7am Arivu (Seventh Sense) - Tamil Movie

Friday night.. a last minute impulsive decision to go watch the new movie staring Surya in the theaters with MIL and Cousin..

Off we went with some lowered expectations as the movie got mixed reviews.

Came out thinking "damn, what a different movie! This is definitely a new for Tamil cinema these days. Has been quite some time since we came out of a Tamil Movie thinking.. "

Consider my General Knowledge to be above average, what with being on Quiz teams from a young age but one thing I did not know was that Da-mo, the patriarch who is credited with bringing Zen Buddhism to China and also reshaped Shaolin Kung Fu to China was actually a South Indian Pallava prince! Somehow that part was never taught to us in our history books. Neither was the fact that today's Kung Fu had its origins in Kalaripayattu (which was the original martial art form that this Da-mo or Dharuma (or Bodhidharma as he was referred to) learned in India. Did know what Kalaripayattu was! That needed no introduction.

It was an interesting movie, simply for bringing to light, the lack of interest in self promotion in India and Indians alike.

If you are interested in knowing more watch this video series. This guy did an awesome job of explaining BodhiDharma. Do not know if he ever completed the book. If any of you know kindly drop a note. Should be worth a read!

Every twelve years or so my life encounters something that is beyond my grasp. Something that I have found a new respect for that teaches me that "just because we do not comprehend something, we should not dismiss it. There is a lot we do not know and cannot explain with our limited mental and physical capacity".

The first one was Siddha medicine. When allopathy left me for dead at 12, a 97 year old chain smoking bearded Yogi (who was always in Padmadsana when he treated me) cured me by looking at me, feeling my pulse, looking at my eyes, mouth and feeling my skin and then declaring "this kids blood is not pure. we have to purify it" and went on to give me some heavy metal cocktails that purged my system and brought me even closer to death but revived me. At that time my parents and relatives thought it was nothing but magical. Everything he did has an explanation in modern medicine. Arsenic in small doses can be a cure! Bismuth is used in pepto-bismol ! All said and done he did with baspams, legiyams and thailams (powders, gels and massage oils) what the antibiotics of the early eighties could not do.

My post on that aspect is here. The movie literally echoes my sentiments in the conclusion. (It was funny with the reference to turmeric!. should have started writing movie scripts last year!)

Another 13 years later, there was an encounter with Nadi astrology. Indian astrology is dismissed as gobbledygook by westerner scientists. Don't need to say more. If I can tell you that by analyzing a hair root, I can tell the persons ethnicity, eye color, diseases they are prone to etc. etc. 50 years ago it was laughable. Today we call it genomes, bio-markers, etc. and to the educated few it is not laughable. If it is possible to believe that so much information can be gleaned from a hair follicle, why not a thumb print?

Old posts on this topic Here and here..

Thirteen more years later when physiotherapy said "this is as far as we go!" Yoga has come to the rescue. Initially hesitant that sitting in a hot room at 105 F and 40% humidity would do anyone any good, have seen what can happen if only you believe! Again, it is magical. Folks who are seeing me after a two or more year gap say "you have become younger".

It is a crying shame that there are more Yoga studios in the San Francisco bay area than in Chennai. If only they had taught yoga in the schools in India instead of teaching us "march past" to the beat of a drum maybe my bow legs would be straight by now!

My legs are bowed like my fathers. Maybe it is genetic, maybe it is a vitamin deficiency of sorts but when I bring my thighs together and me feet together, my knees separate. Asked one of my yoga teachers, "how long do you think before this corrects with yoga?" and she said "usually it takes only 7 years".

Will let you all know how it goes in "only 7 years"!

What else is there to encounter another 12 years from now?!

Do watch this movie for the documentary aspect..

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Thanga Bhaspam, Velli Bhaspam, Legiyams - The irony

Recently, some of my friends were discussing the role of Gold/Silver and their impact on the environment and what was considered safe levels in our systems.

When I mentioned that as a little kid have taken a few grams of gold and silver powder as part of medicines over a period of years to cure a weird infection, no one in the audience believed me and they actually thought my "credibility" was taking a hit with a statement like that.

That is really sad because I am reasonably sure (and my parents have confirmed) that it was Gold containing powder (Thanga Bhaspam) which was always mixed with Honey and given to me and Silver containing powder (VeLLi Bhaspam) which was given always by mixing in Ghee (clarified butter). Why different media were used to dissolve the powders, we do not know. In addition to that was given a Legiyam (or viscous solution) that would clean out my bowels in record time and literally purged me.

Distinctly remember the old Siddhar( telling me that my blood was impure and he was purifying my blood (Raththa Suddhi was the word he used.. ie. blood purification) using the combination.

When mentioning this to Allopathic doctors (at least the western medicine doctors were referred to in our family as Allopathic doctors), they would comment on how these treatments were known in the western world but were avoided because of the "poisonous" nature of the cures and they used heavy metals like Arsenic, Bismuth, etc. to get to the digestive tract and attack the system using a "mild poisoning" method.

The way the body tries to fight mild poisoning, it kills the real poison also and that helps recover the system. It is not totally true that western medicine ignores these elements now.

You can see Bismuth in pepto bismol like stomach restoring systems. Chemotherapy uses heavy elements, kind of like the "raththa suddhi" used by Sidhhars.

The thing that would always beat me was the labels on these medicines from the sidhdha vaidhya saalai which would say "Used in curing the following with other medicine combinations... and Putru Noi or Cancer would be in the list"

Being in 7th grade and having limited exposure to Cancer as a "cureless disease" in those days, would ask my parents if this whole thing was bogus and can be believed. They recommended that since there were not many other alternatives, might as well go with the flow and believe! Their point was "Siddha medicine has been around for centuries. People won't go back to a doctor if they don't cure a high percentage of patients".

Now some dude in China actually goes and proves using western science that old eastern medicines have a reasoning behind them.

My personal take on how this type of thing evolves over time (again, note my very over simplified explanation) is..

In the good old days(thousand or two thousand years ago) there was a huge gap in the knowledge base of the people. There were many smart people who probably weren't famous or well documented but left their mark by passing on their knowledge in spite of not having media. Today we have a population of 6.9B instead of an estimated 170M in 0BC (a forty fold increase) and Information technology has come a long way from stone tablets to bluetooth. We only question the information from the past and want validation with current methods of understanding.. But as a % of people with higher knowledge levels have we come far?

Is information really leading to improved knowledge? What use is all the information if you do not act on it? Can knowledge be useful if it did not have a Ph.D behind it?

Does everything from the olden days have to be proved and understood in a doctoral thesis to be accepted? By who? why?

Should we confer Ph.D's to all our grandma's who tell you that using turmeric powder when boiling vegetables or adding turmeric to food that comes from the ground is safer or applying turmeric on baby girls is good for their hormone cycles? Or should we have research papers like:

Choi, Hyunsung; et al. (July 2006). "Curcumin Inhibits Hypoxia-Inducible Factor-1 by Degrading Aryl Hydrocarbon Receptor Nuclear Translocator: A Mechanism of Tumor Growth Inhibition". Molecular Pharmacology (American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics) 70: 1664–71.

Aggarwal, BB.; Shishodia S. (May 2006). "Molecular targets of dietary agents for prevention and therapy of cancer". Biochemical Pharmacology (Elsevier) 71 (10): 1397–421.

Hatcher H, Planalp R, Cho J, Torti FM, Torti SV (June 2008). "Curcumin: from ancient medicine to current clinical trials". Cell. Mol. Life Sci. 65 (11): 1631–52

etc. etc.

Maybe if there was a Journal of Grandma Society and it had papers published every month and we could have references like

"Effect of kasthuri manjal podi on long term hair growth" , R. Saraswathi, K. Vijaythaammal, et. al. J. Gram. Soc., Vol 23, 2010, pp1023-1025

would more people be inclined to take it seriously?

Will the use of heavy metals to target poisons be taken more seriously now that we have this news?

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