![]() ![]() When asked about the doctor’s verdict or subsequent hospital visit, he seemed unperturbed. ![]() These days, it would have been three to five stitches, easy,” he said. Naval captain Sajid Mahmood, TI(M), remembers his grandmother’s calm treatment of his profusely bleeding finger with turmeric after an axe accident. Even if they do, there’s an impulse to revert to centuries of familiarity rather than allopathic medicine. People didn’t know the names of medicines.” lemon juice on the temples for a headache. We’ve grown up seeing warm honey, ajwain (carom seed) and ginger for a cough. In her final interview, Aapa summed up totkay beautifully: “Totkay are where the joint family system is. During her prolific career – which began at 50 – of 6,500 cooking shows, she shared tips live on national television during her call-in segment. Zubaida Tariq, Pakistan’s own Martha Stewart, was known fondly as Zubaida Aapa (“older sister” in Urdu) for her role in mainstreaming totkay from the late 1990s. “I still believe in totkay from my childhood,” said Siddiqui. They are treatments from the land, of the land, passed on by people living on the land. The root of one, the succulent flesh of another and brewed petals of the rest offered a smorgasbord of remedies from their garden-pharmacy.įor many of their “patients”, totkay were affordable alternatives to mainstream medicine. Together, they tended an overflowing herb garden that included local varieties of aloe vera – an excellent natural sunscreen. Siddiqui and his grandmother kept a wide flask filled with venomous scorpions submerged in sesame oil to use as an antidote against scorpion bites. Siddiqui’s grandmother wasn’t a trained medical practitioner, and though her home was minutes away from Christian Medical College, the region’s largely agrarian workers preferred her herbal remedies to visiting the hospital. Rehman Nawabjan Siddiqui, an 80-year-old overseas Pakistani, spent his childhood summers in Vellore, India, with his Nani, or maternal grandmother, watching her treat ringworm with antiseptic garlic and wasp bites with anti-inflammatory onion juice. During rampant political turmoil or imminent famine, totkay were powerful portals into a world of healing: not alternatives, but medicine itself. Sharing totkay is a vestige of their resilience and resourcefulness. The custodians of these cures are often grandmothers who have lived through Partition, war or both. Totkay speak to Pakistanis’ memory of their former selves. In contemporary Urdu, as South Asians gravitated away from these practices, we started using the term for herbal remedies, almost like magic cures or spells.” “Totka is a synonym of the word tona, and both used to be associated with black magic and witchcraft. “Totka means a cure of any negative or evil thing,” explained Syeda Nausheen Ali, who has been teaching Urdu in Karachi schools for the past 28 years. The Urdu word “totka” is derived from Sanskrit, with its first usage in a 1683 book titled Suhagan Nama (“Married Women’s Songs”). From the pantry to the vanity, humble ingredients promise alluring returns. Anti-acne totkay use powdered, day-old roti (flatbread) and neem (Azadirachta indica, or Indian lilac) powder to control excess sebum production and unclog pores. In Pakistan, you simply have to voice (or show signs of) an ailment, and the totkay come rolling in.īeauty totkay are also popular, likely because using makeup and visiting salons are rites of passage reserved for married life in some Pakistani families, making natural remedies the self-care regimen of choice for many women. Travellers may see merchants board local buses and trains to sell “cures” for common ailments, while social gatherings often feature well-intentioned elders doling out life hacks. Lemon, turmeric and ginger are the holy trifecta for multiple illnesses, while drinking ghee induces labour and asafoetida cures flatulence. Totkay range from the pragmatic (treat styes with garlic sprinkle salt and turmeric to eliminate ants) to the obscure (place eggshells around your home to circumvent lizards poke cloves in a lemon to ward off dengue). ![]()
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