Oil's Well...oh well...

I had always wanted to have a massage. It had been on my ‘Things to do atleast once in my life’ wishlist for about the past 5 years. Tourist brochures showing lazy foreigners being given the royal treatment by Indian masseurs in idyllic locations would always scream out for my attention. Another source of temptation was movies. They always show the villains being massaged into ecstasy by some moll or doll. I wasn’t tempted by the villain part, but the offer of having a couple of beautiful women run their hands over you was enough to agree to even play the part of a villain (of course, even THAT doesn’t come my way..yet another of the tragedies of my life!). So when I made it to Varkala for my short ‘break’, a massage was right there on top of my list. And unlike numerous other instances in the past, this time, I managed to achieve an objective.

But then, where’s the ordinariness of it all if things go just as you want them to?

Somewhere in the deep dark corners of my mind, I had a picture of a masseuse. Oriental, extremely beautiful, gentle hands, and err..a host of other features. That was my vision. Reality sucked. Not the massage, mind you..that was definitely good..the person doing it though, could have done with quite a few changes-starting with gender.

The masseur was a man dressed in white. Sort of looked like a male nurse. He led me into a room which had a wooden bed-like structure. He asked me to undress and handed me a ..well..i don’t know how to describe the cloth that he gave me..it looked like something out of God’s Must Be Crazy..if you remember how the tribals were dressed in that..Let me just say that once I actually managed to ‘wear’ it, there wasn’t much left to imagination.

This Ayurvedic (Swedish was not an option) massage was something called ‘Abhyangam’. There was a lot of oil doing the rounds on my body. Right from the head down to the soles of my feet. And, to complete the atmosphere of relaxation, there was soft Indian classical music playing in the background. The massage in itself was very clinical. Not harsh, not rough, yet very clinical. He would do my left hand and then my right. Then my left leg, then my right. His hands would go clockwise, then anti clockwise. All very calculated. The massage done, he led an oil covered me to the steam bath and left me there for close to 10 minutes. I’d never previously seen sweat creeping out of my skin and dripping down. I saw it then. The grand finale was a disappointingly ordinary shower to get rid of all the oil that remained.

One hour and about 1600 bucks later, I came out of the Ayurvedic Massage Centre at Taj Garden Retreat, Varkala. My body was feeling great ( I’d like to think so after having spent so much of money!) my wallet was feeling not so great. I mentally struck out one item off my wishlist. A filmi version of the massage though, someday, would be just great…

Shain