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Long before “hacks” entered the common lexicon, people across the subcontinent used condensed nuggets of ancestral wisdom to solve everyday problems.
During my twin boys’ newborn phase, they slept using steel pot lids, small rice-filled sacks and tea saucers for a pillow. The objective? To make their heads perfectly round.
This was one of the Pakistani totkay (singular: totka) I encountered during new motherhood and beyond. A totka is a household remedy, widely touted, sometimes trivialised, and, often, surprisingly effective. Long before “hacks” entered the common lexicon, people across the subcontinent used condensed nuggets of ancestral wisdom to solve everyday problems.
Beauty 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. 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. From the pantry to the vanity, humble ingredients promise alluring returns.
The centuries-old hacks stretched meagre portions, made healthcare accessible and normalised self-care (Credit: Danishkhan/Getty Images)
The Urdu word “totka” is derived from Sanskrit, with its first usage in a 1683 book titled Suhagan Nama (“Married Women’s Songs”). “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. “Totka is a synonym of the word tona, and both used to be associated with black magic and witchcraft. 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.”
Totkay speak to Pakistanis’ memory of their former selves. The custodians of these cures are often grandmothers who have lived through Partition, war or both. Sharing totkay is a vestige of their resilience and resourcefulness. During rampant political turmoil or imminent famine, totkay were powerful portals into a world of healing: not alternatives, but medicine itself.
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.
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. Siddiqui and his grandmother kept a wide flask filled with venomous scorpions submerged in sesame oil to use as an antidote against scorpion bites. Together, they tended an overflowing herb garden that included local varieties of aloe vera – an excellent natural sunscreen. The root of one, the succulent flesh of another and brewed petals of the rest offered a smorgasbord of remedies from their garden-pharmacy.
These low-cost and readily available solutions often come from the kitchen or pantry (Credit: Donald Iain Smith/Getty Images)
For many of their “patients”, totkay were affordable alternatives to mainstream medicine. They are treatments from the land, of the land, passed on by people living on the land. “I still believe in totkay from my childhood,” said Siddiqui.
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. 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.
You may also be interested in:
• India's ingenious approach to life
• A centuries-old "zero-waste" movement
• India's original "turmeric latte"
In her final interview, Aapa summed up totkay beautifully: “Totkay are where the joint family system is. We’ve grown up seeing warm honey, ajwain (carom seed) and ginger for a cough... lemon juice on the temples for a headache. People didn’t know the names of medicines.”
Many still don’t. Even if they do, there’s an impulse to revert to centuries of familiarity rather than allopathic medicine. Naval captain Sajid Mahmood, TI(M), remembers his grandmother’s calm treatment of his profusely bleeding finger with turmeric after an axe accident. “The bleeding stopped immediately. These days, it would have been three to five stitches, easy,” he said. When asked about the doctor’s verdict or subsequent hospital visit, he seemed unperturbed. “What hospital visit?” he said.
Due to their popularity, these ancient remedies are now being mass produced by companies like Hamdard (Credit: Aysha Imtiaz)
Dr Bilquis Shaikh, a registered medical practitioner of homeopathy, certified alternative medicine practitioner and Pakistani herbalist doctor, bridges the gap between the world of medicine and totkay. Born in a small village in Chitral in the far north of Pakistan, limited access to doctors spurred Dr Shaikh’s passion for naturopathy. “If you have a broken bone and the closest doctor is 12 hours away, turning to the kitchen or using willow tree branches is what you do. Our women are all kitchen doctors. Totkay are in our genes,” she explained.
More than one million subscribers tune in to her YouTube channel, where she addresses a range of issues from hormonal imbalances to natural hair straightening using coffee, yoghurt and borax. Her three-minute tooth-whitening hack involves clove powder (an antiseptic, she explains), garlic powder (the sulphur content erodes plaque), ginger powder (to prevent bleeding gums) and salt (as an abrasive to clear build-up and eliminate foul breath).
The ingredients are familiar, but the narrative is changing. No longer just remedies retrieved from Nani’s treasure chest of wisdom, Dr Shaikh consults academic papers, research journals and a wide range of literature to substantiate each ingredient with research.
For many people, totkay are affordable alternatives to mainstream medicine (Credit: Bashir Osman/Getty Images)
She explained that her method of presenting the scientific evidence behind old-world traditions is well-received by millenials, who are used to turning to Google for all life’s questions. According to her team, many of her followers are in their 20s, suggesting that her target demographic is turning inwards to find local cures. “We’re like plants,” said Dr Shaikh, “If we lose touch with our roots, we’ll wilt.”
Remaining Article in the link below
www.bbc.com
During my twin boys’ newborn phase, they slept using steel pot lids, small rice-filled sacks and tea saucers for a pillow. The objective? To make their heads perfectly round.
This was one of the Pakistani totkay (singular: totka) I encountered during new motherhood and beyond. A totka is a household remedy, widely touted, sometimes trivialised, and, often, surprisingly effective. Long before “hacks” entered the common lexicon, people across the subcontinent used condensed nuggets of ancestral wisdom to solve everyday problems.
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). Lemon, turmeric and ginger are the holy trifecta for multiple illnesses, while drinking ghee induces labour and asafoetida cures flatulence. 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. In Pakistan, you simply have to voice (or show signs of) an ailment, and the totkay come rolling in.
Beauty 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. 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. From the pantry to the vanity, humble ingredients promise alluring returns.
The centuries-old hacks stretched meagre portions, made healthcare accessible and normalised self-care (Credit: Danishkhan/Getty Images)
The Urdu word “totka” is derived from Sanskrit, with its first usage in a 1683 book titled Suhagan Nama (“Married Women’s Songs”). “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. “Totka is a synonym of the word tona, and both used to be associated with black magic and witchcraft. 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.”
Totkay speak to Pakistanis’ memory of their former selves. The custodians of these cures are often grandmothers who have lived through Partition, war or both. Sharing totkay is a vestige of their resilience and resourcefulness. During rampant political turmoil or imminent famine, totkay were powerful portals into a world of healing: not alternatives, but medicine itself.
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.
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. Siddiqui and his grandmother kept a wide flask filled with venomous scorpions submerged in sesame oil to use as an antidote against scorpion bites. Together, they tended an overflowing herb garden that included local varieties of aloe vera – an excellent natural sunscreen. The root of one, the succulent flesh of another and brewed petals of the rest offered a smorgasbord of remedies from their garden-pharmacy.
These low-cost and readily available solutions often come from the kitchen or pantry (Credit: Donald Iain Smith/Getty Images)
For many of their “patients”, totkay were affordable alternatives to mainstream medicine. They are treatments from the land, of the land, passed on by people living on the land. “I still believe in totkay from my childhood,” said Siddiqui.
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. 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.
You may also be interested in:
• India's ingenious approach to life
• A centuries-old "zero-waste" movement
• India's original "turmeric latte"
In her final interview, Aapa summed up totkay beautifully: “Totkay are where the joint family system is. We’ve grown up seeing warm honey, ajwain (carom seed) and ginger for a cough... lemon juice on the temples for a headache. People didn’t know the names of medicines.”
Many still don’t. Even if they do, there’s an impulse to revert to centuries of familiarity rather than allopathic medicine. Naval captain Sajid Mahmood, TI(M), remembers his grandmother’s calm treatment of his profusely bleeding finger with turmeric after an axe accident. “The bleeding stopped immediately. These days, it would have been three to five stitches, easy,” he said. When asked about the doctor’s verdict or subsequent hospital visit, he seemed unperturbed. “What hospital visit?” he said.
Due to their popularity, these ancient remedies are now being mass produced by companies like Hamdard (Credit: Aysha Imtiaz)
Dr Bilquis Shaikh, a registered medical practitioner of homeopathy, certified alternative medicine practitioner and Pakistani herbalist doctor, bridges the gap between the world of medicine and totkay. Born in a small village in Chitral in the far north of Pakistan, limited access to doctors spurred Dr Shaikh’s passion for naturopathy. “If you have a broken bone and the closest doctor is 12 hours away, turning to the kitchen or using willow tree branches is what you do. Our women are all kitchen doctors. Totkay are in our genes,” she explained.
More than one million subscribers tune in to her YouTube channel, where she addresses a range of issues from hormonal imbalances to natural hair straightening using coffee, yoghurt and borax. Her three-minute tooth-whitening hack involves clove powder (an antiseptic, she explains), garlic powder (the sulphur content erodes plaque), ginger powder (to prevent bleeding gums) and salt (as an abrasive to clear build-up and eliminate foul breath).
The ingredients are familiar, but the narrative is changing. No longer just remedies retrieved from Nani’s treasure chest of wisdom, Dr Shaikh consults academic papers, research journals and a wide range of literature to substantiate each ingredient with research.
For many people, totkay are affordable alternatives to mainstream medicine (Credit: Bashir Osman/Getty Images)
She explained that her method of presenting the scientific evidence behind old-world traditions is well-received by millenials, who are used to turning to Google for all life’s questions. According to her team, many of her followers are in their 20s, suggesting that her target demographic is turning inwards to find local cures. “We’re like plants,” said Dr Shaikh, “If we lose touch with our roots, we’ll wilt.”
Remaining Article in the link below
Pakistan’s ingenious solutions to life
Long before “hacks” entered the common lexicon, people across the subcontinent used condensed nuggets of ancestral wisdom to solve everyday problems.
www.bbc.com
