Can I Have A Loincloth, Please?

Without even realizing it, by heading to the state of Kerala in the deep south of India, I inadvertedly ended up smack in the middle of the massage headquarters of India. Ayurvedic treatment spas litter the landscape here and I don't think they let you board a plane back north until you've had a treatment. I heard of ayurvedic massage for the first time in Mumbai, as a friend Andrew described his experience with it in less than glowing terms. Uncomfortably clad in a tiny loincloth with a small Indian man rubbing oil into his body, I can understand why he was slightly disturbed by the whole thing. At the time, I struck it off my 'Must Do in India' list and dismissed it from my mind.

But 2 days into my stay at the ashram I found myself in the doctor's office whining about the torturous pain in my lower back. I'd yet to find a 'comfortable meditative seated position' and this little problem, combined with the torture device that passed as my bed, was making it challenging to roll out of bed in the morning with any dignity. It turns out ayurveda is a form of medicine, not just a type of massage, and I'd unknowingly landed in the office of a doctor of ayurveda. He gave me two tiny containers of ghee (purified butter that's supposed to have curitive powers), some foul smelling pills and a prescription for 5 consecutive days of ayurvedic massage.

Here's the guidebook's description of ayurveda, so I don't butcher it completely:
'An ancient Indian science of herbal medicine and holistic healing, which focuses on treating the whole organism instead of just the illness, using herbal treatment and massage.'

Living in an ashram, one with a rigid schedule, means following simple instructions for the injestion of medication is seriously complicated. Two pills a half hour before you eat is tricky when you only eat twice a day and you're in the middle of the headstand pose in yoga class a half hour before breakfast. And the ghee - it looked like congealed lard, and well, I was not keen at all. Luckily on my first attempt of trying it the container exploded as I tried to pour it into my tea, and I ended up chucking it in relief. So all my hopes were pinned on the massage.

One really good thing about ayurvedic massage treatment is you're treated by a member of the same sex. This became especially important at my first appointment, when I was told to take off all my clothes and not provided a loincloth. Not that a loincloth would have actually covered much, but there's something unsettling about being completely naked in front of a woman you met 30 second earlier. And given her English vocabulary was limited, it seemed pointless and a little prudish to carry on about my naked state, so I just tried to go with it. Surrendering to India to stay sane is something you read about in guidebooks, so I just stayed silently horrified and kept my hang-ups to myself.

Ayurvedic massage starts with a head massage, so I was quickly seated on a small plastic stool having herbal oils massaged into my head. It should have been relaxing, but I spent most of the time wondering about whose bare bottom had warmed this stool before me and speculating on the likelihood that any sort of disinfectant had been used. After the head massage I got up onto the massage table - a massive wooden structure, turned dark, almost black by millions of beads of oil dripping off other naked bodies and soaking into the wood. At first I sat cross-legged and she put a dot of oil on my forehead, palms, belly button and feet. Then, after having my back oiled, I lay down face-up and spent the next hour and fifteen minutes being marinated, tenderized and battered like a giant piece of raw chicken. Ayurvedic massages isn't deep tissue massage, but rather a repetitive massaging of herb-infused oil into pretty much every square inch of your skin. Nothing was left untouched other than the area where my loincloth should have been. I admit it, I had to supress a fit of giggles at times because it was just so weird. Periodically during the marinating stage she stopped to pick random hairs off my oil-soaked skin - which as I'm sure you can imagine, horrified me. Later in the process I found a small hairball stuck to the back of my leg, which was very traumatic for me - especially as on quick inspection it was clear other people had contributed some materials for the mass. This led to more internal freaking out as I pondered the cleanliness of the massage table, so the experience was less than relaxing.

After 45 minutes of marinating we moved onto the tenderizing stage. Herbs wrapped in satchels, heated over a propane stove came next, which were pounded into every surface of my body. As each satchel cooled another heated one replaced it. This should have relaxed me, and on a certain level I recognized it was quite nice, but I was still hoping for a more aggressive treatment of my back pain, so in my head I was just like 'can we just get on with it, please'.

And yes, I mentioned a battering stage as well. Obviously after all that oil and herbs being rubbed into your body, you're just one massive oil slick. Using a minimum of instructions, I was led, naked, into the bathroom. Showers in India are traditionally bucket baths, which means you fill a large bucket of water and use a small bucket to pour manageable amounts of water onto yourself. The masseuse grabbed a handful of chickpea power and quickly mixed up a paste. While she did this I sort of just stood there desperately wanting to cover myself, but the rational part of me realized that this was now pointless. She then demonstrated the battering and showering procedure, rubbing some of the chickpea paste on my arm, then dumping water on it to rinse it off. She sat on the plastic stool outside while I showered, with the door open, so I felt like some crazy exhibitionist, but just sort of went with it anyway.

As you can imagine, I was sort of dreading my next appointment. At appointment number two a loincloth was produced, without my prompting. I don't think the lack of loincloth at the first appointment was deliberate to see how much it would make me squirm, I think they just either have some on supply or they don't, and you just sort of adapt accordingly. I'm not exactly comfortable with semi-public nakedness now, but my loinclothless days have made me a stronger person.