Miss Timmins' School for Girls Read Online Free PDF Page A

homeopathy, she tried Ayurveda, and she took me to all sorts of astrologers and healers. I remember so many afternoons when she would come in a rickshaw to pick me up from school, and we would wait in crowded rooms and corridors, and even in a line that snaked down the steps of dark buildings, for some famous visiting savant. She always brought me lemonade in a flask and a chutney sandwich. Those afternoons, surrounded by people with improbable diseases being cured by outlandish procedures, were tinged with the aftertaste of those sandwiches.
    All my life green chutney sandwiches have stood for hope.
    The more bizarre schemes were the ones we expected the most of. They seemed more likely to produce miracles.
    We disagree now on whether the cow-dung phase was after the cow-pee phase or concurrent with it. I clearly remember washing the blot with hot and foaming cow urine in the morning, and at night, tying a bandage of cow dung on it.
    The cow-dung bandage was a big event. Ayi mixed the dung with some herbs and medicines, and then applied a thick paste of it to a bandage cut from soft cotton saris. The poultice had to stay in place over the blot, but not cover the mouth, a process that took hours. It would always be done in the back balcony where we hung our clothes to dry. Baba would patiently tie a sling over my left ear with his deft naval fingers, till all three of us felt it was just right.
    The dung bandage would smell and prickle, and I could not sleep. Ayi often sat by my bed in the moonlight, singing old lullabies. I thought she had the sweetest voice. It was much later that I realized she sang completely out of tune. Every morning we would open the bandage breathlessly, wash my face, and examine the blot. Each morning, we felt it was fading, getting less angry, or getting marginally smaller. I remember this phase going on for at least half a year, though Ayi assures me it was just a little over a month. She also insists that the cow-dung phase was different from the cow-urine phase. “I can tell you because I remember going to get the urine from this old woman called Tanbai. At five every morning. It used to be dark, and she would come with the cow, holding the urine in a tin mug. It had to be the cow’s first urine.”
    Another urine phase created a more lasting change. My mother became what she referred to delicately as a urinetherapy practicer, which actually meant, much to my disgust, that she drank her own urine.
    It started with a dream seller who came to our house one mellow winter morning. He had an unkempt beard and a juicy, nasal voice. Slurping his tea from his saucer, he told us that he was confident that he could cure 90 percent of all diseases with two things: a buttermilk enema once a week—“Cleans your whole system out,” he roared—and drinking a few sips of one’s own urine every morning. “You can even apply your urine to cure skin diseases,” he said. He assured my mother that my blot would be gone by puberty if I did this.
    My mother wisely decided against the buttermilk enemas, but felt that the urine therapy was worth pursuing. Even Morarji Desai was doing it. “But he is at least sixty-two years old,” I whined. “That’s different.”
    I was twelve years old, and I just could not bring myself to drink my urine. I did pour it in a red plastic glass and try to bring it to my lips, but I could not. In order to set an example, my mother started doing it herself. She began to feel healthier almost immediately. “You know how my feet hurt at night? Now all gone,” she would say. Or, “You know that burn I had on my right hand? I applied it for two days, in the morning, and see, it’s gone.” I was embarrassed and disgusted at the thought of my mother drinking pee, and I made her promise never to tell any of my friends. The first person I ever told was Merch, the Mystery Man, but he always made telling so easy, listening