A Winter in India

When we travel we always find the signage interesting. We must be sensitized to it because of Kate telling us about graphic design.

Here is a sign from Connaught Place in Delhi for an Ayurvedic doctor. You see a lot of ads for these in the newspapers and even on TV. Ayurveda is the ancient Hindu medicine that most people here grew up with, so most still know various home remedies. "It's our home medicine," the immunologist who we met in Lucknow told me, but it has not been standardized and so India is losing out on a global market that is being fashioned by Chinese traditional medicine instead. At both the Central Drug Research Institute and King George's Dental College they are doing research on the various herbal compounds, but seemingly without the use of any of the philosophical framework of Ayurveda. In other words, they test the herb, but for anti-inflammatory activity, not to see if it "increases heat" or "makes the black bile flow faster." Still, many tourists come here just for Ayurveda, looking for a more ancient panacea to ailments. As one of our Indian acquaintenances explained, "I go to the Western allopathic hospital for acute problems, pain and trauma; but I go to the family Ayurveda doctor for chronic problems, he will help me get my life back in balance so that my lifestyle creates health."