studies with a medicine man ii

everyday there r bruised soldiers from the cold war of indian-poverty that limp into the porch of gurrukal family's place. the porch is the color of venus, the prettiest work of architecture on the strip of dismal houses along an allah-hu-akbar-ing arabian sea that threatens to spill over the short wall of rocks that sit like a buffer of meditative turtles.

i'm usually leaning back on a bamboo chair n meditating on the jewels dilu/d/gurrukal is dropping. half the time, i'm unsure exactly what he's saying through his bare english, as bankrupt as his finances. but i see him. he see's me too. his family and friends and even his wife often laugh at us, at how we r communicating. we laugh too. only after having engaged on a profound conversation on leaves, on nature, on medicine, on islam n hinduism, and forgetting to remember that we didn't speak the same language, hardly had a middle ground.

d loves nature. says nature provides everything we need. no need to go to the store, everything is back there, he says pointing to the forested area behind the house, before the river of plastic bags, plastic packages, plastic bottles, plastic sandals. i think of the plastic, the way it's strangling the Mother, the ancient ways. d doesn't notice. sees only the gold mine back there, the storehouse of medicine. he drops a recipe to the guy who has limped in with a leg blacker than the ebony of his skin. he has kidney failure, d tells me when i ask, when i stand inches away like a kid in a science lab watching the teacher dissect a frog. beads of sweat crawl down his balding head, onto his shiny button down.

gurrukal is having 4 conversations at once. usually is. his 2 year old daughter, who is unrestricted by gravity, is snipping the air with hedge clippers n yelling a question to him, his mother is telling him something about something from the ocean she is gazing out at. the patient n him r talking about nature, a continuation of the conversation he and i were having, the three 21 year old's with muhammad (s.a.w) beards, who have come in from the suddenly violent storm, holding onto various parts of the body, take note of the cipher and question him like he was socrates.

i realize that there is no equivalent to this in ny, to what he's doing, to the healing center on the porch of the village community, except maybe at the barbarshop. gurrukal is running an ad hoc clinic like a barbarshop. like. but, not exactly. there r young n old, women n men, hindus with four stripes across their head n women with hijabs. they r having chai with the family, politicking, talking health n sirens; they r sprawled over the humble furniture n mats on the ground, along the ledge of the porch that sears out towards the road like a beach-boardwalk.

the health clinics in ny, like the hospitals, like the police precint, feels humiliating, like cheese lines, like soup kitchens, like immigration, like u would be doing something wrong to be asking question, that u r wrong for just being there, like u better write down your questions in text-message speak cause you have 92 seconds when the god-doctor comes out to see you.

gurrukal has set up a people's health clinic, where people seem to be accidentally slipping in the sea and tripping on airless soccer balls n falling off their motor-bikes just to hang here.