The Death of Dadi’s Medicine: How India Lost Its Healing Hands
- Madhukar Dama
- 3 hours ago
- 5 min read
INTRODUCTION: FROM TURMERIC TO TABLETS
India was once a walking encyclopedia of natural healing.
Every home had a healer—your mother, your grandmother, your village barber, your cattleman.
They used kitchen herbs, cow dung, river water, fire ash, prayers, and time-tested rituals.
Illness was local. Healing was personal.
But today, a fever means Google.
Cough? Antibiotics.
Gas? Scan.
A child sneezes—and the whole house panics like war has broken out.
So what happened?
How did we lose thousands of years of lived healing wisdom in just one century?
Let’s explore the systematic destruction of India’s home remedy culture.
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1. BRITISH MEDICAL COLONIALISM
The British labeled Indian medicine as “primitive” and “superstitious.”
Ayurveda and Siddha were dismissed in favor of Western allopathy.
Missionary hospitals shamed native practices while offering free services to convert faith and loyalty.
English education erased Sanskrit-based knowledge transmission.
Indian doctors were trained to mistrust their own roots.
Effect: A whole generation of Indians began to believe that “real medicine” comes in bottles with foreign names.
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2. RURAL SHAME, URBAN PRIDE
As India urbanized, home remedies were seen as “rural” and “backward.”
Daughters-in-law who came from cities laughed at grandmothers who used garlic or mud.
English-speaking children mocked their parents for suggesting turmeric milk or neem baths.
Effect: The kitchen became a “cooking zone,” not a pharmacy.
Wisdom became “nonsense.”
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3. CONSUMERISM & BRANDING
Corporates saw the market gap and rebranded grandma’s remedies.
Turmeric became Curcumin capsules.
Ghee was repackaged as Clarified Fat for $50 abroad.
Chyawanprash was repackaged in plastic and sold with Bollywood ads.
Effect: People stopped trusting what came from their own home unless it came with a barcode.
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4. DOCTOR WORSHIP CULTURE
Doctors became gods.
Medical degrees replaced moral wisdom.
If a home remedy cured you, it was a coincidence.
If a tablet worked, it was science.
Effect: Surrendered our own healing intelligence at the altar of a white coat.
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5. MEDIA RIDICULE AND FEAR PROPAGANDA
News channels mocked natural healing: “Drink kadha, get liver failure?”
WhatsApp jokes turned home remedies into superstitions.
Pharma-funded "experts" routinely appeared on TV dismissing Ayurvedic and folk methods.
Effect: Mass fear. Mass ridicule. Silence of elders.
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6. NO DOCUMENTATION, ONLY MEMORY
Indian healing was passed orally—no journals, no patents, no manuals.
Once a grandmother died, her entire pharmacy died with her.
English-educated children never bothered to ask or learn.
Effect: The chain of transmission broke. Forever.
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7. EDUCATION SYSTEM = ERASURE
Schools never taught even one home remedy.
No textbook mentioned how to treat a cold with tulsi.
Children were taught about Alexander Fleming, not about the power of fasting, neem, or ash gourd.
Effect: A civilization with 5000+ healing techniques forgot them before turning 15.
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8. FEAR OF LAWS & LIABILITY
Government laws criminalized practice without licenses.
Housewives and folk healers were threatened into silence.
Even sharing remedies became risky.
Effect: The tongue that once healed began to tremble.
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9. THE COST OF MODERN LIVING
Microwave life = no time to chew, no time to digest, no time to listen to the body.
Instant noodles, instant relief, instant stupidity.
People prefer injections to introspection.
Effect: Chronic diseases, broken guts, and a billion people who’ve forgotten how to boil ginger.
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10. LOSS OF TRUST IN ONESELF
The biggest casualty was self-belief.
India once trusted its own nose, tongue, belly, breath.
Now we trust lab reports, foreign terms, and app-based prescriptions.
Effect: The extinction of inner instinct.
And the rise of lifelong dependence.
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CONCLUSION: CAN WE RETURN?
Yes.
But not through campaigns or capsules.
We return by:
Sitting with our elders.
Practicing one home remedy every week.
Trusting our senses.
Documenting family wisdom.
Teaching our children to ask: “What did my grandmother do for this?”
The pharmacy was always in your kitchen.
The hospital was your home.
The healer? It was you.
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Title: Dadi Ka Dawakhana: A Healing Dialogue Between a Grandmother and Her Grandson
Characters:
Dadi (Radhamma): 78 years old, lives in a small village in Karnataka, sharp-witted, warm, with a lifetime of healing wisdom in her hands and heart.
Aarav: 17-year-old, born and raised in Bengaluru, CBSE topper, glued to his phone, knows brand names but not basil.
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[Scene: A quiet afternoon in the courtyard. Dadi is crushing tulsi leaves on a stone. Aarav lounges nearby, coughing softly.]
Dadi:
Aarav, drink this. Tulsi, pepper, and a bit of jaggery.
You’re coughing like a tractor in winter.
Aarav (scrolling Instagram):
Dadi, come on. I’ll take a syrup. It’s mango flavored.
Also has vitamin C and... something called guaifenesin.
Dadi:
And what does guaifenesin grow on? Coconut tree or railway track?
Aarav (chuckling):
Dadi, you’re savage.
But really—do these leaves even work?
Dadi (smiles, holds his hand):
These leaves raised five children, cured ten fevers, and survived a British flu without injections.
Your great-grandfather never saw a hospital. He saw this stone and these hands.
Aarav:
But science, Dadi! There are studies and journals and...
Dadi (gently):
Before journals, we had generations.
Before science, we had survival.
We healed because we had to—without money, without chemicals.
This courtyard was our clinic. This sun was our doctor.
Do you know what I used when your father had measles?
Aarav (curious now):
What?
Dadi:
Neem water baths. Turmeric rice gruel.
Silence. And love.
No syringes. Only steam from a pot and hope from my heart.
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[Dadi walks to the small shelf near the tulsi plant. It’s filled with jars—dried amla, castor oil, carom seeds, camphor blocks.]
Dadi:
This is my Dawakhana.
Every item here has a story.
This is for gas. This for worms.
This oil? I massaged your father's broken leg with this.
Aarav (softly):
Dadi… why didn’t anyone teach this in school?
Dadi:
Because they told us it was backward.
Because the man who sells cough syrup wears a tie.
And I wear a saree that smells of cow dung.
So my medicine became superstition.
And his became science.
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[Aarav sits down beside her. His phone slips into his pocket. He picks up a jar of dried orange peels.]
Aarav:
What’s this for?
Dadi:
For digestion and mouth ulcers.
You chew one after meals.
Nature’s antacid.
No side effects—except maybe falling in love with your own breath again.
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[Later that evening. Aarav drinks tulsi kadha, cough eased. He looks at his dadi’s wrinkled hands with new eyes.]
Aarav:
Dadi, will you teach me one remedy every day?
Dadi (wiping a tear):
Only if you promise to teach your children.
Not from Google. But from your hands.
[The sun sets behind them. The courtyard glows. The Dawakhana breathes again.]
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Summary Quote:
“One leaf, one story, one memory at a time—India’s healing isn’t lost, it’s just waiting for someone to sit at Dadi’s feet again.”
—
Dadi’s Shelf Never Lied
they said science arrived
with gloves,
white coats,
and a thousand names
you can’t pronounce
but must believe.
but i saw healing
in a cracked stone bowl
where my grandmother
crushed tulsi
with the patience of god.
she didn’t speak english
but her kadha
spoke to my lungs.
her camphor oil
could send a ghost running.
her dried peels
taught my gut manners.
she didn’t diagnose.
she noticed.
how you sat.
how your eyes blinked.
how the skin felt near your neck.
and when you coughed,
she didn’t reach for pills—
she reached for your shame
of eating cold biryani at midnight
and lying about your poop.
science builds towers.
dadi builds silence.
you sit in her courtyard,
sweating in shame and ginger.
the fever leaves,
but what stays
is the memory
of someone who didn’t charge you
because she loved you
and because
her remedies never came in
expiration dates.
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