Lore has it that Buddha, the most famous Patna-watcher, had cautioned the ancient city against the dangers of flood, fire and feud. He didn’t prescribe any solution. And he never claimed to be a fix-it-all saviour. That’s not a smart thing to do if one is seeking followers anywhere, and more so in Patna – a city perpetually looking for a panacea.

The city snubbed Buddha. Reasons for which can keep historians engaged, but the fact is too obvious. Located barely 70 miles north of the site of his enlightenment (Bodhgaya), Patna has negligible presence of Buddha’s followers – and he can’t be traced farther than his ashes kept in the city museum, a few statues and a newly built Buddha Smriti Park.  Ambitious men, and now machines too, chasing cult status in the city haven’t gone the Buddha way. They have been more aware of the importance of promising a one-stop solution.

Ceragem, a South Korean firm dealing in thermal massage therapy systems discovered it in phases at its distribution centres across the city.  As the pain-relieving powers of a massage therapy got elevated to an all disease-conquering system in public imagination, the disease- talking city knew that Baba Ramdev, the ruling deity of Sanjay Gandhi Park (where  Patna’s morning chatterati walk) , would be competing with the Korean machine. Both offer belief systems, promising solutions for life.

A one-time ticket for life has a different ring in this city. It’s still a place where clearing a test for a government job earns you a lifelong right to have an all-knowing smirk and be taken seriously. Also a lifelong right to feel superior to your neighbour is assured if one can successfully negotiate to bag a young bureaucrat as son-in-law. In the public sphere, the search hasn’t been much different either.

The city’s penchant for solutions found its most defining political moment in 1974 when the holistic and radical sounding phrase “total revolution” (sampoorn kranti), coined by Jayprakash Narayan, became its contribution to the lexicon of pre-Emergency agitational politics in the country.  And as if some frames are meant to be frozen, even in the post-liberalisation period the city has not gone beyond the frame of government for seeking answers to all its developmental and infrastructural woes. Along with Bihar, the state capital has been disappointed.

It’s a city where diseases (not health that much) and radical cures form a good part of otherwise healthy conversations. Alternative is not the word, the treatment has to be messianic to make inroads into public imagination. That’s something the South Korean massage machine network (its Indian wing is headquartered in Gurgaon) has been banking on before the city starts wandering again with its adulterous cult love interests. Rajeev Kumar, Ceragem centre manager at Shivpuri, one of the four distribution and free trial centres in the city, sounds ambitious for his space. He has his share of reasons for it.

Operating from a tripartite hall on the first floor of Kapila complex, the centre has a waiting-cum-promotional area, a trial-cum-healing area with 30 beds supplied with the massage machines (two automatic, rest are manual) and an office corner. Although numbers have shown a decline in the last few months, on an average day each centre still has a flow of around 300 visitors. Not long ago, the wait was longer and queues spiralled out to the roads of this middle class neighbourhood. People queued up from six in the morning, their tiffin-carriers indicating their battle readiness for a long day ahead to get a registration number and the free healing session. Once one manages to get to the official waiting zone on the first floor, a heady mix of entertainment, promotion and hysterical ambience follows – something usually associated with a godman’s ashram in India. People dancing and singing paeans to the massage machine therapy, the tunes are mostly lifted from popular Bollywood songs which might have been lifted from somewhere else. The extremes of promotional claims are stretched when Babloo Singh, a polio-stricken young man, is escorted to join the dance.

Limiting itself to claims of relieving body aches would have been too modest – even a strategic error – for this Korean assortment of massage gadgets. Among the believers, grander claims work. Ceragem discovered it successfully in its Patna centres. Patients have more pompous experiences to share on the promotional dais. Tales of recovery from deadly diseases such as cancer figure in the eulogies and, even as you cross the road below, you can hear blaring loudspeakers recounting how the massage therapy has helped people in keeping a check on blood pressure, sugar and cholesterol levels. No disease seems out-of-bounds for the healing warmth of this thermal massage, no organ inaccessible to its curing rays. Almost.

It may not imply anything, but the coincidence is hard to miss. The only YouTube video showing cancer being treated by thermal massage has been uploaded from Patna, and the video shows a patient getting the therapy for the disease at Ceragem’s Kankarbagh centre in the city.

The city’s medical fraternity has dismissed the Korean thermal therapy as yet another hoax exploiting Patna’s fascination for miracles. “The publicity gimmick of free trials and soaring hopes” is how orthopaedic surgeon and physician, Dr Ramashankar Prasad explains the appeal. Trying to put in perspective the limited role of the machine, Dr Sarvesh Sharma says, “devoid of any scientific basis for its claims of curing diseases, its limited utility could be what is expected from a massage therapy – pain relief”. It’s an assessment which echoes in LIC agent Mithilesh Singh’s dashed hopes of controlling his blood pressure and sugar levels while lying on the thermal massage bed. The more modest hopefuls aren’t so bitter. Chuchun Devi, housemaid and a regular visitor to Shivpuri centre, sounds grateful for relief from shoulder pain.

The number of visitors hasn’t meant encouraging machine sale figures in the city. That’s something that hasn’t surprised distribution centre managers because a large section of the free trial crowd is constituted by low income groups. And as with all free shows, some are there for that sense of spectacle – the therapy picnic. But, business can still be brisk for the simple reason that being the only major city in the state, Patna serves as a supply point for a number of small towns across the state. And within the city too, the machine has found some buyers in the middle-and upper middle-class. Some seemingly healthy people with sound bank balances have justified the purchases with a mystical explanation which nourishes all cults – “a sense of well-being”.

Of late, the dwindling number of visitors is attributed to some rivals like Vigen India (Patna centre located near Raza Bazaar) which is offering the same therapy with similar claims and with the parent company stationed firmly in South Korea. The other reason is something that comes as a stage in the cycle of all belief systems – disillusionment.

In March 2006 Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar was comfortable with a marriage of convenience with soft Hindutva. And he had sought to legitimise Ramdev’s brand of hoax by asking him to become Bihar’s brand ambassador. Today, Nitish would want to forget that offer. But, the state capital is not shying away from its new affairs with panacea. Koreans know it. Buddha wasn’t interested.

Image By: Abhishek Verma