Home remedies for oppression

Illustration/Uday Mohite

My father died of cancer. We suffered at his suffering, naturally, and at the knowledge of his inevitable death, even while we kept hoping and trying to make him better. Finally, he chose to stop his treatment. A cousin who adored him, called with a cure: a popular ayurvedic male vigour tonic, which her boss's relative - "she's a very well-respected person" - had assured her would help. I should have thanked her and ignored it, but angered, I said, "Instead of such pointless home remedies, you should come home and see him before he is gone, lest you regret later." That, sadly, was what came to pass.

Why do we Indians, in the face of dire difficulty, especially illness, love to trot out outlandish, ootpataang home remedies, which we ourselves have not tried? I don't say this as a sceptic. I believe there is something to holistic therapies and don't have blind faith in allopathic doctors. COVID-19 has brought a flood of pseudo medical advice - ghee in your nostrils, 28 herb kadhas, banging utensils and the spirit of God. These random suggestions of distant relatives, WhatsApp gurus and politicians are merely home remedies for denial and oppression.

They are like the character in that famous sketch from the show Goodness Gracious Me. She dismisses everything she encounters, saying that she can make restaurant pizza or a kidney transplant at home. All she needs is x, y and one small aubergine. Our insularity is reflected in constant assertions of "our way is best". We scoff at expertise as overweening, an Indian middle-class tendency that reveals the deep lack of confidence in Indian social culture, which is always more about establishing power and identity, deferring to social status, caste, gender or professional post rather than knowledge, ability or experience. My cousin citing "a well-respected person" - was about that person's social status, not their track record of miracle cures.

When we baselessly act like we know a simple and magical cure, we mask our panic and guilt at being powerless, not only before death, but before life. Sometimes it is an inability to face the gravity of something. Other times it is deliberately minimising the scale of a problem. We want to be seen as the ones who magically came, like Hanuman carrying a mountain, to save the day. These fantasies of golden medical pasts which - khulja sim sim! - will establish a benign rule of foolishness in the future testifying to how useless and unimportant we actually feel. To take advice from those who have expertise, makes us feel we will lose importance. These meaningless gestures of faux concern are a theatre, designed to keep us at the centre, to endorse our power, rather than centre the suffering of people.

Yes, it's an extension of a society where ‘elders' want to make your career and marital choices for you as a mark of their status rather than any knowledge of the world. This kahani ghar ghar ki is today our public and political culture where our leaders, like door ke jijajis, tell us we are making too much of a fuss as we die. To actually help a crisis needs humility, the acknowledgment of others and carries the risk of failure. Instead, we get, "Be positive", their version of one small aubergine and I think, another fine bharta you've gotten us into.

Paromita Vohra is an award-winning Mumbai-based filmmaker, writer and curator working with fiction and non-fiction. Reach her at paromita.vohra@mid-day.com