When I was about three years old, I had  jaundice : it was somewhat serious because the doctor, after looking at my reports, said that he really couldn’t say anything and my mother came home and fainted.

Later reports concluded that I probably wasn’t going to die, but more investigations were needed: while waiting at the hospital, a man, sitting next to my parents, told my mother that these fancy western cures don’t work too well and that she should take me to a mosque, Moti Masjid, famous for its jaundice cures – open to all religions. My mother, exhausted and tired of waiting in a very crowded hospital, decided to at least hear the man out. The man told her to get a copper plate and glass if she decides to go. They don’t charge anything. It’s free. The next morning at the mosque, the maulvi – an old man – asked my parents to wash the plate and glass themselves because he could not touch anything. Then asked them to rinse my hands while he chanted something. The water, transparent, as it usually is, at first, soon turned yellow, as if mixed with turmeric.

We came home, and for the first time in many days, I said I was hungry.

We went for two more days, until the water became transparent again.