Looking back on my childhood, I remember the relationship with my father,Vaidya Kameshwar Mishra, being emotionally tough: he was as stern as my mother was sweet. He would interrupt playtime with my friends to drag me home to go to bed by 8 pm. He would ring a bell at 4 am to get me to wake up to take a cold shower with well water, and then recite my prayers to start my studies. I was forbidden to share food with my friends or eat anything outside the home, lest it contain onion and garlic, or any other “non-kosher” ingredients!
So it was that my mother’s arms were not only my refuge from the world, but from my father’s severity as well. I respected and feared him, but I loved her.
Until I graduated from college in 1974, an accredited physician in Ayurvedic Medicine and Surgery. I remember coming back home to announce my full emancipation from my father’s disciplinary regimens, ready to start life on-my-own-terms, as an adult and young graduate. But he had other plans for me.
My heart literally sank when he announced to me that the time had finally come for me to intern with him. For seven years. He explained how he wanted to relay the ancestral knowledge and know-how of our SVA lineage to me, and further train me daily by seeing patients in his clinic.
There was no way I wanted to stay. I had just graduated and felt confident to embark on my own journey, fly with my own wings in the world. I challenged him to test me out, to prove to him I did not need to intern with him. He agreed.
So my father asked me to ayurvedically prepare highly toxic plants for medicinal intake. In Ayurveda, there are special methods whereby which plants and ingredients that are highly toxic can be processed to become great rasayanas, rejuvenating elixirs. I was not flustered by his request. I was confident in my knowledge and skills. I gathered the ingredients and took the 2-3 days’ time and prepared the ayurvedic mixture and proudly took it to my father to show that I had successfully completed the challenge he had set me to.
My father took the vials and examined them for color, texture, making sure they met the standard. He then asked me to pour some out into a separate container, which I did. He then took that container to his lips and was ready to drink it down and I sprinted over and snatched it from his hands in great panic, as he calmly observed me. He was about to consume my preparation: when the preparation is made right, it is a life-bestowing nectar; if it is not, it can be a lethal instant poison. I knew I had made it right. But there was always that 0.0001 chance I might have not… I had failed. Yet again. In my father’s eyes. Or in my own eyes, in front of my father – this greater-than-life figure who inspired me with such awe.
Cool and composed, he asked me why I had snatched away the mixture from his hands. I explained that I could not take the risk of him consuming it, even if I knew I had prepared it right, I could not bear the thought of the mixture harming him, even if I knew it would not…
He answered: “This is exactly the point! You have all the knowledge, all the know-how, now you need to gain the confidence. This you will only acquire after you intern with me for 7 years.”
I knew he was right. He was always right. And so very wise. But my ego did not want to accept him as a teacher, because I felt I already knew more than him, being a recent college graduate! After all I had studied volumes upon volumes of books, passed exams, and was accredited by qualified teachers and the State.
But, dear father, you unclouded my ego with your great wisdom. When I challenged you to test me out, you gave me a test and I failed poorly! And that not only compelled me to become your student for 7 years, but to do so with great reverence. Thank you again, and again, for that.
I thank you for those 7 years spent with you, and mom, as a young adult, for imparting upon me infinite ayurvedic wisdom, not bookishly, but as a living tradition. And hard as it is for me to say this, I also do thank you for being stern and strict with me during my wild teenage years when I used to skip school to play climbing up on the mango trees with my friends and wallow in the ponds with my favorite buffalo, Rani.
Dad, you were and always are my beacon, the memory of your words and actions guides me even today, and keeps me from faltering. You are my father, but I was also fortunate to have you as my ayurvedic guru, my teacher. You have given me all I ever needed, and more. For that, I am eternally grateful and bow down to your lotus feet:
let your father be your god….
Vaidya Mishra
