The Rediff Special /Anwar Alikhan

Swallowing the fish is not an easy task -- it is alive and wriggly and would leap right out of the patients mouth

By now the auspicious moment had arrived. The treatment began.

Shivram Goud stood there in that tiny, overcrowded courtyard, with large trays of his medication -- little turmeric-coloured balls of paste -- by his side. One by one, the patients stepped up to him, each clutching a clay pot with the fish bought outside.

What followed was a curious ritual. Goud would swiftly pick out the fish and place a ball of the yellow medication in its mouth. Then, with one smooth, fluent movement, he would slip the fish down the patient's throat and pinch his nose shut. After that a helper would take over, giving the patient three further doses of the medication to take after 15 day gaps, and details of a diet to be followed strictly for the next six weeks.

Swallowing the fish was not a particularly easy task, I discovered. First, because of its size (anything up to 4 inches long and 3 inches in diameter), and second, because, after all, it's alive and wriggling -- so that often the fish would leap right out of the patient's mouth, and the entire procedure would have to begin again. With children, although they use smaller fish, the task was even less easy.

And so it went, with Goud administering his cure to the endless line of patients right through that night and -- taking turns with his brother -- through the whole of the next day. Meanwhile, in large shamianas set up around the old house, other members of the Goud family also dispensed the cure, as they've been doing in recent years to help cope with the enormous crowds.

I wandered around talking to several of the patients, and many of them had similar stories to tell. Ramesh Khanna, an engineer from New Delhi, for example, had been suffering from asthma for nearly 15 years. Sometimes he'd have upto 5 attacks a day. Some attacks would last upto 12 hours at a time.

His doctors had sent him to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences and the Patel Chest Institute in Delhi -- supposedly the leading institutes in the country -- but they hadn't been able to help him much. Then he had tried various homeopaths and ayurveds, but this hadn't helped him either. Finally, two years ago, somebody sent him here to Hyderabad. Since then, he has had remarkable improvement: his attacks are only occasional. And even when they do come they are only half as severe as they used to be. What's more, he's off the drugs that he was once completely hooked on. Now all he needs is an inhaler -- and that, too, once in a while.

Kiran Dalipkumar had flown down from Indonesia, where her family is settled. She used to have severe asthma attacks every single month. But since she started on the cure, she's found that her condition has been steadily improving. This year, for instance, for the first time, she hasn't had a single attack. She, along with her two sons, her friend and his daughter, now come down every year.

Abdullah Al Omar was a Saudi businessman from Riyadh. He had tried everything for his asthma, he told me -- including going to a well-known asthma clinic in Germany. He read about the fish cure in a Kuwaiti magazine and first came here three years ago to give it a try. Like Dalipkumar, his condition has been improving steadily with each dosage. Now he is off all his drugs, he said proudly and, as for his attacks, he get them only rarely...

So, it seems the fish cure doesindeed work. But how?

I asked Goud about it the next day. He is a soft-spoken retired engineer who used to work in the Hyderabad Municipality. The turmeric-yellow balls of medication, he explained, were an ayurvedic formulation (prepared in conjunction with various pujas and religious rites). But what is critical is how the medication is given: in other words, the fish itself.

The reason for this is (and I'm quoting him) that asthma is basically caused by jalas (literally, webs) in the body's channels. The function of the fish, therefore, is to swim through the channels and clear this congestion. Moreover, the fish apparently knows the precise points in the body where the medication is to be released; and does so with accuracy. Hence, while the basic medication can be taken on its own (indeed, vegetarians can choose to take it mixed with halwa), the fish acts as a catalytic force.

That is what traditional wisdom had to say about it. Interesting, yes -- but somehow not very convincing on the rational plane. I was beginning to develop my own theory on the matter, but I thought I would check with modern medical science to see what it had to say.

I interviewed three senior doctors who have, between them, an impressive array of degrees from India and the UK, and over a hundred years of experience. Obviously, each one had his own individual views on the fish treatment -- but, interestingly enough, all three of them finally came to the same conclusion (which, I was pleased to note, seemed to bear out my won personal theory). And this was that the way the treatment works is basically at the level of what is sometimes referred to as "the mind-body connection."

Photographs, kind courtesy: The Taj magazine

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