I stood in the shower, the warm water cascading over my body. Random thoughts came to mind:
My mother, telling me, as a pre-teen, that one of the tests of ‘lying’ on psychological tests was ‘Do you like to bathe?”. Those who answered ‘yes’ were suspect. This reminded me of the added trouble of bathing during my childhood in Turkey. My father had to build a fire in the bottom of the water tank to provide us with hot water; the tap water supply was so unreliable it had to be supplemented by a bathtub full of clean water—so before a bath could be taken, the ‘insurance water’ had to go down the drain. Still, even at the time, I found this lying test to be based on the questionable assumption, that everyone, underneath, disliked bathing.
Then I remembered another bathing experience from the 1950s. My family took a trip to the Turkish town of Bursa, where we stayed at a very elegant old hotel called the Cilek Palas (Strawberry Palace). In the lower reaches of the hotel was a cavernous area, decorated with arches and blue tiles, and featuring a number of shallow pools of very hot water for communal bathing (decked out in swimming suits). My parents told stories of how the Romans had used hot water in baths such as these as a therapy for troubled minds. We all lolled about in these waters, gradually reaching amazing levels of relaxation. But we stayed in so long that the culmination was utter exhaustion, so extreme we could hardly make it to dinner.
My mind turned then to a near-ecstatic experience of bathing, in Bali in 1979. I’d gotten up at 4 AM, and accompanied a group of considerably younger college students to the volcano, Gunung Agung, which we all intended to climb. As the morning progressed and we marched along a gravelly spine of lava, the sun rose higher in the sky and I began to fade. The students urged me on, telling me to ‘do it for your daughter’ (an admonition I found rather odd in the circumstances, but still one that, with some cognitive manipulation, helped to strengthen my resolve). I did in fact make it to the top with everyone else; but when I got back to my Balinese host’s home, I fainted from heat exhaustion or heat stroke or some such thing. When I finally woke up, having been placed somehow on the bed, the maids had prepared a hot bath for me. I cannot describe the heights of delicious, luxurious feeling. I still remember vividly, 35 years later, the utter and ecstatic delight of dipping the warm water out of the plastic tub, and pouring it over my tired and aching body. This was the first and only hot bath I had during my three month stay there (all water had to be heated, pan by pan, on the cook stove).
Then I remembered another, reverse experience of bathing in East Kalimantan, not long after this Balinese bath. Our ‘bathtub’ was the Telen River, and we (small groups of 3-6 of my housemates and neighbours) would go down in flexible and informal shifts to a raft shared by several households, for our late afternoon bath. There, we would come together, chatting, sharing the day’s events, pleasures, troubles. It was a companionable time of the day (and for an anthropologist, particularly informative). But there were physical pleasures as well. Long Segar is located almost exactly on the equator, so the days are very hot. Life is sustained by rice cultivation, a labor intensive crop that required us to be out in the sun all day, with only a short break at mid-day (the hottest part of the day). So arriving hot and sweaty at the raft, in my sarong, I would first put my toes into the water, then gradually submerge my feet, my legs…then dropping off the raft, my whole body, eventually hanging on with only hands and head out of the water as it flowed around me. Sometimes I would swim a bit in the fast current, but mostly I would just hang on and enjoy the coolness of the late afternoon and the water flowing over and around my body: what a delight.
These pleasures stay with me, brought to mind this morning in my ordinary American shower. Today the warm water struck my body gently, the warmth rolling over my back, each wave pleasing, more than pleasing. I did a yoga roll-down to expose each segment of my back to the force of the water droplets; and then I turned around, like a pig on a spit, allowing the water to strike me, front and back again. I had set the timer controlling the blower that clears the steam from the bathroom; and I listened for it, realizing that I should get out after the allotted 10 minutes—saving water, saving electricity. But I resisted; the flowing water felt too good. It soothes away troubles, focusing the mind on the here and now. I resist taking a bath, yes; it takes time and trouble to take off and put on one’s clothes; but once in the shower, who could not find it pleasurable!?