Dancing with life
June 2014
Very often, we think nothing shall ever harm us. When things do go wrong, we just do know what to do. Some like Jeroo Mulla show us how one can overcome anything, even cancer, if only one has the will.
By Jamuna Rangachari
Jeroo Mulla was diagnosed with uterine cancer in 2006. Desperate and distraught, she just did not know what to do. Bravely but with a little anxiety, she went for radiation. She knew this may be a challenge but did not expect it to be so bad. The fact was that she went through severe reactions to the radiation. She began to get diarrhoea, which increased in intensity. After two weeks of radiation, she got intense stomach cramps. The cramps at the end of the second week were becoming unbearable and there was no way she could eat. Her strength was being sapped and she was becoming very weak.
One day, out of the blue, her homeopath, Dr Ms Shetty, called her to check how she was and asked her what she was eating. She suggested she stop all the meat and chicken and begin eating only fruits and salads. She had done this type of diet before with Vijaya Venkat for two months once before and she had felt very good.
Serendipitously, in the next two days, two other people, one of them a well-known health journalist, and the other someone who had had breast cancer, also suggested she contact Vijaya Venkat or her daughter Anju Venkat. When she was able to speak to Vijaya, she spoke to her with so much compassion in her voice that her depression and negativity disappeared. She assured her she would be healed and that nature had in abundance whatever was needed to heal her. She roughly gave her a diet plan and told her what to do. She said Anju would give her more details the next day.
Dos and donts of a naturopathic diet
The things to AVOID completely – all the “NO”s
- Refined Salt (a small quantity of sea salt or rock salt is OK)
- Refined Sugar ( gur or honey in small quantities is OK). Khajoor (Date paste is a great substitute)
- Milk and milk products
- Wheat ( Bajra and jowar are preferable, rice is the best)
- Oil ( Sesame oil and olive oil in small quantities are OK). Freshly grated coconut is great as an addition
- Split daals – to be had very occassionally
Important DOs of the diet
- Lots of fruit – but not to be mixed with any other food
- Lots of dry fruits – khajoor, anjeer, jardaloo, black raisins, raisins etc ( not to be eaten or mixed with nuts)
- Lots of nuts – e.g. almonds, cashew nuts, walnuts, pistachios
- Lots of fresh vegetable juices
- Lots of raw vegetable salads
- Freshly grated coconut
- Lime-shots - the juice of one lime and an equal quantity of water.
Additional things to remember – disinfectant and immunity builder – the juice of fresh haldi.
This is the basic diet. But one has to fine-tune it to the person’s health problems.
Anju called the next day. She told her to eat a single fruit every hour and have a single raw vegetable for lunch and dinner. Whenever she felt weak, she was to eat khajoor (dates). She said all fruits break down into amino acids which are the building blocks. She said at that time she was incapable of digesting anything except fruit. Jeroo had to have a different variety of fruits – a rainbow of sweet, watery, acidic and sub acidic. She also had to stop adding the sugar in the lime juice mixture the doctors had recommended. Refined sugar was absolutely out. She also made her have white pumpkin juice.
For the cramps she told her to just have lime juice mixed with in equal quantities with ginger-juice every hour or so. The lime juice becomes alkaline when it enters the intestine and neutralizes the acidity.
Nature heals as told my Anju Venkat
Our body has been designed for health.
Health happens when all functions in the body are occurring smoothly and efficiently.
For functioning the body needs energy, for our body works on the principle of Output = Input.
When the input we provide is not according to the genetic blueprint of the body , the result is that the body can no longer function at an optimum level. The body communicates this through various signals. These signals of the body are mis-interpreted as a symptom and therefore are being classified into various conditions.
To motivate the body: everything in our body occurs through motivation. In happiness and gratitude our cells open up to receive nutrition and function better. By getting Jerro to understand what is happening within her, we got her to have faith in her body’s innate intelligence that heals. This is the most important for healing to occur. Severe muscular cramps and pain that she got, started reducing her trust in her body.
To make the blood alkaline for all functions in the body to happen we all need an alkaline medium. Through curry, worry and hurry we create an acid or toxin build up in the body. This body gets eliminated naturally through our breath, perspiration and bowel. When the elimination in our body is slow, toxicity builds up and dis-ease occurs. Through an increase of raw foods which is fruits, raw veggies and herbs helped the blood restore alkalinity.
Cancer does not grow in an anaerobic medium. Breath or prana helps the body heal and change. By getting her to rest, physically, mentally and digestively, we got her breath or prana to be conserved within the body. Every few hours she was asked to rest her body, lay down, do a shravasan, do some deep breathing or a hold a cold towel against her abdomen.
Boosting immunity
It is the body’s natural defense mechanism that helps take cancer cells out. By boosting her immunity through sleep, darkness and herbs like ginger, lemon, onion, turmeric, we restored her wellness, repairing cells that had got damaged through toxicity and radiation. Repair happens in darkness, rest, and through material, that is nuts, sprouts and greens.
The body’s only goal is Wellness. As soon as you energize the body, the body returns to homestasis which is balance. Or order for this balance to occur the body needs to start by taking out the toxicity that has accumulated within. In Jerro’s case the toxicity was removed through the exit of the bowel (extra motion). The body eliminates either through the lungs (cough and cold) or skin (fever and rash) or the bowel (extra motion).
As her body eliminated the toxin, movement of the nutrition into the cell increases, repair of the cell occurs and balance is restored.
Her body responded immediately, for the cramps, reduced as soon as she started fruit and discharged the toxin via diarrhea.
Appetite improved, taste returned and her body felt less tired.
Vijaya and Anju Venkat can be contacted at
The Health Awareness Centre.
Worli 022-24980005/6Email : thacwellness@gmail.com
Rethink about water
Jeroo kept having doubts about what she was doing but there was a definite change in just two days. However the cramps, although far less, were still there. Then she began to notice that whenever she had water to keep herself hydrated as she had been instructed by her doctors to do, she would feel uncomfortable.
She told Anju this and she immediately said – stop the water! She explained that the doctors said she ought to be hydrated and that did not necessarily mean she ought to have water. She was having juices and that was enough.
Within the next two days, her cramps had gone! The miracle had happened! In just four days of her diet. And it was only fruits, raw vegetables and lime-juice and ginger juice that had done it!
She had a break from radiation over the weekend so she was worried that when she resumed on Monday she would get cramps again.
Anju assured her this would not happen. She told her how to sip water-melon juice before the radiation instead of water in order to get the bladder full which was necessary for the radiation. And yes that worked too. On Monday too there were no cramps!
She had to get a haemoglobin test done to check if she could withstand more. When she got it done, she found her haemoglobin level after the diet had actually increased!
During the entire period of her travails, Jeroo had never given up as she knew she would be looked after, which she knows is responsible for her well being today.
Spiritual equation
As a child, Jeroo had learnt the Christian prayer, “The Lord is my shepeard, I’ll not want..”. She just kept chanting this and the Zorastrian prayers she knew when she was undergoing radiation.She would also do positive visualizations to affirm that she was healed and happy.
Vipassana was introduced to Jeroo by a close friend of her husbands and it was a life-changing experience. It taught her to accept things as they are, to let go and to face the vicissitudes of life. It was a pillar of support to her during her illness where she had to face so many problems. She is now far more seriously into the meditation than she was before her illness.
Iyengar yoga has become an integral part of her life and she ensures she regularly practices it to keep herself fit and healthy.
As she also knew Bharatnatyam, she ensures that dances regularly. Today vipassana, Iyengar yoga, dance and a proper diet are the pillars of her life.
Jeroo’s diet today
Early morning – wheat grass juice
Breakfast – fruits and dry fruits for breakfast. ( Nothing except fruits till 12) Also a fruit juice – orange juice or pomegranate juice
12.00 p.m. – Spinach Juice with Celery/Tomato/Cucumber with lemon and ginger; OR Beetroot /tomato / carrot juice with phudina, amla and ginger
Lunch: a dubba that consists of raw salad, sprouts, rice/idli and a nut-milk preparation which seems like a daal and all sorts of other things. None of these have any oil or salt.
After lunch : a lime-shot
Evening : fruits
Pumpkin juice ( to which is added some raw spinach (or celery or mint), kothmir (coriander), ginger and lime) an hour after the fruit
Dinner: salads with lots of nuts – no carbohydrates – steamed potatoes and/or steamed whole daals or sprouts.
After dinner: a lime shot
Pumpkin juice an hour after dinner.
In sum
As we can see, one has to take care of the body, mind and spirit to attain complete wellness.We cannot neglect any aspect and make each aspect strengthen and not weaken us. Jeroo is now sixty but still dances, travels and never compromises on her spiritual practice.
Whether or not we have a health challenge, Jeroo’s story is indeed an inspiration to all of us to lead a complete, wholesome life.