You might want this guy to twist your arm

There are many things in Mysore that I find amazing. (The one thing that Mysoreans seem to find amazing is "How did someone like Sheela end up marrying that ugghhh?" but thats another story).

There is the huge and ornate Mysore palace (in which lives the huge and ornate king of Mysore), the 6.00 am mutton pulao, the addressing of all and sundry as "saar", breakfast for less than Rs. 10, tiny workshops where craftsmen produce the most intricate of wooden carvings, a restaurant named "RRR" which serves such spicy chilli chicken that it is rumoured to be fed to suspects by the police in order to make them "talk". Many, many more

The most amazing of them all is this guy named Dr. K. R. I. Jagdish. He is famous for curing severe cases of slipped disc, cervical spondylitis and allied ailments, but is much more than that. I am told that he cures stuff like diabetes and asthma too.

Any way, I landed up there because young Sheela (my sweet and long suffering wife) had spondylitis trouble. Caused, no doubt, by continuously having to crane her neck to see if I'm hitting the Malpuris or the rabdi in the fridge. She was in considerable pain and we eventually landed up at our orthopaedic surgeon's clinic.

He made us click a few X-rays and promptly diagnosed it as spondylitis. He chattily carried on an interesting conversation about El five and El six or something like that which would have been really entertaining if I could understand a word of it. They could be Mexican cities for all I knew, or weather conditions (I've heard of El nino). An airline, perhaps, like El Al.
But I digress. Well, he recommended physiotherapy, and Sheela soon felt better. But the pain never really went away. To make matters worse for me, the words "pain" and "neck" used in the same sentence would usually end up in someone cracking a silly juvenile joke about me. With a dignified "Ha", I would take that as a cue to disappear, the better to preserve my self respect.

Eventually, to cut a long story short ("too late", I hear you say) we landed up in a distant suburb of Mysore. Dr. Jagdish, ( who endearingly calls himself "Jag" and his treatment "Jag Therapy") started work at 8.00 am. We had been warned that there would be a long wait, so we landed up at 7.45. There were 12 people ahead of us. It was a good hour before our turn came and I marched in with Sheela to find a 70 year old guy wearing shorts and chatting with two assistants, one American and one Japanese. Talk about incongruous. He had a disarming smile and a gently sarcastic tone of voice. He holds daal as the root of all evil because when we answered in the affirmative to his question whether we consumed it, he gave us the kind of look
your cardiologist would give you if you told him you ate 12-egg omelettes and half a pound of bacon for breakfast each morning. Horrified! After a little tirade against the poisonous nature of daal, he asked Sheela to lie down and felt her neck. He promptly said the same Spanish things (El this and that) that our orthopaedic surgeon had said. Amazing! Without any X-rays too! He said it was a very mild case and would cease to bother her, provided of course she stopped eating the poison (daal).

He held her arm and gently moved it around. Then he said he was going to manipulate
her joints and it might hurt a bit. Before she could say "daal", he had twisted her arm and
neck and sent a lot of joints in there going "snap". Sheela hasn't felt the pain since. He gave
her some exercises to do and strict instructions to have nothing to do with daal, and we left.

Know the most amazing thing? This whole treatment is free. He does not charge a penny other
than a one time Rs. 50 registration fee which entitles you to see him as often as you like, for
ever. Even that is waived if you tell them you cant afford it, as some poor people do. There is a charity box kept near the reception where you can contribute but it is voluntary and unsupervised. In my entire life I have not seen anything like this anywhere. You're not even asked or urged for a donation.

I was moved. This Jag, I learnt later, practises for half a year in Brunei. The other half is in
Mysore. As far as I can see, he lives entirely on voluntary contribution and invites people to
live with him and learn his science, free of charge. Even the cynic in me could not see any ulterior motive or hidden agenda. And he really does work miracles with slipped disc cases.
Many people who considered themselves crippled for life are today completely cured.
Sheela met a family she knew, a wealthy businessman's, doing voluntary service at Jag's,
eternally grateful to him for making someone in the family walk again.

Really amazing, Mysore.

P.S. Several people have asked me for jag's contact details. Here they are


Sri K. R. I. Jagadish Charitable Trust
9/1P 13th E Main J Block Kanadasa Nagar
Dattagalli 3rd stage
Mysore

Ph: 3294855/2901813

Mail kadabajagadish@hotmail.com

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