Dhanukdhari’s skill as a bone setter was well known in the district. Word of mouth advertisement was of great help in spreading his natural gift and skill in fixing broken or fractured bones and easing the pain of a sprained ankle or finger.

Dhaukdhari had arrived in British Guiana as an indentured immigrant with very little wordly goods and after his term of servitude was over, he settled in our village and raised his family.

Everyone in the village knew him and his family. Indeed, everyone knew everyone else but he was well-known for a special reason.

First, allow me to describe what I remember of this old man who had magic in his hands and a vast knowledge on of the human skeleton.

I can remember him from the time I had become old enough to have knowledge of the villagers.

He was perhaps in his 70s. He always wore a cream flannel vest with short sleeves and a dhoti. His head was bald and his legs thin and hairless. He was usually seen sitting on a jute bag under the house, his thin legs folded under him. And oh! Before I forget, he wore rings in his ear lobes. I think he oiled his skin from head to toe.

Very often, there would be people of all ethnicities, ages and sizes – men, women, and children, parents with young children coming from all over the coast- waiting on him for help in fixing sprains, fractured or broken bones. He had his own homeopathic poultices and rubs to use and to give to the villagers when he had finished helping them, to effect the healing process. I do not think there was a monetary charge, but the villagers would give him whatever they could afford. There were, of necessity, return visits for him to assess the healing process, change a bandage or give new instructions.

I might mention here that many of these cases might have been first seen by doctors at the General Hospital in Georgetown. There were no district hospitals at that time. When the bones refused to heal after a hospital visit, the people would come to Dhanukdhari. I do not know of any case that he treated refused to heal. My own sister’s fractured arm was healed by his fingers and turmeric paste and a bandage.

Very soon doctors in the hospital heard of this magician/healer who fixed what they could not. They wondered who this person was. Where did he train? How did he know what to do? How was he able to fix broken and fractured bones with his bare hands and without the help of X-Rays? Who was the ignorant village “charlatan”who performed the miracles on people whom they themselves had examined?

One day around 10:00 in the morning, I was in my classroom teaching my class of seven-year olds when I looked through the window to see old Dhanukdhari running down the pasture past the grazing cows and sheep, jumping over drains filled with water heading towards the canal, his dhoti flying in the wind, his spindly legs pumping, running as though for his life, heading for the courida trees that grew along the canal.

Soon, all the little heads in my class were pressed against the windows watching him run. We all tumbled outside to behold this unusual spectacle of Dhanukdhari running as though his life depended on it. The children yelled and egged him on. “Run, Uncle! Ruuuun!” They had already seen the reason.

I looked around too to see the cause of this commotion. What I saw was a group of men coming down the school dam waving their hands and shouting out to him indicating that they wanted him to stop and to talk with them, but Dhanukdhari never looked back. Never slowed down.

Well, that interview died before it was born. Dhanukdhari refused to turn back and the men had to give up the chase.

We later learned that he hid in the bushes until night fell. Then it was that his family was able to coerce him into returning home.

The news went around the village that the group of men who were doctors from the hospital and reporters from a daily newspaper had come to see this man with the magic fingers, who had no formal education, no knowledge of medicine, who had never spoken with a doctor in his life, had never seen the inside of a hospital but who was able to fix broken or fractured bones, ease the pain of a sprained ankle or finger with only an inborn skill moving through his fingers to explore, to massage and fix, and a deep knowledge of natural cures from plants.

All they wanted was to interview him to learn his “secrets’. He, however thought that they

had come to take him to jail for doing what he thought they saw as illegal, by doing that which he was good at and was blessed with.

If I remember well, from that day on, he never helped anyone again.

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