Putting the treat into treatment

Well, that’s the end of the intensive part of the 28-day process (so I thought, but not so sure after asking around...) Today I have sweet milky rice porridge for breakfast, lunch and dinner; and tomorrow, and the next day. Then I have vomiting therapy, followed by rice-water porridge. 

The next day I have Tournedos Rossini [cuisson bleu-saignant] and a bottle of Vosne-Romanée 1985, followed by a glass of Sauternes to accompany my Îles Flottants . I wish... I wish...

But surprisingly I am not missing anything. My stomach has shrunk – at least internally – and I don’t feel at all hungry. The climate is superb: cool to the point of a slight chill at six when I go for my early morning walk, then warm and warmer to comfortably hot in the afternoon. I decided to celebrate the successful completion of Phase One with a trip to town, and arranged a taxi for the afternoon, but first I had my first treatment session: oil massage followed by steam box.

Shoes outside the front door

One thing you soon get used to in India is the shoes. They’re everywhere because nobody wears shoes indoors. I remember being in Mumbai/Bombay for an important business meeting and having to deal with the indignity of kneeling down to tackle my shoelaces, because I was wearing my smart black lace-up business shoes. In India, most men wear loafers for the (now) obvious reason. At a place like this, the area outside the main building or the consulting rooms is scattered with shoes. Of course, you have to remember where you left them, which is something of a problem when there are four different entrances to the main building.

So I took my shoes off and waited patiently outside the consulting rooms. You’d think that if you told someone it was an Oil Massage, they’d have some idea of what they would be in for. Of course, the sexes are separated for treatment, with female masseuses treating female patients, but this failed to reassure one particularly puritanical Canadian woman who confessed to complete shock with the realisation that treatment involved disrobing in front of strangers. We laughed at her story over dinner that evening, and, like all of us here, she recovered from another of the daily surprises of learning what Ayurveda entails, as she described her plunge into a new experience.

Shoes outside the consulting room

I kept my appointment in the men’s treatment room. I stripped off, climbed onto the wide, solid wooden massage table and stretched out while two handsome, winsome and charming young men massaged me gently with perfumed oils. Were I differently inclined in life, this could have been a dream come true..... As it was, it was both relaxing and invigorating, with the massages on subsequent days gradually becoming increasingly vigorous.

If you remember the steam-boxes in “Goldfinger” then you have an idea of what was next in store for me. You sit naked on a stool inside a wooden box, with a cut-out hole that’s just the right size for your neck, so that your head sticks out above the box, cushioned by a judiciously positioned towel. Health & Safety would love this contraption. Inside the box there is a tiny stool on which you perch - dripping with oil. If you slide off the stool – assuming you don’t break your neck in the lid of the contraption – you could finish up wedged inside the box with the steam jets pointing just where you really wouldn’t want them to point. Adjacent to the steam-box was a cooking hob on which a pressure cooker was bubbling away, producing steam. The safety valve had been removed and replaced by a plastic tube that piped the steam into the box. But when all is said and done, the apparatus worked very well and the effect was heavenly. This really is more treat than treatment, - and the prospect of more of this every day certainly compensates for the lack of alcohol and whatever.

My afternoon trip to town was fun and I ordered two shirts. I’ll write about the town and the shops after I’ve been to collect them.