cooling mudpacks: the aesthetic quality of therapy 173
After completing four weeks of panchakarma treatment, which includes
taking purgatives, enemas and nasally-administered medicines while on a spe-
cial vegetarian diet (described in more detail in Chapter 2), the patient at the
GAMH receives talapodichil.^9
Talapodichil is performed, along with other ayurvedic procedures, in the
late afternoon on the outdoor verandah of the GAMH.^10 Th e patient who is
to receive talapodichil sits on the short wall of the verandah. A nurse unwraps
what I have been calling a “mudpack,” a ball of ayurvedic materia medica
including nellikka (gooseberry) and yogurt curd, which resembles wet earth or
clay. Th e nurse removes and puts aside a small portion of the “mud,” then rubs
oil on the patient’s head (which, if the patient is male, has been shaved), and
molds the large portion of the mud onto the patient’s head from the top of the
skull down to the top of the forehead and about as far down on the back and
sides. A banana leaf is then tied over the mudpack to keep it in place, and the
patient is allowed to walk around the hospital compound or relax, as he or she
wishes. (See Figures 4 and 5 which show nurses administering talapodichil to a
patient at the GAMH.) After 45 minutes, the patient returns to the treatment
area, and a portion of mud is removed from an area between the forehead and
the top of the skull that is considered an important center of mental activity.
Th e mud removed from this area, which physicians at the hospital say will have
warmed to a temperature around 40° Celsius, is replaced with the small por-
tion of mud that was set aside at the beginning of the pro cedure. After another
45 minutes, the mudpack and banana leaf are completely removed and the
patient wanders off to socialize or relax.
People I spoke with who were undergoing talapodichil said it had a cooling
eff ect on their head and body. One patient joked that it was like having an
“AC” (i.e., Air-Conditioned) hat. Ajit, the former patient of the GAMH who
was introduced earlier, refl ecting on his treatment there recalled: “I got some
more energy, especially a little improvement in ‘memory.’ My head got cooled.”
“Cooling” (tanuppa, kulirmma and other terms) is a cultural idiom for a pleasant
physical, visceral state or eff ect. In many parts of South Asia, there is a lay (non-
specialist, though loosely related to ayurveda) system of classifi cation of foods,
weather, times of day, emotions and many other things as heating or cooling.
Mental imbalance is often, though not always, considered to be due to excess
heat that aff ects the head and can be countered by substances and circumstances
that create cooling eff ects.^11 However, cooling has many meanings beyond the
realm of mental disorder. It can refer to a pleasant aesthetic eff ect in many
contexts. People in Kerala—friends, research assistants and others—were often
telling me what would give one a cooling eff ect: from drinking salt with your
lime juice, to building your home a certain way, to visiting certain parts of a