Karnataka’s noted ayurvedic physician Dr T L Devaraj, is supposed to be a giant in his field but this so called book or is it a souvenir, Ayurveda Brahma Prof Dr T L Devaraj by Prof Dr T Prabhu, has reduced him to a pygmy. If one tries to overlook the grammatical errors and even the incorrect sentence construction, one is literally faced with a plethora of encomiums from a vast section of people ranging from doctors to patients that is haphazardly juxtaposed in various chapters without making any sense.
This book, released on the occasion of the 74th birthday celebrations of this doctor, is nothing but a collation of messages, family photographs, felicitation photographs, certificates, information and review of books written by Dr Devaraj. Even the chapters pertaining to the contributions is hardly lucid and does not provide any insight to the doctor’s yeomen services to ayurveda. It is impossible to either understand or make any sense out of the biography of this great physician as it is badly written jumping from personal to professional details and including too many unnecessary characters from different times. Here is one anecdote from the book: He came to surgery practicals and started influencing Dr Gajendran to fail Dr Devaraj and telling all false things about him. Dr Gajendra started rebuking him who are you? What is your designation? When he told that he was a lecturer Dr Gajendra became very angry and told him that Dr Devaraj is the best student in the entire class and your are unfit to interfere in the examination procedures. He passed him in merit in Salya (Surgery). This is the style of writing and narrative techniques adopted by the author and one can only hope and wish such books are not dumped on the unsuspecting reader in the future.
With clear segmentation and demarcation of the personal, professional life of the doctor and his yeomen contribution to the practice of Indian ayurveda, this book would have made a wonderful read, if written by a professional writer. The less said the better about the chapter on ‘Case Studies’ as it is full of errors and printing mistakes. If only these case studies had been re-written or properly edited, it could have inspired hundreds of practising doctors. The book has been unnecessarily ‘filled up’ with hundreds and hundreds of repetitive messages from the political, medical, religious fraternity as well as his admirers which does not serve any purpose or highlight Dr Devaraj’s outstanding contribution or his impeccable knowledge of the ancient science of ayurveda.