One truly new experience

 I had – guess what – a full body massage today. No news really, except for the fact that I had been mildly curious about it for decades, my daughter has been nagging me for years to get a taste of it, yet this was the very first time in my life at age 57, and yes, it was good. In fact, much more than good, else I wouldn’t have bothered to write here about it. 

I have always hated (or rather, felt embarrassed about-) anything that smacks of self indulgence, so always tried to avoid anything which attracts that label, though I have wanted my loved ones to enjoy them, so long as they didn’t do it to excess. Getting a massage, to my mind, has always sounded like gross self-indulgence, so I limited myself to the head massage that barbers sometimes offer (once upon a time when barbers were content to be poor they came free: now no longer!) I had always thought that such things were for effete zamindars, sybaritic politicians and fat, corrupt policemen. Halfway through life I learnt that some people within the extended family needed such treatment as part of recuperative therapy after some forms of serious and prolonged illness, and that massages were good for the circulation and the heart and for reducing stress; besides, I had started to develop all kinds of aches and pains myself, so I began to waver. That wavering, however, had gone too far… for more than a decade, in fact. But the mountain had to come to Muhammad, so I waited, and waited, until a young friend who had qualified as a physiotherapist, and had treated me as well as my parents, set up a clinic a stone’s throw from my house, and asked me to come over for a first experience at a time of my choosing. So I did this evening, and it was grand.

For half an hour, in a dimly lit and lightly perfumed room, with slow and soothing music playing softly in the background, I was pushed and pulled and pressed and kneaded and, well, subjected to the entire bag of tricks in the professional masseur’s repertoire. I cannot pay him a greater compliment than to put two things on record: that I nearly fell asleep, and that my heart rate had become slower afterwards than I have ever seen in the last twenty years! I really must do this again, preferably soon.

And maybe it’s time that I started seriously to draw up a bucket list for myself. Would it be a long one, I wonder? Most things I have wanted I have got and grown tired of; others, I know, will always be beyond my reach, and not always merely for lack of time, money or facilities available nearby. But maybe there are a few things that can be done without too much trouble, and would give me just as much fun?