Jindal Nature Institute, essentially, is a lot about getting naked.
You get naked for most
of the baths they give you – ozone bath, oxygen bath, hydrating baths, jet
baths, even Jacuzzi baths. You definitely take your clothes off for the saunas
and the steam (freezing body shower, sauna, freezing shower, sauna again, and
then another Arctic shower). You get naked for the massages – deep tissue, oil,
Swedish, underwater, salt glow, Epsom salt rub. You shed your clothes for God’s
own massage, the Kairali, and get stark naked for the Devil’s own treatment,
the one which shall usually not be named : Colon Hydrotherapy, or ‘Colon’ as it
is lovingly referred to, when discussed at our lunch hours.
The other times, you get semi-naked. For the mustard packs,
the mud packs, the water packs, and for the endearing tubular enema, ‘Colon’s’
younger sibling. You also divest part of your clothing for the 20+
physiotherapy treatments on offer: HiTop 20 for the stomach, hot wax poultices
for the knees and the ankles, electric shocks to your non-clothed parts, and,
obviously the prickly ministrations of the acupuncture specialist (35 needles
in your body, since you asked).
There are the clothed bits too, definitely. Yoga for one. And
not just some simple, random asanas. Taught by strict, never-aging, perfection-obsessed
martinets, there are half-a-dozen kriyas, meditation, laughing yoga, general
asanas, pranayama, a couple of disease specific asanas, water yoga (naked) nidra,
or sleeping, yoga. All of these daily, for all the days you are there.
You walk clothed too, in the patented Jindal-wear of a T-shirt
smelling of massage oil, and shorts, which have been pulled down and up a dozen
times that day. You walk around the most beautiful lake with Brahmani kites,
egrets, and a hundred ducks. You walk through the fields and orchards of the
100-acre campus, breathing in the purest air, and looking longingly at the
produce growing a couple of feet away from you, and cagily at the guard who
mysteriously appears.
And, obviously, you eat clothed, the only thing naked there
is the desire and hunger in your eyes, as you look at a few luckier (and
thinner) people being served actual, real, solid food, which you can actually
chew. You eat a slice of papaya and watermelon, along with strictly one bowl of
fresh but watery soup before noon. And then, for variety, you have a slice of
papaya and a guava, with the said soup in the evening. Sometimes you spirit
away the guava back to your room, to quell the hunger pangs that strike you.
And this is when you are actually eating. You fast for a minimum of three days,
a glass of glorious sweetlime juice in the morning, and another one in the
evening. Some fast more. This lady I met did it for nine days straight, yours
truly managed six.
And as you fast, you wonder where you have this new found
energy – how on the third day onwards, you stop feeling hungry and how you walk
for 15km instead of 12; and you start really discovering what your body really
is, and what it really needs. It is a miracle, of how your body actually revels
in your food-less state and starts healing and curing, while your evil mind
cannot stop thinking of all the great banquets you have devoured. You discover
that your celebrating body is a limitless reservoir of energy, if you stop
stuffing and poisoning it, and the daily routine of the inmates tells the
story.
You get up at 4.30AM, pull on the aforementioned t-shirt and
shorts, and go down for walks, kriyas, meditation, yoga at 5 AM. Your finish in
three hours, and then take your mudpack and your morning set of treatments
(massage or bath or another pack or either of the ‘colon’ siblings). You then
go for your daily doctor consultation, where you learn anew the benefits of not
having any food. You then go for your physio and your needle-pricking. You have
your gourmet, three-course lunch, and than an hour in the room for rest or
phone time and you are back again – another set of treatments, another couple
of yoga sessions. Evening is there before you know it, and then you start walking
(yours truly was at it for 2 hours every evening). Back for the
Michelin-starred dinner at 7, and soya milk an hour later; and by 8.30PM, you
are ready to sleep – naked or not, is your wish.
Oh, there are a bunch of juices through the day – after yoga
you get lime juice, before lunch, you have carrot or kokum. After lunch you
have the most vile concoction known to Man (even a starving one) called
Wholesome Juice – made of 23 ingredients, a vile sickly pink in colour, with a
taste that threatens to bring out everything that the super-efficient ‘colon’
siblings could not.
And, you make friends. Loads of them, all trapped in this
place where you can check in anytime you like but you can never leave. The Gujarati
tycoon from Africa, here to become more Indian; the 32 year self-proclaimed
virgin from Andhra, who wants to get thinner and perhaps correct that
affliction, the striking lady from HK with the 9-day fasting streak, the carpet
seller from UP, casting beady eyes on the furnishings, and the business man
from Mumbai, who wants to correct his four-drinks-a-day habit. You sit around
during meal and juice times (clothed): talking of food, politics, food,
business, food, religion, food, family and children, food. At times, you talk
lovingly of alcohol too, and imagine that the infernal wholesome brew in front
of you is actually something else…
A lake on one side, impenetrable barbed wire on the other,
and Dachau-like gates at the entrance, your regular daydreams of money, women
(or men), world peace and Donald Trump get replaced by the world outside – this
mythical place where you can actually go and eat whatever you want, whenever
you want.
And then, before you know it, it is over. And only then you
realise the near-paradise you were in. You are squeaky clean outside: your naked
self having been rubbed, scrubbed, massaged, scoured, brushed, and polished
until you shine. And you are presumably squeaky clean inside too – three
colons, a couple of enemas, some forced vomiting sessions do the trick, and
how. You lose half a kg a day, and you feel a kg lighter every time you walk
around the campus. Asanas you could not dream of seem possible, and your body
does not scream aloud when you attempt them. You came in with your blood
panicking at 140/100, you go back with a tamed 120/80. You knock off 2-3 points
in your BMI; your ego ratchets down several more. And you feel reborn; those 10
days shed off your skin and your attitude.
And, as you finally leave, dreaming of chicken kababs and
paneer parathas and tumblers full of your favourite tipple, you realise that
you came into this world naked, and naked you will go...
