When I was about 15, I went to New Delhi to visit my grandparents. After the customary murgh masala and tea binge, my grandfather pulled me quietly into his room. He touched my face with his index finger, tracing the constellation of acne that gave my face its unique topography.

He mumbled a few words, smiled, and told me not to worry. By the time I finished explaining how I had seen a dermatologist and was going to start taking Acutane, he had already burrowed into his closet pharmacy. Between questions about school and my friends and life in America, he’d surface from beneath his suit coats and Nani Ji’s saris holding a small test tube-like beaker to light, studying its label. Occasionally, when he’d found the right one, he would grab the tweezers, pull out a few round, white pills and swish them around into a stubby brown container.

I was impressed - until I had my first dose. I placed this “homeopathic” medicine beneath my tongue, and instantly started salivating. They were sugar pills. And I laughed and he laughed with me.

And since that day, I tease him about his pharmacy, and the rows of homogeneous homeopathic beakers hiding beneath his undershirts. He laughs and goes on taking his sugar pills.

I don’t think I understood why until I read this account:

Bidoun - The Road to Wellville

“Look at your wonderful achievement, o! Modern man of flying colors! The gigantic synthetic tree you have grown has no leaves, no flowers. “

To quote Ian Scott, a man wiser than he admits, “If it feels good, do it.”