Witnessing a Miracle Healer at Work

We rattled along the dusty national highway, heads bouncing and jolting with every insignificant bump. I did my best to avoid touching anything. Years of hair oil caked the windows where sleepy travelers nodded off. The leftovers of forgotten meals litter the floor, dancing, parading around my toes, taunting me with its filth. Aside from the massive explosion that ripped through the right side of the bus just seconds after we left the Agra bus stand, the ride from Firozabad to Goragon was an uneventful passing of six hours. “It’s just a blown tire,” Vibhu explained calmly as the bus screeched to a standstill in the middle of the highway. I was certain a bomb had exploded.

Sri Premji is known throughout India as a miracle worker. Healing joint and back pain, deformities and the like, stories about his healing power are rampant across the country. From children unable to stand because of musco-skeletal deformities, to young laborers in such excruciating pain they are unable to work, and old men so stiff and hunched over that their days are spent gazing at the floor, he has healed them all. With a simple touch on the ankle, a pinch to the lower back, and a few strokes of his hand on the forearm, we witnesses absolute, unexplained change.

Vibhu has been suffering from chronic pain and increasing stiffness in his back for close to five years. He’s been to chiropractors, acupuncturists, MD’s, massage therapists, and no one has been able to provide answers or lasting relief. Going to the gym and relaxing in the sauna were the only things that made him feel better.

A doctor in Agra diagnosed him with Anklosing Spondolyisis (AS), a chronic, autoimmune disease which causes gradual shrinking of the space between the vertebrae, and as a result, stiffness and pain in the back and lower extremities. We read everything we could find on the internet, it scared us and gave us hope, but best of all, it was a diagnosis. This pain and debilitating discomfort had a name and we were no longer chasing an unknown demon.

AS has no cure and no definitive cause. Exercise, hot packs applied to the tight muscles, and a diet low in starch seem to be the only known, if unproved ways of controlling it. Before making any radical changes to his diet, Vibhu’s mom asked us to go see Sri Premji.

We spent three days in Goragon, so that Vibhu could visit Sri Premji, a respected medicine man/miracle healer. Instructed to come twice a day, Vibhu religiously made the trek from Guragon, where we were staying with his cousin, to the temple/guesthouse of Sri Premji in Sohna. While Vibhu was busy traveling back and forth between Guragon and Sohna, I whittled away the days editing wedding videos and roaming around online, absolutely stoked to have 24 hour a day access to internet. I felt so connected!

Each night Vibhu slept a little better, tossing and turning less, and waking up with less stiffness, less pain. Throughout the day his back stayed loose and pain free. He slept through the night for the first time in years. It’s been three days since he last saw the healer, and still he rolls out of bed in the morning with little to no stiffness, he is able to twist and turn, touch his toes, breath deeply. Easy things that most of us take for granted, but for Vibhu, during flare ups, his muscles would be so tight that he couldn’t even take a full, deep breath or sneeze.

Going to this medicine man, as much as I wanted Vibhu to experience relief, I was even more skeptical. But sitting in the room that first day, I watched people transform from being carried in to see the healer, to walking out on their own two feet. Hundreds of people from across India line up everyday to see him, and not a single rupee is charged. Even if Vibhu’s relief is temporary, my belief in the power of alternative medicine and healing has been absolutely strengthened.