For Dr Gurubasavaraju, Chief Medical Officer of JSS Ayurveda Hospital, Mysore, Ayurveda is more than a profession.
Because he considers it a mission, most of his wakeful hours go into healing through Ayurveda. His daily routine is always the same: he sets out for work at 8 am, reaches office at 9 am and goes for his ward rounds. He returns to his outpatient room at 10 and stays there almost till sunset. He needs no rest in the evening. He then goes to his small clinic again to be of help to the sick. In spite of his solid reputation, he is not keen to encash his talents. It has never occurred to him that he needs his own place to settle down in after his retirement. Every day of healing leads to the next, and he enjoys every moment of it. A job well done is its own reward.
Why did he take to Ayurveda? Not because he debunks other systems They have their own virtues. However, being the oldest medicinal system, Ayurveda has acquired greater wisdom in classification and treatment of diseases. For instance, Ayurveda recognises the following categories: curable, incurable, easily curable, curable with difficulty and manageable during medication. These categories are applicable to all other systems. None of them can claim cancer to be curable. Neither can they maintain that asthma is curable without medication. Further, Ayurveda recognises the indissoluble bond between body and mind. So did the ancient Greek system. But western medicine lost sight of it later only to be shocked back into it after the Freudian revolution. Ayurveda has
always maintained that, because of too little or too much activity inappropriate to the season, people fall ill. It is therefore a holistic system. It aims not just at the treatment of diseases. Its objective is to guide people in the art of living. Health results from performing actions suitable to the day or season. The right kind of eating is of utmost consequence. Its principles are: eat only when hungry; eat helpful food and eat within limits. Medicines are curative whereas right eating is preventive.
But why do the more successful allopathic people term Ayurveda as irrational? Dr Gurubasavaraju doesn’t agree. Things have changed now, he says. There is no more conflict between the systems. A large number of his patients are allopaths. A lot of them refer their cases to him. He too consults them when it comes to a lab diagnosis. There is no effective medicine for liver problems
except in Ayurveda, a fact crystal clear to all. At the same time when infections go too far, even Ayurveda people have no option but to advocate allopathic medicines. Surgery too is inevitable at times. But, in most cases, there are different treatments possible for different kinds of ailments through different systems. There are also some conditions that are more amenable to non-medical treatments like reiki, pranic healing or yoga. No system can claim to have cure-alls. Only fanatics can make such stupid claims.
Dr Guruvbasavaraju has no qualms about his profession. Isn’t it boring to go through the same kind of rigmarole day after day? Never, he asserts. The joy of seeing someone healed is a spiritually uplifting feeling. He feels more committed to the poor because they are the ones who deserve our greatest attention. Also, a healer’s profession is full of surprises and discoveries. The love of one’s job pushes us to more and more innovative kinds of problem-solving. An expert in Ayurvedic panchakarma treatment, Dr Guruvbasavaraju once discovered that a treatment like takradhara can be of great help in treating diabetes. When he first started talking about it people laughed: “What has the head got to do with pancreas?” Still driven by his conviction, he tried it out and achieved great success after which he began to speak of it at national and international conferences. People have now started taking it seriously. His patience has paid dividends.