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The next post-cataract-surgery prohibition told me was that I can't take head-baths (shampoo) for a whole month and body baths for two weeks.
Like every healthy village kid, I resisted daily baths during my school years in Muthukur. But we belonged to the South-Indian brahmin family and my Father insisted that no food would be served unless after a proven bath. Several stratagems were devised by me for faking baths like sprinkling water on face and hands sparingly but I was always caught and my head was pushed under a pouring bucket of well water by Father...he too had been a village kid and he knew all about it.
So at least one bath was compulsory daily. And before the night meal, a mere washing of face and hands.
Things changed by the time I was in my University at Vizagh. The place was steamy and, since I was a day-scholar, most of my mornings and evenings were spent commuting in the bus with no chance of any outdoor play. And the continual study of determinants and integrals made my head too hot like that described by the Autocrat. I was no writer or thinker but found that the thermal capacity of my brain was too small for calculus. And that was when I started relishing cold water baths with mugs poured over the heated head...not that it improved my calculus...I just managed to pass.
Things became worse by when I graduated as a teacher at IIT KGP. And my academic interaction with my Guide, SDM, who relished hypergeometric functions for breakfast and Young diagrams for tea didn't help any.
By the time I retired from the humid and sultry KGP summers I got into the habit of taking at least half a dozen head baths daily...actually there was only one morning bath with shampoo and soaping while the others were what we called: Kaki Snanams (crow-dips) into water...just pour a few mugs of cold water on the head and body till the heat dissipates.
Such baths can be terribly addictive...
A South-Indian brahmin about a couple of decades older to me once proclaimed:
"The British stink!"
This scholar was in the Benares Hindu University in the early 1950s and must have enjoyed his umpteen swimming sessions in the Ganges...day in and day out. And he was duly deputed to London for his higher studies. And was living in modest digs as a paying guest to an old and poor British lady. And he soon discovered that she didn't give him water in his bath tub at all...it was as dry as our river Pennar in Nellore (except when flash floods do their damage once in a blue moon).
And when he asked for water in the bath tub, she exclaimed:
"Why do you want baths in London! We never take bath except for a week in summer"
And this gent couldn't eat without taking his bath. Apparently a compromise was reached that once a week she would supply hot water in his tub, but that evening he had to eat out.
Talking of Ganges takes me to our Lord Shiva. Among all our 33 crore gods and goddesses he alone is addicted to baths. Wherever I see a shiv ling in our temples, I find a huge brass vessel over His head from which water (and sometimes oil and milk shakes) leak on His head drop by drop. When I took my mom to Benares in 1984, she told me that her only wish was to take a dip in the Ganges at the Dasasvamedh Ghat, fill up her brass pail with Ganges water, climb all those stone steps carrying it to the Viswanath temple, and pour its contents over Lord Shiva's head.
Her sins are thereby washed along with those of Shiva.
At home also my mom was fond of giving her tiny Shivilngs and Saligrams their daily baths. And once in a couple of years, the thing becomes more elaborate. Pundits are called in to perform what is called the Rudrabhishekam. And I had to sit down for all of 3 hours and while the Pundits chanted their Rudram, Namakam and Chamakam shloks repeatedly (11 times at the least) I had to keep pouring water from a refilled copper glass with a spoon-shaped Bael leaf... a tree found in every Shiv temple down South.
My Muslim friends in our school at Muthukur also resisted their baths. But they used to hide their stink (unlike Londoners quoted above) by wearing a pinch of cotton soaked in attar (ittar) of various perfumes behind their ears. And I used to beg them to lend me an attar bottle.
I guess Londoners nowadays have found their answer to stink...it is called a deodorant.
When I was agonizing about having to quit all my baths for weeks together, my son gifted me a few packets of what he called: Wet Wipes.
These are the modern Hyderabadi version of ittars. When I opened a packet, I was thrilled to find all of 30 wet wipes @ Rs 70...a pretty affordable bath substitute for a pensioner.
And the wipes had all flavors of perfumes sprayed over them. And I discovered reading the fine print with the help of a magnifier that their enduring wetness is due to a couple of glycols. And they come in sizes of folded handkerchiefs in lovely lace fiber.
And now I've got addicted to those Wet Wipes...
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"It is a good sign to have one's feet grow cold when he is writing. A great writer and speaker once told me that he often wrote with his feet in hot water; but for this, all his blood would have run into his head, as the mercury sometimes withdraws into the ball of a thermometer."
...Autocrat of the Breakfast Table.
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The next post-cataract-surgery prohibition told me was that I can't take head-baths (shampoo) for a whole month and body baths for two weeks.
Like every healthy village kid, I resisted daily baths during my school years in Muthukur. But we belonged to the South-Indian brahmin family and my Father insisted that no food would be served unless after a proven bath. Several stratagems were devised by me for faking baths like sprinkling water on face and hands sparingly but I was always caught and my head was pushed under a pouring bucket of well water by Father...he too had been a village kid and he knew all about it.
So at least one bath was compulsory daily. And before the night meal, a mere washing of face and hands.
Things changed by the time I was in my University at Vizagh. The place was steamy and, since I was a day-scholar, most of my mornings and evenings were spent commuting in the bus with no chance of any outdoor play. And the continual study of determinants and integrals made my head too hot like that described by the Autocrat. I was no writer or thinker but found that the thermal capacity of my brain was too small for calculus. And that was when I started relishing cold water baths with mugs poured over the heated head...not that it improved my calculus...I just managed to pass.
Things became worse by when I graduated as a teacher at IIT KGP. And my academic interaction with my Guide, SDM, who relished hypergeometric functions for breakfast and Young diagrams for tea didn't help any.
By the time I retired from the humid and sultry KGP summers I got into the habit of taking at least half a dozen head baths daily...actually there was only one morning bath with shampoo and soaping while the others were what we called: Kaki Snanams (crow-dips) into water...just pour a few mugs of cold water on the head and body till the heat dissipates.
Such baths can be terribly addictive...
A South-Indian brahmin about a couple of decades older to me once proclaimed:
"The British stink!"
This scholar was in the Benares Hindu University in the early 1950s and must have enjoyed his umpteen swimming sessions in the Ganges...day in and day out. And he was duly deputed to London for his higher studies. And was living in modest digs as a paying guest to an old and poor British lady. And he soon discovered that she didn't give him water in his bath tub at all...it was as dry as our river Pennar in Nellore (except when flash floods do their damage once in a blue moon).
And when he asked for water in the bath tub, she exclaimed:
"Why do you want baths in London! We never take bath except for a week in summer"
And this gent couldn't eat without taking his bath. Apparently a compromise was reached that once a week she would supply hot water in his tub, but that evening he had to eat out.
Talking of Ganges takes me to our Lord Shiva. Among all our 33 crore gods and goddesses he alone is addicted to baths. Wherever I see a shiv ling in our temples, I find a huge brass vessel over His head from which water (and sometimes oil and milk shakes) leak on His head drop by drop. When I took my mom to Benares in 1984, she told me that her only wish was to take a dip in the Ganges at the Dasasvamedh Ghat, fill up her brass pail with Ganges water, climb all those stone steps carrying it to the Viswanath temple, and pour its contents over Lord Shiva's head.
Her sins are thereby washed along with those of Shiva.
At home also my mom was fond of giving her tiny Shivilngs and Saligrams their daily baths. And once in a couple of years, the thing becomes more elaborate. Pundits are called in to perform what is called the Rudrabhishekam. And I had to sit down for all of 3 hours and while the Pundits chanted their Rudram, Namakam and Chamakam shloks repeatedly (11 times at the least) I had to keep pouring water from a refilled copper glass with a spoon-shaped Bael leaf... a tree found in every Shiv temple down South.
My Muslim friends in our school at Muthukur also resisted their baths. But they used to hide their stink (unlike Londoners quoted above) by wearing a pinch of cotton soaked in attar (ittar) of various perfumes behind their ears. And I used to beg them to lend me an attar bottle.
I guess Londoners nowadays have found their answer to stink...it is called a deodorant.
When I was agonizing about having to quit all my baths for weeks together, my son gifted me a few packets of what he called: Wet Wipes.
These are the modern Hyderabadi version of ittars. When I opened a packet, I was thrilled to find all of 30 wet wipes @ Rs 70...a pretty affordable bath substitute for a pensioner.
And the wipes had all flavors of perfumes sprayed over them. And I discovered reading the fine print with the help of a magnifier that their enduring wetness is due to a couple of glycols. And they come in sizes of folded handkerchiefs in lovely lace fiber.
And now I've got addicted to those Wet Wipes...
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