharajah. I walked in the bracing mountain air, ate organic vegetarian Kerala meals, and treated myself to two ayurvedic massages by an expert therapist. I knew perfectly well that twenty-four hours was not going to redress anything fundamentally wrong with my constitution, but twenty-four hours was all I had, and even if the effects could not possibly be lasting, I felt reinvigorated for the next few days. Is that such a bad thing for India to offer the rushed visitor?
Our ancient traditions evolved in ancient times; if we can adapt them to the present and in the process bring a few of those sixty billion dollars into our country, what's the harm in doing so? We're never going to become a major tourist destination because of our beaches or our shopping malls; no one is going to come to us for our spectacular historic sites because they are so badly maintained and so poorly supported by our infrastructure. The one commodity we have in abundance that the world wants is our ancient wisdom — the spiritual teachings of our sages, including the practice of ayurveda. The purists like Dr. Ramkumar are right that what is being promoted is really “Ayurveda Lite,” but let us not allow the best to become the enemy of the good.
No one wants the basic principles of ayurveda to be compromised. But perhaps by popularizing ayurveda in this way we will generate the resources the ayurveds need to do their serious work better.
*
“The palace?” the excitement in my mother's voice was palpable.
“We're going to stay at the palace?”
“I suppose so,” I replied. In booking my annual holiday in India, I opted this year for a change from the usual round of visits to friends and relatives. My mother, my sons, and I would instead play tourist in our native Kerala — and check in to the tony resorts that have recently sprung up around the state. How, I wondered, had the backwater I knew as a kid become a tourist destination?
Each winter, my sisters and I round up our British- and American-reared children and head for Kerala, rather self-consciously “renewing our roots” and instilling in the new generation our same sense of obligation.
But this time, as we visited our crumbling two-hundred-year-old ancestral home in a seemingly timeless village, it was Kerala that had changed. Savvy tourism promoters have lately come to appreciate the region's exceptional beauty. And because Kerala is also the spiritual center of the ancient life-science of ayurveda, with its aromatic oil massages and yoga, New Age travelers have come flocking.
I worked out our itinerary: five top-class resorts in fifteen days — a trip “home” doubling as a real vacation, with us trying out ayurvedic treatments at half a dozen different resorts, many run by the ecologically savvy CGH Earth Group, which offers its guests tours of the compost-processing biogas plants at its hotels.
Some resorts definitely traded authenticity for a more cosmopolitan allure: you could sip a Singapore sling poolside before going in for a massage, blissfully unaware that alcohol is prohibited in ayurveda.
But the majority have clung to ayurveda's origins as Kerala's indigenous medical system, insisting on an on-site interview with a registered ayurvedic practitioner before arranging the appropriate treatments. And only one, the newly restored Kalari Kovilakom in Kollengode, went the whole way, offering its guests all ayurveda, all the time.
My mother couldn't believe it when I e-mailed her. “The palace!”
“What's the big deal?” I asked. “Tourists in Rajasthan have been staying in converted palaces for decades. It's the one thing palaces are good for in our democratic age — serving as hotels.”
“You don't understand,” Mother replied, “this is the Kovilakom in Kollengode.”
Then I caught on. Kollengode, a tiny town miles from anyplace, was where she was born. “When I was a little girl, I used to walk along the outer walls of the palace every day on my way to school,” she said. “It looked so immense, so forbidding. It was unimaginable that I could even step into it, let alone stay there. The biggest thrill of my life was when your father and I were invited to tea by the rajah nearly fifty years ago. But even then we sat on an open porch. Visitors were not allowed inside. And now we're going to stay there?”
“Four nights,” I said. “The authentic ayurvedic spa experience.”
As lunch arrived I looked covetously at the steaming dishes placed before my sons. “I'd like some of what they're having,” I said.
The waiter grinned a bit sheepishly. “Sorry, sir,” he said, “the doctor has prescribed a different lunch for you.”
“You mean my lunch requires a prescription?” I exclaimed. The waiter nodded, unabashed. Welcome, his smile seemed to say, to the serious world of ayurvedic tourism.
No sooner had I checked in than I was interviewed by the resident doctor, Dr. Sreelatha. Her searching questions about my medical history sought to establish which of the three basic ayurvedic “humors” my body ran to—vaata (air), pitta (bile), or kapha (phlegm). Then she determined the types of treatment I'd undergo and the precise combination of oils that would be mixed for my massages. Dr. Sreelatha prescribed the last thing I'd drink at night and the hot water, lemon, and honey with which I'd be roused at 6 A.M. And, as I found out at my first lunch, she decided what I was allowed to eat.
“Ayurveda is not like Western medicine, which treats an individual symptom,” she explained. “Your entire lifestyle has to be treated.”
And so it was. I sat with my sons on yoga mats with coconut trees swaying in the gentle breeze around us as an Australian swami in saffron robes took us through our exercises. Mother woke up in a royal bedroom and had her breakfast on the very porch she'd visited when young. And just down the road, our ancestral village slumbered on, as farmers with yoked bullocks plowed the fields as their forebears had done for centuries.
I smiled at my mother when she returned from an hour-long ayurvedic massage meant to ease her arthritis. “Welcome home,” I said.