A sceptic's search for health and healing

A series of blog posts by Tim Parks, featuring extracts from his new book Teach Us to Sit Still.

Day 2

An extract from Teach Us to Sit Still

It took me a while to tell the whole story. The ayurvedic doctor wore a shirt and tie and listened attentively; his wife and secretary (thus he introduced her) was sitting beside him.
‘So, the urologist still wants to operate on me, but having heard the radiologist’s comment on the urogram I’m not convinced. There’s no evidence that there’s anything wrongwith the prostate at all. On the other hand, the symptoms are getting worse. The only test still to do is the exploration of the bladder. For cancer.’
The wife nodded, making notes. She was modest, attractive, wearing Western clothes. Dr Hazan waited some moments before responding. Had I seen him in the street,I would have imagined he was a young executive in one of Delhi’s booming software companies.
‘Well, for immediate relief, we could address the symptoms,’ he eventually began. ‘For that I would prescribe an
enema of sesame oil and various herbs to be held in the colon for as long as you can manage, certainly not less than forty minutes.’
I was silent.
‘On the other hand…’ He sat back and looked me in the eyes. His face was frank. ‘This is a problem you will never get over, Mr Parks, until you confront the profound contradiction in your character.’
I can’t recall being more surprised by a single remark in all my life.
‘Ah,’ I said at last.
‘There is a tussle in your mind.’
I sat still. I had wanted a different story, to challenge the ‘official medical version’. I was getting it.
‘What actually causes all this pain?’ I asked.
‘It is blocked vata.’
‘That is an energy that flows in the body,’ his wife explained. ‘One of the five elements. It balances others
and needs to be balanced by them. When the balance goes wrong, then the vata is blocked and causes pain.’
‘It is this mental tussle that blocks the vata,’ the doctor said.
I reflected. ‘So, what is the tussle about?’
‘Good question!’ The doctor smiled.
‘A tussle like this is not really about anything,’ his wife explained. ‘It is part of the prakruti.’
They began to explain what prakruti was: the amalgamation of inherited and acquired traits coming together to form the personality. If those traits were at odds and the two couldn’t, you’d be in trouble.
‘In that case a person may get the impression that his life is a series of dilemmas. He may think: If only I could resolve this or that dilemma, I will have resolved my problems.
But each dilemma is a only a manifestation of the deeper conflict.’
It was an elaborate theory.
‘Let’s assume that you are right,’ I said. ‘How would one go about, er, sorting out something like that?’
I sensed as I spoke that ‘go about’ and ‘sorting out’ were the wrong terms. Somebody who knew ayurvedic medicine would not have used them. Dr Hazan was weighing me up. ‘There is no prescribed cure, as such. It is hard to treat the prakruti. But a good way to start would be with a birth chart.’
I had noticed some publications on astrology in the waiting room. The doctor could see my scepticism.
‘You don’t believe in our connections with the stars, Mr Parks?’
I shook my head.

Teach Us to Sit Still is published by Harvill Secker on 1st July.

To visit Tim Parks newly designed website click here.