The New Age-ing of ayurveda
This is the kind of Orientalist pr0n which regularly makes Western papers like the NYT:
She was Glinda in a sari. Early that morning, she had glided ethereally across the courtyard with her fellow healing goddesses… “Please sit,” she said prayerfully… She breathed heavily, karate-chopping the oil…
I chose Kerala [for]… the sensuousness of a culture where even trucks are works of art… Kerala [has]… a tropical climate that makes love to practically anything that grows…
… my spine was a cobra unfurling… The goddess, in the act of bathing, had returned me to an infant state… guests… drifted maharajah-like across marble floors, polished and fragrant with lemon grass oil… [Link]
The writer had returned me to an infant state, but she got one thing right:
… popularized by Deepak Chopra and the Whole Body aisle of Whole Foods, [ayurveda in the U.S.] has largely assumed a day-spa persona. [Link]
on Sunday, August 13th, 2006, 9:14 am in Humor, Media › 
Email this
› 
Facebook this
› 
Reddit this
› Link
› Reader links
Manish I read this article today in NYT..I thought after the first few strange paragraphs, the author does get into some facts about Ayurveda and the article gets better as you read more… my dad took one for asthma when I was young and it worked for 15 years and he didnot have major asthma attacks..There was a famous doctor in warangal that time who made patients stay at his home for 15-20 days, cooked meals for his patients and controlled every little thing that they ate and also gave them oils and medicines home made by him with gold, some metals and ayurvedic ingradients mixed together to make fresh medicine everyday. And I do remember when I was a child my family trying out some ayurvedic medicines too for improvement of memory, this and that..
I thought the article was ok, not all that bad though the beginning of the article had some exotic descriptions of kerala and the place..