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 w

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