Small is beautiful: Meet Rajasthan's little wonders

MAGIC POTION: Bhootia village is known for its ayurveda and the 'gunis' who practice it.

            

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Bhootia: Ayurveda hub

Bhootia village would never find itself on a map. It's a tiny dot in Udaipur's Girwa block. And to Bhagwanlal Mehta, that is ironical. He could easily be mistaken for an avid gardener. But very few people know the value of this man and his saplings.

Bhagwanlal is one of Udaipur's renowned gunis, better known as an ayurvedic medics.

"When you have allopathic medicines, the illness never goes away. With Ayurvedic medicines, we cure it right away," he says.

Ten years ago, Bhootia was just another village, forgotten and unknown. Agriculture and livestock allowed its people to earn a few hundred rupees every month and Bhagwanlal traveled hundreds of kilometres to hilly terrains to get the herbs he needed.

Then one day he had a thought: why not bring the herbs to the gunis? And there began the dream to build Bhootia's very own herbal garden. Local organisations they approached set them up by giving villagers saplings that they needed. And the rest was in the hands of Bhootia.

The women are the caretakers of this herbal garden. Today the village also has its own ayurvedic hospital - set up with contributions from every house here.

Patients come as far as from Mumbai to visit this trio of ayurvedic doctors. They come with various complaints - from common cold to diabetes. And everyone gets a specially concocted medicine.

For those who cannot offer to pay, it comes free. And this isn't just some home-grown business being run.

Inspectors from Rajasthan's Department of Ayurveda come regularly to check the samples.

"People come from cities to even our houses to meet us. They have a lot of faith in our medicines," says a Guni

Women like Limdi Bai treat patients from home. She learnt the trade from her father in law who convinced her to stop her liquor trade, and focus on curing people.

“We gunis exchange our knowledge. I trained for 12 years,” she says.

Gunis in Rajasthan are as old as the history of this state. But in the age of modern medicine, these practitioners of one of the oldest forms of medicine in the world are gradually becoming extinct.

It’s a village that could one day be the signpost for ayurvedic medicine in India. The pride here on every one's faces is unmistakable – a pride that stems from knowing that they have achieved some thing that they themselves consider remarkable.