A medicine man in Malabar
(Published in the Indian Express, 22 April 1993) It’s a beautiful June morning in Kerala and it’s pleasant to be out driving in the country. We’re going thirty kilometres from Palakkad to Kollengode to see a bone setter who, I’m told, might have a cure for my troubled knee. I'd damaged it in a cricketing accident and the doctors in the city have suggested surgery. We're going to try an alternative. My companion is a surgeon retired from government service, and as superintendent of hospitals in this district, has traveled these little known roads before. It was his driver who first told us about the bone setter. The driver said the bone setter came from a long line of medicine men -- healers who have tended the Kalari warriors of Malabar since the days of kings, kingdoms, and the detritus of war. This bone setter is said to come from Pollachi across the Tamil Nadu border and it is said that all his medicine comes from the extract of a single herb. There are the usual far fetch