Roger Gets a Massage

Not THAT kind of massage.  Southern India is the birthplace of Ayurvedic medicine, an ancient philosophy of holistic treatment (it includes yoga) that has been practiced here since 3000 BC.  Its basic form of therapy is the Ayurvedic Massage, which consists of herbal-oil concoctions vigorously kneaded into the body.   It differs from western medicine in two respects: its tenets are ungrounded in scientific principle; and its practitioners are unregulated.  Other then that, it’s pretty much the same. If they were taken to advertising, like the health facilities in the US, their slogan might be “Keeping India Healthy for Five Thousand Years.” 

Kovalam, our starting point in India, prides itself as the Home of Aruvedic Therapy, and there are Treatment Centers at many of the small hotels and dozens more spread through the back-alley bazaars.  There are more Ayurvedic spas in Kovalam than wig shops in Detroit.  While not a devotee, exactly, Linda is up on this stuff and Ayurvedic treatment was high on her to-do list in southern India.  So when I arrived in Kovalam after thirty hours in coach with a stiff back, Linda’s solution was predictable:  “You need a massage.”

I admire and trust Linda’s judgment, and I’m also pretty indulgent.  This explains my recent acquiescence to ball room dance lessons and water aerobics.   So why not Ayurvedic therapy?  I avoided the “tourist places” and sought instead a gloomy back-alley bungalow that optimistically offered “Divine Ayurvedic Treatments.” 

We both signed up for the “full body massage”, but after the required consultation with the doctor a second therapeutic regimen was prescribed for me to treat my back pain.  The modesty of Indian culture dictates that massages be administered only by same-sex practitioners.  This is a good policy, as these are pretty intimate affairs, with the patient stark naked and virtually every square inch of exposed skin (and most orifices, too) vigorously poked and prodded and kneaded and greased.  Except that my doctor had to keep going into Linda’s examination room to get supplies.  You might have thought he would have planned ahead.  (“Lighten up, babe,” I told her later. “The man’s a doctor!”)

After the general one-hour session they began my therapy treatment.  My doctor carefully selected a mixture of herbs and exotic plants best to treat my back, the fruits of millennia of Ayurvedic research.  He formed the concoction into four poultices, which he then heated in an essential oil over a propane flame, the temperature approximating that of a White Castle deep fryer.  It is difficult to describe the smell and consistency.  It smelled and looked very much like a fish curry past its prime whisked briskly in a quart of 10-W 40 motor oil.

The doctor and his female accomplice then proceeded to dip the poultices from this pharmaceutical fondue and literally pound it into my pores, leaving no patch of skin unmolested.  For nearly an hour they pounded away, alternating poultices from the pot to ensure a scalding application.

And then it was over.  Looking as smug as the gyno that just delivered the octomom litter, the doctor announced, “All better now...wait thirty minutes and shower” and he left me standing buck naked, greased like a pig and stinking like the Rouge River in the examination-cum reception room.  I couldn’t get dressed (my clothes would have been ruined) and they wouldn’t give me a sheet because they either didn’t have one or they were afraid I would escape unnoticed, blending into the neighborhood.

When I finally was able to shower, the stink refused to leave!  It had been pounded into me so deeply that it is now probably part of my DNA.  Or maybe it’s not soluble in cold water; I wouldn’t know as we have yet to take a shower in India with a functional hot water tap.

So despite three subsequent cold showers, the stink has still not left me.  The bad new is that Linda will not come near me; the good news is that I now smell like the rest of India.  And my back is better.