How Cat got her first hot wash

Dear reader

This is not a "Just So" story ( as the title might suggest), but take my word for it happened Just So...

it's week two. i am high on life and yoga asana's in the ashram but after all the squatting, stretching and shoulder stands, i'm in the mood for someone to hunch over my every need and knot. so i book a massage. the famous keralan specialty ayurvedic massage let it be said at the ayurvedic hospital on the ashram property. granted i should have flinched at the idea of a massage in a hospital but hey, i'm all trippy from my morning chant session so i just mantra my way over there and wait patiently (no pun intended here).

i am ushered in by my lady masseuse (it is illegal in India to massage the opposite sex i am told) and gather from our clumsy exchange (remove yes? wait here, this okay?) that this is not going to be a chat session. fine by me.

i don't need indian phrases to tell her that there is no way i am going butt naked but yes okay i'm willing to compromise by wearing the discretionary loin cloth instead. (actually it looks more like a muslin cloth curtain than a respectable pair of disposable knickers. but no mind, i am sure that the smell of ether will make me pass out even if the massage doesnt.)

Let it be said that having a massage at a hospital tends to be more treatment than pleasure.

what i am avoiding telling you is the part that really freaked me out. the room. perhaps i have watched to many movies in my day but i didn't expect to be conjuring up images from the jack the ripper movie era at a hindu ashram in india.

Let me paint the picture a different way. have you ever watched those movies ( in the 16-1800s with the grimy backstreets and dingy surgerical rooms where surgeons operate under low wattage and even lower regard for the patients on their tables? well the image i have is always of the old bearded white surgeon wearing a white shirt covered in blood and some woman dying in childbirth. bad image i know and right now i bet you're asking yourself why am i following this blog. didnt i promise you cheap thrills and the occasional witticism? stick with me here reader, don't pass out.

the room was straight out of that movie set, complete with a massive wooden surgical table (well oiled thanks to the limbs of many) and a surgical trolley crowded with large glass bottles showcasing viscous yellow ointments and tubes running between them. way to authentic for my liking but luckily i had my pranayama (yogic) breathing to keep my mind focused on the green tiles that gripped so clinically to the walls surrounding me. or at least until the ether made me pass out.

to the traumatized mind, the incident (in this case the massage) is only recalled in visual frames, which i shall try to recall...

i was smothered in more oil than a south indian curry. at one point i remember thinking that i was waiting on this plastic chair for my wrestling opponent to challenge me. instead i was placed on the surgical bed and rubbed down but not massaged as such. i recall my knees and elbows being bent back and forth, presumably she was checking that my joints were indeed well oiled.

yes sireeeeeeeee. i was well lubed with no opponent to wrestle.

i think she had the last laugh over my "not completely nude" rule as my loin cloth curtain wasn't drawn in the first place.

And the butt naked truth is that i had to go through this treatment of mind and body manipulation to earn my greatest desire.... a hot wash. those few minutes after the massage, when she left me alone with a bowl of chickpea mush and a large bucket of hot water, were probably the most sacred and sweetest i have experienced in all the weeks of mass participation and ritual in the ashram. i scrubbed myself down like i was edifying myself of desire itself and allowed myself to tingle and drip with a simplicity that only nature allows.

And that, dear reader, is a true tale of how Cat got her first hot wash.


PS> it's funny how things come full circle. as my masseuse was directing me to put my used loin cloth in the bin i suddenly realised what i had been emptying every morning on my daily rounds of bin duty. dirty loin cloths. karma yoga indeed