VA AYYADURAI, boy from India, lost Senate seat in primary elections in USA but an MIT scientist who has come a long, long way with fan following paying heed to his health videos on food, immune boosting how vaccines destroy immune system
By Tara Narayan
IT is with sadness that I said adieu to the monsoon rain, so reluctant to depart this year! Also leaving us in the grip of all manner of nameless fears, having failed to get the better of the Covid-19 menace…I mean as my friend Dr Shekhar Salkar never fails to drive home to me even doctors are not immune to it!
I cannot say our treatment profile of the novel corona virus is streamlined because of the infection itself – it defies even medical understanding for the story is that it all depends on what kind of mutated virus gets you if you act all casual and indifferent (like I do sometimes, tending to increasingly have faith in my immune system and karma!). But I do wear a mask when with people and wash my hands whenever I go out or come in from wherever, be it home or restaurant – it’s remarkable how most everyone has grasped the nature of this infection and almost all eating places small and big have a foot sanitizing dispenser at their entrance, ask for sanitizer if it is not there or they’re trying to economize by hiding it tucked away somewhere; ask and you will get!
MERCIFULLY, although my heart is a cropper I’m not yet living in a “valley of dolls” popping pills to stay alive like a dear friend I know (although these days I’ve given up on everybody dear and not so dear). I’ve also been reading up and catching up some more with my American Indian friend VA Shiva (MIT bio-systems analyst scientist who recently “lost” the Massachusettes Senate seat in the USA primary elections because the election machines are created to steal a candidate’s votes in “third world state Massachusettes”).
VA Shiva you may remember if you’ve been following this column is a Bombay-born boy who migrated out with his parents to the USA when he was seven years or so. He likes to call himself a working parents son and takes pride in describing himself as hailing from the lowest of the lowest caste system of south India.
Anyway, you may not sneer at him now for his formidable credentials and he’s been putting out food videos on how certain super foods do make a difference to the betterment of body beautiful. The videos on garlic, turmeric, black cumin seeds, etc, are some of the most educative videos I’ve come across along with all his tips and cues on food that keeps our immunity levels fighting fit…sorry, he’s got the wrong end of the stick in his political career, but then here’s a man who I dare say lives by connecting the dots of mind and body, heart and soul needs and his constant urging to his legion of fans in the USA, India and around the world to review “truth, health, freedom.” To look at life bottoms up (the worst comes from top down) and to never, never think that one size fits all. All this rings a bell with me.
This week I’ve started believing in preventive health care for the immune system and also karma! Never mind that AYUSH Minister Shripad Naik spend a month recovering from Covid-19 at Manipal hospital rather than the GMC’s private rooms, I do believe that preventive health care as promoted in the austere ashram-styled sanitariums of old is the best ticket to keep ticking…that’s why I think we should have a chain of AYUSH sanitariums in every state of India rather than more and more mega hospitals designed to keep wonderfully natural sanitizing sunlight out…to my way of thinking sanitariums should be more al fresco or semi gardens than locked in icy intensive care units. I never want to die in an ICU dependent on a ventilator…according to Ayyadurai it’s the ventilators which are giving the coup de grace to many Covid-19 patients junior or senior. His by now much quoted letter to President Trump about how to give the best to critical coronavirus infected patients includes high doses of vitamin D, IV liquid vitamin C and more for a short spell of time makes a lot of sense but is anyone taking any interest and implementing it in Goa (I remember recommending here that Goa’s Health Minister Vishwajit Rane read up Ayyadurai by way of enlightened reading on the subject of coronavirus pandemic).
You don’t have to be a doctor to understand how the body works like clockwork along exquisite engineering design (something like that). I still have a lot of VA Shiva reading up to do but the newest bit to come up on the pandemic infection is that upto a third of patients with Covid-19 in ICU may develop what is called invasive pulmonary aspergilossis, but this is a challenge to diagnose, according to AFWG (Asian Fungal Working Group). Vitamin C, by the way, does a lot of good towards improving the strength of your lung tissues, so drink lemon juice, eat capsicums in your salad greens, drink green…if you want to stay alive and kicking to see where the future is taking us, where we need to go or where we are better off not going.
A FRIEND of mine these days is recommending that I join her in discovering Qi(chi) or life force energy exercises which reportedly can make a 73-year-olds look and behave like they’re 35 years or so, well. Maybe one of these days. Which reminds me I met a most interesting man who has been spreading the efficacy of Tibetan Ayurveda medicines. Meet swimming pool businessman Peter Lobo of Parra who cured himself of hear fatal stage liver cirrhosis with Tibetan medicines or more specifically the Men-tsee-khang Tibetan Medical & Astrological Institute of the Tibetan settlement in Mundgod. They have several centers though and he was fortunate that he got to meet a doctor who put him on the path of recovery some months down the line.
He was a new man with the Tibetan Ayurveda medicines, says Peter, but he had to stop his bad eating habits and learn to eat better nutritive food as also doing Buddhist vipassana meditation did his ways of thinking a great deal of good. From what I know vipassana meditation is one of the toughest meditations to do and if you can do it you’re pretty much in control of your life thenceforth…anyway, Peter tells me he is putting down the details of his journey back from hell and of course I urged him to do so for he has lots of interesting insight and has taken to studying Tibetan medicine himself, recommends if I’m in trouble with my health I head to Mundgod rightaway. Funny or not funny but there must some rationale to it, he says all the eating healthy prescribed for him includes eating goat’s kidney and liver meat for regeneration and wellbeing!
PETER also told me that he is forever grateful to Kavita Mukhi (a friend of mine too, she is one of Mumbai’s pioneering entrepreneurs in the organic farming movement) who had by chance dropped in on him some years ago and was appalled to see his condition. She promptly wrote him the name of a Tibetan medicine doctor to see at the Mundgod Tibetan health and insisted he go immediately. Peter took her seriously and went and well…and lived to tell his inspirational story of recovery through alternate systems of medicine.
His story reminds me somewhat of the dynamic Earth Keepers and New Earth Summit’s Darryl D’Souza story of recovery from mind-boggling ill-health to rejuvenating wellbeing once again (read his book `Become Healthy or Extinct’). Peter Lobo’s comeback story to life anew is also very educative and a testimony that where there is a will to change there is hope anew and recovery. All we need is a bit of luck in vis-à-vis the right connects and we may return from hell to…er…not heaven as in 100% recoveries but we take out chances and feel good enough to feel like living once again.
That’s the most important factor in life if you’re asking me, reasons and goals to live. These days I’m looking for a reason and a goal to live myself; hey, my heart is still ticking away! But maybe I will look up these Tibetan medicine folk. Peter warns me, “They don’t promise cures and talk very little, just take your history of symptoms, check pulse, prescribe herbal medicines…when I started taking this medicine you have no idea what shit came out of my guts, it stank to high heaven and my wife would say don’t use the toilet in the house, go use outhouse toilet!” But this is how little patience by little patience, his liver regenerated anew – when he started respecting it! This is to say body beautiful is where we live primarily, so we need to respect it first, second and last.