Vazhavatta, Wayanad: The church bell at St Sebastian’s Church, Vazhavatta, has barely finished ringing the final response when a slim man in a white shirt steps out into the cool air, nods to a catechist locking the sacristy, and sets off to his house cum traditional ayurveda hospital. Five minutes later he is at a low-slung building where the day begins not with paperwork but with boiling jeera water. This is Antony Vaidyan, Wayanad’s only Catholic vaidyan by local reckoning: an Ayurvedic practitioner whose routine starts with the Eucharist and continues with a style of care that is homely, frank, and open to anyone who walks through the gate.

He is quick to correct the romanticism that often sticks to such profiles. “I was poor,” he says, matter-of-fact. “I learnt trees because books were far. Later, I nearly died.” In 1982, newly married, he was ventilated with severe jaundice. Relatives were told to be ready; an ambulance waited to take his body to the mortuary. “Then I opened my eyes,” he says. “I don’t argue with that. God gave me back.” The memory drives a particular stubbornness: a preference for those who cannot pay, a suspicion of grand claims, and a habit of mixing prayer with practical instruction.

A clinic that feels like a house

Antony’s hospital, Soubhadra Ayurveda, began with three beds and a kitchen. It still chooses simplicity over spectacle. Rooms are bright and ventilated; the corridors are quiet; there is one kitchen and no “special food” for insiders. Staff and patients eat the same meals, cooked in the same pots. At 7.30 a.m., a mixed circle forms in the courtyard nurses, attendant, two doctors, a couple of priests and a schoolteacher on leave for fifteen minutes of gentle movement. The mood is unhurried and neighbourly. “Hospitality, not hierarchy,” a staff nurse says, shrugging as if it were obvious.

Appointments are by consent and spaced so the waiting area remains human. A sign at reception asks patients to keep a short diary: sleep time, stool, appetite, and pain on a ten-point scale. The team grips small routines because they travel home with people better than slogans do. The centre’s three lines are easy to remember: eat before sunset, walk lightly, sleep gratefully. Families are encouraged to try a fortnight of early suppers and note the difference. “It’s not doctrine,” Antony says, “it’s an experiment you can repeat.”

Pulse and proof, not either or

Antony trained in the gurukula style under Pathrose Vaidyan in Palakkad, learning nadi pariksha three finger pulse reading alongside fieldwork with plants and years at the bedside. The pulse, he says, is his “first doorway”. But he resists the temptation to make tradition an ideology. He orders scans and bloods when needed, reads them with the patient’s diary, and adjusts quickly. “We look and we listen,” he says, “and then we check. Humility beats pride.”

The clinic’s leaflets reflect that stance. They urge honesty with one’s physician about every herb, oil, and supplement; they warn against “poly-remedy stacking”; and they list red flags that require escalation.

Catholic, committed, and genuinely open

Parish life is not a sentimental backdrop. For more than three decades, Antony has taught catechism at St Sebastian’s. He often leaves the clinic in the evening to sit quietly in the church before walking home. The Catholic grammar shows up everywhere: in his affection for the poor; in the insistence that work and prayer belong together; in the steady refusal to trade one person’s dignity for another’s convenience. But it never turns sectarian. The hospital kitchen bakes a simple cake for feast days; staff festivals across religions are marked the same way. The charitable trust behind Soubhadra covers gaps without fuss and without extracting publicity.

“People come here because they’re treated like neighbours,” says a young father from Sultan Bathery, holding a toddler. “Nobody asked what church I’m from. They did ask what time my wife sleeps and what she eats at night. That felt serious.”

The “two mothers” and an uncomplicated ecology

Ask Antony about nature and he does not retreat to abstractions. He uses a domestic image. “We have two mothers,” he says. “The first carried us nine months. The second is Nature—air, light, water, soil carrying us all our years.” The image lands quickly with families. In practice it means supper before sunset if work allows; small kitchen gardens with fewer chemicals; rooms with more light and less noise; and the habit of treating water and air as gifts, not private property.

This uncomplicated ecology has a clinical edge. Early suppers and short walks improve sleep and mood for many; lighter kitchens and open windows reduce small infections and irritability. The tone is practical rather than crusading. “We don’t lecture,” he says. “We ask people to try and judge for themselves.”

Free camps and the first step back

Soubhadra’s free monthly camps, often held with local cultural groups at Eachome, are woven into the calendar rather than tacked on for show. They prioritise the very poor, those caught in addictions who want to change, and patients with advanced disease who have been shuttled from one facility to another. Volunteers triage quickly: urgent care, manageable at home, needs monitoring, or requires referral. In the quiet corners there is teaching: how to steam safely for a cough; how to read a label; when to stop a home remedy; how to speak plainly to your doctor.

One camp story has become a staff touchstone. A man with advanced cancer had been made to live under the stairs in his own home because the odour of illness was too much for his wife and family. Soubhadra took him in. They bathed him, oiled his skin, changed the linens, and organised visits so he would not be alone. “We cannot fix every disease,” Antony says. “We can refuse to leave people unseen.”

A book for the kitchen shelf, not the coffee table

Antony’s educational push aims to raise health literacy without pretence. His bilingual manual, Home Remedies for Health, attempts one thing: to put usable knowledge in the hands of ordinary households. Thirty short lessons, colour photos of common plants, clear safety flags, and a one-page aide-mémoire for talking to doctors. The design is deliberate: Malayalam and English on facing pages so grandparents and grandchildren can read together, and so teachers can lift pages into school meetings. Accompanying YouTube explainers and a modest-fee online class in gruhavaidya take the material to those who cannot travel.
“People say the elders kept secrets,” he says. “Let’s not repeat that mistake. Knowledge that doesn’t move is not medicine.”

Economics without cruelty

Kerala’s private health sector can be a maze of packages and promises. Soubhadra declines franchising and heavy marketing. It uses time-boxed plans instead—one or two weeks with a clear exit and a home routine. The approach may be less profitable, but it keeps families from slipping into debt and dependency. Staff are trained to rehearse the home steps with a carer, write them down, and book a follow-up before discharge. The rule is consistent: hand people back a life they can keep.

Antony’s staff between fifteen and thirty, many from modest backgrounds speak often about a sense of belonging. Special days are marked together; differences of religion are unremarkable. A repeated warning from the boss “Don’t be arrogant with money or food” acts as a common brake. Patients notice. Advice is easier to accept from people who visibly live it.

The miracle that won’t be turned into marketing

The temptation to package Antony’s 1982 survival as brand story must be strong. He refuses it. He speaks of “mercy” and “grace” rather than theatrics, reserves the word “miracle” for that single event, and writes functions, not legends for everyone else: pain down from seven to four, sleep extended by an hour, a month of work without relapse. Staff keep these numbers in a simple diary that travels between home and clinic. The figures keep the team honest and spare families false hope.

He is not sentimental about boundaries either. “We are not a hospice, and we are not an addiction centre,” he says. “But we walk with people; we refer properly; we don’t abandon.”

A Catholic imagination, shared widely

What does it mean, finally, to be a Catholic vaidyan? For Antony it means that prayer opens the day and hospitality shapes the hours that follow; that the poor are expected, not included as an afterthought; that truth-telling with other clinicians is a duty; and that nature is treated as mother rather than warehouse. It means admitting limits, publishing simple rules, and refusing to let dignity become a luxury.

The day’s movement Mass, corridors, kitchen, evening prayer and bedside makes sense in that pause. “I was given back,” he repeats, almost embarrassed by the simplicity of it. “So I will give back.” He spends regular hour of prayer in his own house chapel before going to bed at sharp 9:30 PM.

Tomorrow morning, he will do the same circuit again. The bell will ring; the jeera water will simmer; three fingers will rest lightly on a wrist; and someone will hear, perhaps for the first time in years, that they have two mothers the one who bore them and the one that bears us all. In a district too easily split by hurry and habit, that is a small, bright line of unity.