The intuitive lady of Ramaipatti

I’ve never been much of a believer in anything, let alone black magic and witchdoctors. So when our driver in Mirzapur tells me about the old woman in Ramaipatti who can not only ward off the evil eye but also soothe away people’s troubles, I’m visibly unimpressed. “Meet Mai once,” he says, “and then decide for yourself!” He insists we stop for a chat, and reluctantly, I walk into the narrow gali where she lives.

Mai, or mother (everyone calls her that), turns out to be a tiny, blind woman in a white sari, too old to walk, camping alone in an unfinished shop not more than 10x10 feet in area and open on three sides. A young woman with her six-year-old son are with her. The mother believes the child has been touched by the evil eye because he isn’t eating well. She anxiously recites a litany of what the boy eats in a day, adding every now and then, that her mother-in-law thinks he should eat much more. “He’s a lovely boy, healthy and normal,” Mai smiles. “How many older sisters does he have?” It turns out he has been born after his mother had three daughters (sadly, three too many even today, in this part of the world). 

“He’ll be fine,” Mai says, pressing the mother’s temples and wordlessly chanting prayers. The woman begins to weep like a dam has burst. When she finally stops crying, Mai wipes her tears with the edge of her tattered sari and tells her to leave with a happy heart. The woman places a bag of mangoes in front of the old woman and leaves. When we’re alone, I ask Mai how exactly she helps the people who flock to her. “Many years ago, my father-in-law taught me how to invoke the gods to bless troubled souls and remove the curse of the evil eye,” she says. She recites those prayers and people go away relieved. “Some leave me a few coins, others, food,” she says. “This is my life…”

Then, without any warning, she places her surprisingly strong thumbs on my temples. “Enough about me,” she says. “Tell me, why do you get such frequent headaches?” Her thumbs move slowly, rhythmically. Her rheumy eyes raised upwards, she begins her wordless chant. As for me, the hardened skeptic, I’ve the oddest urge to cry — why, I’ve no idea. “You think too much, that’s why your head aches,” she murmurs. All too soon, she lifts her thumbs away. I can still feel their pressure on my temples. 

“Most women who come here are troubled less by the evil eye, and more by their own thoughts,” says she. Mai would make a great shrink, I muse. She somehow intuits the roots of her clients’ problems, and simply lends an empathetic ear. “Just like your father-in-law taught you, have you also passed your skill to your children?” I ask. She cackles sadly: “I made the mistake of sending them to school and they have office jobs. My skill will die with me, and I can sense that it will happen very soon now...”

I leave, feeling unexpectedly relieved. My science can’t fully explain what’s happened. Perhaps Mai is right. Modern education has somehow taken away our ability to intuit, empathise and feel compassion in the way she can.