Usually we don’t request our viewers to share our videos. Such an attitude comes from our belief that if viewers like the content or think it will be of use to someone, they share it on their own volition. But this time, we request you to share this video with as many people as possible; that is, if you are convinced of the importance of this subject. I feel it should be subjected to discussion. This video is a response to the query: What benefit do we get by creating forests? But before that, let me tell you something else. Nearly 25-26 years back, a scientist named Dr Vishnu came to see me in my office. He was 70 or 75 years old then. My cousin Bonnykumar had brought him over. Computers were rare in those days, and when Dr Vishnu’s computer developed some problem, he came to us to get it sorted out.
At that time, he was involved in a project that sought to make a digital library for the government regarding the usefulness of trees. The context was this: someone in the US was granted a patent on India’s very own turmeric. This meant that for every product which used turmeric as an ingredient, permission had to be sought from that party concerned. This created such a furore that the patent was eventually cancelled. India has been using turmeric since very ancient times. Therefore our argument was that patent could not be granted on this product. However, we cannot merely state in the court that something has been in existence for a very long period. We should furnish proof for it. In this case, evidence came in the form of an article written by some unknown doctor and published in a magazine. It recorded that turmeric can be used to heal wounds. India won the case by citing this reference. Someone sought to gain patent on neem too. That was when the Indian government decided to make an inventory of all the plants and trees in our land, and record their properties, and publish them in the internet or elsewhere so that no one could stake claims on them. Dr Vishnu was leading that project then.
After his business at my office, as he proceeded to leave I accompanied him to our gate. Just then he noticed clumps of Bermuda grass on both sides of the path. He said it was good for brain growth. It was a new bit of information for me but I did not give it any additional thought then. Much later, in the course of a conversation with an Ayurvedic physician, I came to know that, in earlier times, milk given to children used to be sourced from cows that ate Bermuda grass. This was to help improve their brain growth.
The reason for saying all this is to remind you that all our medicines – Ayurveda and Siddha – are mostly extracted from plants. But a majority of us dismiss it as unscientific. But modern medicine does the same thing. The only difference is that they extract the chemical at the molecular level, and target the specific artery whereas in traditional method, the medicine is injested in the form of food. Let me give you an example. Most of the trees that you see all around are used in nearly all branches of medicine. Strychnos nux-vomica is used in modern medicine, Ayurveda, Siddha and Homoeo. So also Aloe vera. Rauvolfia serpentina or the Indian snakeroot is used to fight cancer and blood pressure in modern medicine, Ayurveda, Homoeo and Siddha. Similarly, turmeric is used to heal bruises, and fight infection. Thus all branches of medicine have acknowledged that medicines can be extracted from plants. The only difference lies in each one’s claim that it is right and the others are wrong or unscientific.
Let me share a personal experience of mine. Many years back, my mother, at the age of 82, had to be in the ICU for 40 days following her involvement in a road accident. She could not take food orally because her food pipe had been damaged beyond repair. Besides, she had pneumonia and experienced breathlessness. Food had to be fed through a tracheostomy tube. The prognosis was that she would not be alive beyond 10 days, and my mother insisted that she should be allowed to die at home. Her speech too was gone because her vocal cords got infected when anaesthesia was administered during the knee-surgery. We spent Rs 18 lakhs on her surgery and treatment, and brought her back home in such a condition.
Then, on the advice of an Ayurvedic physician-friend of mine, Dr Prasad, I put her on traditional concoctions. One was Dushsparshavasathi, extracted from the Indian stinging nettle, a plant that causes itching at the merest touch. That cured her of phlegm trouble. Next, Dr Prasad advised me to crush false daisy (generally used to aid hair growth), mix the juice with long pepper, grind it to paste consistency, apply it on the surface of an iron wok, scrape it the next day, mix with boiled goat milk and palm sugar, and give it to mother to drink. For six months, I followed this routine until, my mother could begin to take food through her mouth. Next, I was advised to mix betel leaf juice and honey, and apply a drop of it on her tongue every hour. A month of this treatment helped recover her voice. I made all these concoctions myself. So I am convinced about the effectiveness of them all. I know the particular manner in which certain medicines have to be made, and their effect on the body.
Now let me come back to our subject. When people ask about the benefits of forest, what they think about is only the food they get out of it. Some people eat three or four meals a day, others two, still others, one. There are those who do not eat at all and as they are used to it, such a lifestyle does not harm them. But we breathe 24 hours a day, and drink a lot of water. Even when we take pride in eating only organic food or make a lot of fuss about what we eat and do not eat, we hardly pay attention to the quality of air we breathe and its safety, or about the quality of the water we drink and its purity. This is where plants and trees become relevant.
According to Ayurveda, “jagatyevam anoushadham” [There is nothing in this universe that is non-medicinal] “naasti moolam anoushadham” [There is no root that cannot become a life-saving medicine]. The problem is that we do not know how to use them. A thousand medicines are mentioned in Sahasrayogam, and those medicines are made using many ingredients. But since it does not say how the medicine works, people imagine that it is unscientific. However, the medicines are very effective. Even when they are taken for years, no side-effects are reported. It is when this system is manipulated to make it like modern medicine or when Ayurvedic medicines are prepared despite non-availability of the required number of plants that we become suspicious about its effectiveness. Earlier, our grandmothers were involved in the making of these remedies.
Besides, these plants exercised a natural influence on our atmosphere – in the air that passed through them, in the water that got filtered through their roots, in the soil where their leaves rotted. In my childhood, I suffered from asthma. A medicine made from the touch-me-not plant cured me of it. So maybe if an asthmatic child drinks the milk of goats that feed on touch-me-not he or she will gain resistance to the disease. Nobody has done a serious study on this matter perhaps.
When we construct a house, we remove all the plants that grow in the plot. We see every grain of soil as rubbish, and lay tiles over it. Then we cut all the trees so that leaves do not fall and destroy the beauty. Next, we buy imported or exotic plants and decorate our garden. In other words, we build an aquarium for ourselves and live inside them. The birds that live in free Nature come to our compounds, see us inside our aquarium and fly back – this is the feeling I have about our lives. Perhaps they look at us in the same way as we look at the ornamental fish in our aquarium. That is the stage we are in.
The next stage is already visible in foreign countries where children suffer from early puberty, hormonal disorder, diseases that we have not heard about until now, growth disorders and so on – all of which are related to the food that is eaten. There is a scramble for organic food now in foreign countries. A little earlier, they forsook chicken thigh, claiming that its fat content was high. So they exported chicken thigh to us, and chose chicken breast for themselves. This is the pattern you see in developed countries. They take what they want and either donate the rest to others or encourage us to eat what they discard. But we have our own food culture.
Therefore, to those of you who are planning to construct houses in the future, I have this to say. If you are able to grow a hundred plants in your five-cent plot that will not only be a great thing to do for Nature but it will do you a lot of good as well. Instead of spending a lot of money on the house, buy a little more land, dig a well, and plant a lot of medicinal plants near it, so that the quality of the well water improves. If a person owns a 10- or 20-cent plot with a well, he or she will certainly have water in it. All that needs to be done is ensure the rain water does not flow out of the compound. Kerala gets three lakh litres of water in the form of rain in every 1,o00 sq. m. of land. So the owner of a 20-cent plot gets a lot of water. If all that water is permitted to seep under the ground, and such plants are grown in the compound to create a pure atmosphere, everything will become useful.
Let us see the air and the water as the benefits of forests. They are more valuable than food because you can purchase food but not air. You cannot walk around with an oxygen cylinder tied around you. You can purchase water but there is no point in asking whether the water inside the plastic container is organic, pure or health-giving. There is no rationale behind the argument that medicines extracted from plants are dangerous. You may not agree with the Ayurvedic method of extraction but modern medicine and other medical branches too use those very same compounds. All plants, trees and flowers are very essential for our environment. We should learn to value them. We should avoid seeing the usefulness of forests merely in terms of the food it generates. There is nothing we can do about the houses that we have already constructed. But to those of you who are planning to construct one and are getting prepared to purchase land, my request is that you should consider these factors too.