The massage was an interesting experience.
Jimmy guided me back to a small hut-like building on the back of the property where there was a small (maybe 5 feet tall if he had shoes on) but muscular looking man with a smile a mile wide. He was darkly complected and his teeth were the most amazing white. Like he used 14 packs of the Crest White Strips or something. Huge, sincere smile. And spoke very little English.
He motions me into the room and shuts the door most of the way and stops it with a part of a brick. He points to my shirt and I say, take it off, and he smiles his big smile and nods his head. Next comes a point at my shorts, no problem. Then comes the point the my underwear. Ummm… ok???
A few seconds of hesitation, but a few more later and I’m standing buck naked in front of Little Man and he reaches around my middle with his small arms and ties this piece of fabric around my waist. It’s basically a 3 inch wide piece of lightweight white cotton cloth, and it’s about 18 inches long.
There are fabric ties around the top of it, which is how he’s fastened it around my waist. He moves around back of me, and reached through my legs to grab the dangling cotton and then pulls it up in the back, and tucks it under the ties. It looks like the most rudimentary diaper you have ever seen, but it gives me a bit of my modesty back, for now at least.
He has me sit on a stool and he opens a dark bottle of something and he pours about a quarter cup of whatever it is, in to my hair on the top of my head. And he starts massaging my head. Pretty soon, he is working the oil (I think it was coconut oil infused with Ayurvedic herbs) into my face, around my eyes, into my moustache. Everywhere. I’m not even worried about it.
At some point he indicates that I should get on the table. The table is hard. It has no cushion whatsoever, like a piece of three quarter inch plywood with a waterproof tablecloth on top. Like you’d see on a picnic table somewhere, but it wasn’t red and white plaid.
I get on the table and Little Man starts massaging my legs, and there’s no safe boundary area between where my leg stops and my other parts begin, if you know what I mean. This is pretty much a no-fly zone in a normal American massage, but that’s not the way it works here, apparently. There are muscles there, and they need to get their kinks worked out, you see.
The little diaper is doing precious little to keep my bits in check, so with every lunging movement (Little Man is going up and down the length of my leg, which is a stretch for him, he kind of looks like he is rowing a boat) I’m falling out of my cotton restraint.
This does not bother Little Man in the least. He acts like he doesn’t notice, and maybe he doesn’t for all I know. But I am noticing as it is quite a peculiar and strange feeling, and even more peculiar and strange for it to be happening in front of another man.
He gets up to my chest and belly and arms, and does the whole thing. Sometimes knocking or hitting me in a synchronized fashion, other times working long, long strides down the length of whatever part he’s working on.
Pretty soon its time for me to flip, and at this point, the diaper is in his way, so he just undoes it. A full-moon has risen in the middle of the day, in Alleppey, Kerala. The whole process is repeated, just as it was on my front side. Utter disregard for the more private of parts or the proximity to them.
This went on for apparently an hour, because that’s what I paid for, though I wasn’t watching a clock, because there was no clock for one thing, and I was just trying to not start laughing like a school girl for another. When Little Man was done, I was pointed into the shower room, and he gave me a trial bar of soap and a trial sized shampoo which he cut the top off of for me with some tiny scissors he produced. I asked him for a towel as there was none around, and he must of known that word, because he brought one over. It looked like a big version of the diaper, nearly gossamer thin cotton, but without the straps.
I get into the shower room, but there is no shower head. There is a bucket and a scoop (more like an open spouted cup). I picked up the scoop and poured one over my head to get wet. At this point I realized how viscous the oil was. I felt like I was covered in motor oil.
I take another scoop of the water (Little Man is watching all this, by the way), and start shampooing my hair. Little Man, at this point, comes into the shower-less shower room and takes a scoop of the water and puts it over my head, so I can rinse it better. He says something about soap in a questioning kind of way, and I hand him the package and he opens the soap.
He then proceeds to wash me.
My modesty had left some time ago, and my pride was MIA as well at this point. It’s helpful anyway, to have someone bathe you in this situation, because my arms can’t reach to the Crisco on my back anyway. Little Man does my arms, legs, back, chest, and every other place as well, except for my face. Apparently my face is off-limits. There was no other place that was true.
He rinses me a half dozen cups worth, and then hands me the cup to finish up. A few more dousings and I grab the threadbare towel and soak it nearly immediately. I wonder if I should pull my clothes into the shower room, but decide to present my naked self into the room, as there was nothing that needed hiding anymore between us. I get my underwear and shorts and finally my shirt back on, and I thank him (I actually am really relaxed from the massage), and we smile broadly at one another for a half a second.
That was interesting was all I could think at the time.
In retrospect, I think I prefer my massages to still have the no-fly zone. I’m also pretty sure I still prefer to be washed by my own two hands and to be the only one in the shower for that matter. But he never did anything untoward or inappropriate, it was just a total disregard for private space (literally) and a completely different worldview on modesty.
What can you expect from a country whose “strangers” are so intimate with one another.
The rest of my day paled in comparison to the massage. I went for a walk along both sides of the river, I bought a package of pineapple cream cookies for $.20 (think vanilla/pineapple Oreos), and I hopped a ride back on the ferry which was free. I found an ATM which didn’t like my card, but I had another debit card it did like, so I got some money out to pay the piper in the morning when I check out. I took my camera out and got some good pictures of the many species of flowers in the garden (again, and better), and then I ate.
Dadu, the cook here, made me some chicken curry which was excellent, along with dal fry, chapattis, some vegetable dish which had a mostly dry mixture of tomatoes, green peas, onions, and fried paneer cheese cubes in it, and some fresh papaya from the tree outside. I’m not sure why every Indian dish gets translated into English as some kind of curry. You would think from the name that I have been eating the same thing over and over again, just with a different main ingredient. This is not so. Though many of the dishes make use of the standby Indian spices, they are in different combinations and strengths, and it doesn’t feel (or taste) as though they are all the same at all.
Earlier I had made mention to Rema and Jimmy, how delicious the ice cream and julab gamun was from yesterday, and it appeared on the table towards the end of the meal as well. With this amount of food and the variety, I can’t fault the price. There is enough to feed 4 people here, and it’s all spread out before me. A couple of glasses of the pink water to wash it all down, and I was full and satisfied.
Here at the house, there is usually somebody near you while you’re eating. They try to be available at all times. I told the manager (her name is Rema) that I really appreciated the repeat on the desert and pointed to the table. She was somewhat aghast. I repeated it, and her surprise just increased and she’s now looking at the table where I’m pointing. I then pointed directly to the (now empty) ice cream dish and said desert slowly once more. Then she got it, and the relief melted her worry. She thought I had been saying “lizard.”
We had had a conversation a few days back about the geckos I’d found. She said the last guest found an adult gecko in the room and had Jimmy come and catch it. I don’t know how one would catch a gecko. When they get the inkling to move, they do it quick. I bet it would be about like trying to catch a puff of smoke. Even if you could, why would you want to. They eat mosquitoes! Anyway, I had told her that I liked the geckos and she told me that people there call them “house lizards.” She thought I was telling her there was a lizard on the table :).
After dinner, I sorted out a problem with the AirTel sim card which AirTel had disconnected. I had to use Rema’s phone because all outbound and inbound calls were stopped. The first guy I talked to told me I needed to go to an AirTel store and get a duplicate sim card made up, because mine had failed. He kept speaking in Hindi though, and I kept asking him to speak in English. Finally he put me on hold and about 10 minutes later a man who spoke English well came on the line.
Miraculously, my sim was now not the problem. He said they disconnected it because of address verification issues. I had heard about this and it is why I purchased the sim at the airport because that booth wasn’t supposed to have the same problems, as it had some higher grade of acceptance coming from the International Airport for travellers without permanent Indian addresses. However, when my entire balance suddenly ran out in Varanasi (remember that?) and I had to re-buy my voice and data credits, I think it switched to a different store, and that’s why they terminated it.
The second guy tells me that I need to go to an AirTel store in Delhi. I tell him I’m in Kerala and that’s not going to happen. He magically fixes the problem, and tells me that within 15 days, I’ll need to verify my passport with an AirTel store. No problem. In 15 days I’ll be in the United States of America and it won’t be an issue for me.
After the AirTel calls, Rema and I talk for about an hour about all kinds of things that are different and/or interesting, differences between America and India. She answers some questions for me about the chairs outside (that have legs rests which are extensions of the arm rests), and I order breakfast for the morning at 9. I tell her I’d like to try the boiled bananas that she told me about, so she makes a couple of calls and instructs someone to bring some bananas with them to work in the morning.
Now, I’m getting ready to take another shower. The latest wave of oil has crept to the surface and I need de-glistened. My hair still looks like I’m a pubescent 14 year boy who hasn’t showered in a week.
Tomorrow, I will hit the train from Alleppey, Kerala to Vellore, Tamil Nadu in order to reach Tiruvannamalai by bus. The train gets into Vellore at 3:30a, so I’m sure I’ll have some waiting to do once I arrive. Well, that’s assuming I make it off the train at the right station. It will be the dead of night and the train only stops at my station for 2 minutes. That’s not a lot of margin for error!
Hopefully the connection and signal will be better in Tiru than it has been here, where it takes up to 10 minutes to refresh my email inbox. Maybe there I’ll be able to at least upload some pics from the last week. We’ll see. Til next time.
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