bletia

Before starting treatment, Gyas instructs patients to stand in the sun for about 40 minutes at the clinic, where nearby ducks and goats wander, and Muslim vendors sell mutton curry, prayer beads and skull caps.

Gyas says he does not charge patients, most of whom are poor.

Gyas depends financially on one of his sons who is a shopkeeper, while another son is following in his footsteps, learning the practice from his father.

Mohameed Iqbal Gyas is one of the city's few bloodletting practitioners, a treatment believed to cure a range of diseases by draining so-called bad blood.

SOUNDBITE 1 Mohameed Gyas (man), Bloodletting practitioner (Hindi 20 sec):