He was a toddler — less than two years old. We were not surprisingly very shocked to see red rashes on his soft, chubby face.
The appearance of the otherwise smooth-faced child startled me and my wife. The child got some relief when a skin ointment was smeared over the pimples. However, within a couple of days the pock-like patches appeared in larger numbers all over the face and had even spread to below his neck.
We took him to a doctor as there were no sign of a cure to the ailment. With a mild prick into the tender arm of the child, coupled with his soothing words of consolation, the physician disposed of us. However, the next day a number of red spots appeared, spreading further down and covering the thighs. The sight of these spots made our hair curl.
Our neighbours, who named the disease Akki in Tamil (the English name is Erysipelas), were reticent. We even heard from some busybodies who stayed near our home that people were usually wary of even mentioning the name of the disease.
Our maid then told us that potters would cure the disease by drawing lines in ochre around the patches. This was commonly known as Kaavi. Thus, the next day we called a woman potter to our home to try and cure the child.
With a clothed soaked in ochre, she drew lines around each of the patches on the toddler. She then left, assuring us that the spots would disappear within one day.
Her words did not come true. We thus took the child back to the doctor who had given him a shot earlier. The physician gave him a different injection and we made our way home with a ray of hope seeming to enter our hearts.
However, within a few days the spots covered his entire body, with the face being the only area where they did not make an appearance. The spread of the patches on the little body was such that we could not lift him without covering him with a thin cotton cloth.
Our efforts to cure the child then led us to approach an ayurvedic physician. We then smeared the toddler with an herbal ointment as he asked us to. However, there was no relief for the child and no let-up in the patches that appeared on his body, despite all our efforts.
Then, suddenly, our harrowing experience ended, giving us immense relief from the suffering that all of us had endured, when our maid came holding a bunch of green leaves taken from a lake far from our house. She told my wife how to use the leaves, which she called karappaan poondu. My wife thus baked the leaves, crushed them into a powdery form, mixed this with water and bathed the child.
Our prayers bore fruit. The next day we were cock-a-hoop with joy on finding our son absolutely free of the spots. There was absolutely no sign of what he had been suffering from for so long. All the patches that had kept appearing all over his body had vanished overnight. We heaved a sigh of relief and visited a temple in Chennai to keep the vow that my wife had taken while praying for our son to get well.
We realised that the leaves from a lake had put all other methods of treatment to shame. The vast but neglected spread of shrubs around our houses, as well as the medicinal plants on the roadside bushes that we often cut or burn, have immense medicinal value capable of curing a variety of diseases. A cure by nature has no substitute.