Paresh's pint of urine

If you ever find yourself in the unfortunate position of sustaining a debilitating knee injury, veteran Bollywood comic actor-turned-politician Paresh Rawal has the ultimate cure, but you are not going to like it: sip your own urine.

Actually, if we are to give credit where it is due, it was technically late Indian action director Veenu Devgan who initially advised Paresh back in 1993 about the healing properties of this frankly unappetising bodily fluid, as detailed by the latter in a recent interview on Indian YouTube channel The Lallantop. Those with a strong gag reflex are advised to disembark here. Consider yourselves warned.

Setting the scene

"I was in Mumbai for my second son's (Aditya Rawal) delivery, and I got roped into doing a small scene," began Paresh as he cast his mind back. Painting a picture for his audience, the Andaz Apna Apna actor continued, "I had to drag [late actor] Rakesh Pandey across a fish market in these new slippers they gave us."

The new slippers, with all their new slipperiness, ended up being the catalyst that led to Paresh's potentially debilitating injury.

"No actor works that hard in a rehearsal, you see," explained Paresh. "We usually put all the work in one take - but Rakesh, for some reason, he ended up pulling on me quite hard. It was my own fault really, and I fell on one knee. Luckily, the hospital was right there."

Being carried and rushed over to the nearby hospital by his colleagues, Paresh recalled the series frightening thoughts ticker-taping across his mind - the loss of paid work with a young family to support, bills to pay, a wife about to deliver a baby, and a future in ruins. The prospects, he confessed, looked infinitely grim.

"I was petrified," admitted the actor. "I genuinely thought my career was over and started thinking about who would be getting my other roles. My wife was already in the hospital for the delivery of our baby, and I couldn't stop worrying about who would be bringing in the money."

An inspired solution

Fortunately for Paresh, all was not lost. Thanks to a timely visit by director Devgan, the actor and family man proved that he was willing to do anything to expedite his recovery, revive his career from the ashes and continue to provide for his wife and children.

"Devgan, he was visiting someone else in that same hospital, and he got to know I was there," said Paresh as he took his spellbound viewers down memory lane with him. Spelling out the vivid details of who said what, the Bollywood star continued, "He came to me, and he said, 'If you do what I say, will you do it?'"

Not knowing what he was about to agree to but keen to take any route out of that hospital bed ("It had been three to four days at that point"), Paresh said yes, unaware he was about to be the recipient of some of the most left-field medical advice ever dispelled in or outside a hospital.

"He said, 'When you get up in the morning, you need to drink your own urine'," confided Paresh to his mesmerised (and slightly flabbergasted) audience. "He also said, 'All fighters do this. You will never be in any pain again. Just do it.'"

Devgan's additional tips included abstaining from beer, mutton, smoking ("Otherwise eat what you want") before departing with this bombshell cure. Rather than being repelled, however, Paresh was intrigued, already mentally picturing just how he was going to put the director's words into action. (Take heed. That gag reflex is about to kick in.)

"I had already decided that I wouldn't gulp it down - I would sip it like beer," explained the actor, seemingly ready to relish every last drop of the so-called medicine he had at literally his own disposal. "I knew that if I was going to do it, I would go all the way and do it properly."

Did it work?

Paresh remains convinced that Devgan was onto something when he imparted his wisdom of how "all the fighters" drink their own urine to remain at the peak of their fitness. To his rather gratified astonishment, Devgan's treatment (as opposed to any other advice recommended by his medical team) appeared to speed up his recovery faster than anyone could have predicted.

"You won't believe it - I did it for 15 days and the doctor was amazed," he said, still in awe more than two decades down the line. "My doctor could see the white line forming showing that the bone was healing."

According to Paresh, what should have been a two-and-a-half-month recovery ended up lasting just a month and a half. "I was back at work before in just one and a half months, even though everyone had said it would take over two months," he noted. "That was the magic of it all. You won't believe how beneficial it is!"

As for whether or not the actor's family were as impressed by his beneficial on-the-sly-cure, we will never know, because Paresh never took them into confidence. Presumably, he had accurately anticipated the gobsmacked expressions his family members would have assumed in the face of this independent human-waste-oriented treatment plan.

"I didn't tell them!" he exclaimed. "You don't need to tell them everything!"

The actor-turned-politician did note, however, that everyone he knew was flummoxed by his speedy recovery. "They all just said, 'How are you back on your feet so soon?' And I just said, 'It's done!' I was just very happy to be back at work."

Paresh's urine treatment plan may not be sanctioned by the medical profession, but if you care to try it out for yourself, you may want to emulate the Bollywood actor himself and savour it one sip at a time without gulping the whole thing down. Cheers!