Look Before you Lube: a Traditional Ayurvedic Massage

We’ve noted before that when you travel you are not really in control. So much is out of your hands, and you often don’t have any idea what’s going on. That usually has to do with things like planes, hotel rooms, and the like. But once in a while you voluntarily take on an experience that proves to be not exactly what you expected. Thus it was with John’s Ayurvedic massage. You may remember our amazing night bus adventure in India. The experience we describe here happened just a day or so later.

Laurel suggested that we should have a massage to relax our muscles, sore from the bouncy bus. John does not like massages. He doesn’t know why; he just doesn’t. But Laurel likes them very much. She was insistent. She played the ‘important cultural experience’ card, so poor John had few options. Also, John had never actually had a massage before, so he was keenly aware of having no moral high ground. Somewhat reluctantly, he agreed to an Ayurvedic massage. He had no idea what that might entail, but he is certain in retrospect that Laurel did. Indeed, throughout the remainder of the experience he could almost hear her cackling from the other room. (Laurel swears that she did not know what to expect either, but she does admit that she giggled as she imagined John’s reactions.)

We scheduled our massages at the same time though – India being a modest kind of place – they were naturally in different rooms and with sex-appropriate masseur and masseuse. Nervously, our duo separated. The first thing that happens is that you take all of your clothes off and receive a paper doily with which to gird your loins. The paper was, to put it mildly, neither strong nor comfortable (not exactly waxed paper, but not exactly not; think store brand paper towel combined with the bib they give you at the dentist’s office). You then jump up onto the massage table. Or, you try to: the table sits just above waist height and is a big block of wood with no clear on-ramp. And, for reasons which will soon become clear, it feels oddly slippery.

In any case, when you finally get yourself on the table, you sit up, cross-legged, and the masseur steps behind you. You await what’s coming – maybe a shoulder grab? – but it’s not what you expect. Your next sensation is of someone pouring what seems like a quart of warm oil (olive? corn? you ask yourself – but it is an unfamiliar smell) onto the top of your head. It is not a wholly pleasant sensation. Indeed if you are John it could without exaggeration be described as almost entirely unpleasant.

Over the next forty-five minutes or so, the oil is rubbed first into your head and then into your muscles. This is the Ayurvedic massage proper, and many people find it relaxing. For John, alas, it was not. Mostly he worried about falling off the table as he slid around on it, like warming up for a luge that never got going. John could tell that the masseur was very skilled, but his skill was more or less lost on John. He instead closed his eyes and thought about lunch. He promised himself that whatever he ate would not have oil anywhere near it. Once freed, he looked grimly at Laurel, who seemed none the worse for wear. They both took very very long showers.

Would John do it again? Absolutely not. But here’s the funny part: he’s glad he did it. (He feels this way about exercise too: he doesn’t like doing it but he likes having done it.) It was so far out of his comfort zone that he could only laugh at his own cultural provincialism. And perhaps plot some form of revenge on Laurel.