Resonance of kindness echoes Kailasamandiram as Arya Vaidya Sala celebrates 80th Founder’s Day

Kottakkal Arya Vaidya Sala celebrates 80th Founder's Day with various programs, highlighting the importance of creativity and empathy in healthcare.

Kottakkal Arya Vaidya Sala celebrated its 80th Founder’s Day with a variety of programmes at the courtyard of Kailasamandiram on Tuesday. It marked the 80th death anniversary of Arya Vaidya Sala founder Vaidyaratnam P.S. Varier.

Inaugurating the celebrations, classical dancer and Kerala Kalamandalam Chancellor Mallika Sarabhai showered praise on Ayurveda as a medicinal stream that identified the importance of synthesis of mind and body. Any creative work of art, whether it is music or dance, is generated in the mind and expressed through the body, she said.

Ms. Sarabhai said that it was the realisation of the synthesis of body and mind that prompted Vaidyaratnam to espouse creative works of art along with the treatment regimen. “This unique approach makes Arya Vaidya Sala different from other institutions,” she said.

Delivering the Vaidyaratnam P.S. Varier Memorial Speech on ‘creativity as a medicine for survival’, writer Subhash Chandran said that empathy was a key factor found in both creativity and health care. “Bhuteshu Anukrosha or kindness towards all living beings was the key word espoused by Vaidyaratnam. And it is this kindness, or empathy to be specific, that connects literary creativity to medical care,” said Mr. Chandran.

He said that it was ineluctability of kindness and empathy in medicinal practice and literary creativity that brought people from various walks of life to Kailasamandiram, the headquarters of Arya Vaidya Sala. “Many a personage of artistic and literary creativity has visited Kailasamandiram. The kindness or empathy is the linking factor for them all,” said Mr. Chandran.

He also touched upon the relations between Vaidyaratnam and Mahatma Gandhi. Asking the audience to keep in mind that Gandhiji had not merely passed away but been murdered, Mr. Chandran said that it was not a mere coincidence that Gandhiji and Vaiyaratnam were born in the same year and died on the same date. The gathering stood for a minute in silent prayer commemorating Gandhiji’s martyrdom.

However, Mr. Chandran said that doctors in modern medicine were not approaching their patients with empathy. He cited the surgical experiment made by James Marion Sims, who is credited as the father of modern gynaecology, on enslaved black women without anaesthesia as an example for lack of empathy. “Sims operated upon the false notion that black women did not feel pain.”