showering with strangers

This year, I’m challenging myself to write one essay (>2000 words) every single week in 2026 using no ai. I'll post some here... enjoy <3

Weary from travel, we arrived at the Ayurveda center by boat. Our driver hammered on the windows and called out for the owners to open—we must have been their first customers of the day. Inside, the waiting room was cramped and stifling.

A young Indian woman in a smock said, “Come.” I walked behind a curtain and then a dark green door. We exchanged a few words in a mixture of Tamil and English — her name was Smitha, and she wondered if Canada was very cold. She motioned for me to take my clothes off; I motioned for her to leave the room. She stepped forward, as if to help me remove them. I said a word I hoped she knew: “Privacy?”

She sort of grinned and reluctantly stepped out of the room. I peeled off my sticky kurta and loose pants, and it was only then that I noticed how sparse the room was — at home, there would have been music, dim lights, a sheet tucked just so. I wrapped myself in the faded micro towel she provided, barely big enough to dry a rack of dishes, let alone cover my breasts and butt at the same time. She returned with a plastic stool and asked me to sit. Having never had an Ayurvedic massage before, I believed, “Ahhh, this is where the relaxation begins!”

Instead, Smitha used her fingers and thumb in a steady pinching motion, moving across my scalp—pinch, press, release. She drove her fist into the sides of my head and tapped on it with her other fist. She slicked warm oil all over my head and used flat palms to spread it over my scalp like I was toast and it was butter. She poked and scratched and rubbed with unmistakable purpose. I didn’t understand the method, but eventually, my body stopped asking questions.

I would not say any of this was relaxing, but I allowed myself to close my eyes. Next, she guided me to lie down on a bare table — there was no sheet, no padding, nothing to soften the transaction. I was about to be as bare as the table, as Smitha gently pulled back the towel. When she saw I was still wearing my underwear, she removed them, too.

She used what felt like a whole bottle of oil on my back, her hands moving through a series of pressure holds, pinches, and raps. Despite the strangeness of it, I let myself melt into the table. When I turned over, she poured more oil onto my breasts and belly, working in quick slides and wide circles. Splayed open and more naked than I’d ever been, I chuckled, remembering how just moments ago, I had requested privacy.

Attached to the room, there was a second small room where Smitha went to turn on the tap. She said to rest while she got water ready for washing.

I rested. Somehow, naked and splayed across the table, I rested.

She helped me stand, both our arms slippery with oil, and carefully walked me to the shower. Two buckets waited — one hot, one cold. She brought in the stool. I sat. She poured the warm water over me with a cup, then unwrapped a bar of soap. Her fingers were bare and nimble. I was sucking in my belly— a habit older than the river that had carried us in that morning. I felt how long I had been holding myself that way, how automatic the effort was, and I decided then to just… let it go.

She began at my shoulders and neck, scrubbing in long, deliberate pulls, moving steadily downward as if she was pulling all the oil from my skin. Each stroke gathered my anxiety and carried it away. I dissolved into her hands. I realized that apart from Siva washing me once, after an abdominal surgery, I could not recall even being bathed like this. I know my parents must have when I was small, but that memory was too far away to grasp onto.

Instead, the memory of Siva combing his daughter’s hair floated into my consciousness. I saw my grandfather changing the dressing on my grandmother’s wound, patting it gently with a softness I didn’t know men could have. I felt Amma’s cool hands holding my face, tenderness pooling at my temples. Care moved from body to body, handed down like water.

Tears came. I felt the reflex to stop them — to brace, to apologize for taking up space — and made a small, precise choice not to. I let them fall.

Smitha saw and stopped scrubbing. She stepped close, my head level with her chest, and wrapped her wrists around my skull, pressing her palm flat against my forehead. She rocked back twice. Then, without a word, she resumed washing me.

She scrubbed my face, shielding my eyes as she rinsed me clean. Then she worked shikakai into my hair— a dark herbal paste the color of river silt, gritty and green — and massaged my scalp for a second, third, and fourth time, until the water ran clear. I breathed deeply the whole time wanting to remember her.

I stood. She poured cool water on me and we watched everything slip down the drain. She wrapped my hair. Finally, she smoothed cream that smelt like salt and mint on my cheeks, chin, and forehead, slow and methodical, both of us smiling.

She left the room. I dressed, completely undone. Somewhere nearby, water was already running again.

a whole new person <3