--- On Sun, 15/3/09, Charles Haynes <[email protected]> wrote:
> From: Charles Haynes <[email protected]>
> Subject: Re: [silk] What is "Indian culture"?
> To: [email protected]
> Date: Sunday, 15 March, 2009, 3:06 PM
> On Sun, Mar 15, 2009 at 5:59 PM,
> Bonobashi <[email protected]>
> wrote:
>
> > The Japanese used baths, too, constructed in place of
> wood generally (this is
> > from memory of texts and books) heated by placing
> heated stones under the bath.
> > They were indoors as well as outdoors.
>
> The heating technology varied, but they could be made quite
> hot.
In this case, the text makes it clear that it was a tub in the garden, the
lower part was of metal, it was placed on top of a bed of coals and the heat
from the coals heated the water beyond endurance.
>
> > A young man who was in Japan in the years before the
> First World War had
> > found lodgings with a Japanese family. Part of the
> facilities (sorry, Ram) was
> > the privilege of using the bath, which was located in
> the back garden. After a
> > few days of hesitation, due to unfamiliarity (the man
> had just reached the country,
> > and his knowledge of Japanese was as deep as your
> knowledge of Tibetan),
> > he ventured out and persuaded someone to shove in some
> rocks under the filled
> > bath, and gingerly divested himself of clothing and
> slipped in.
>
> Oops. One is supposed to wash *before* entering the o-furo.
> You wet
> down using a scoop and a bucket, soap up, then rinse off
> using more
> scooped water from the bucket. Only after you are clean do
> you get
> into the o-furo for a blissful soak. Getting into the bath
> without
> washing is yucky.
The first cycle describes a village tap bath or pond bath, the difference being
simply that in the pond-bath, you wore your gamchha and walked into the pond
before starting the wet-soap-wash off cycle, and in the tap bath, you did all
this with gamccha firmly in place under a tap or a pump nozzle. City slickers
at this time, early twentieth century, had an effete provision of a separate
bathing chamber, called a kol-ghor, the tap room, alas so different from the
congenial atmosphere of Anglo-Saxon usage. There was never any hot water - this
was absurd in Bengal, where foreigners cooled down water before using it for
their bath.
Presumably the youngster would have gone through the regular cycle if it had
not been for two factors: the unnervingly exposed situation, in the open, with
everyone in a position to look in on his bath; and the trauma of the previous
attempt at a bath, in the public bath-house, where his escort had explained
that he should get straight in, which was obviously wrong.
>
> > To his horror, after some blissful moments which
> washed away memories of the
> > preceding sea journey from Rangoon and Calcutta, some
> young maids trooped
> > into the garden, took up their positions fairly close
> to the bath and commenced a
> > noisy clothes-washing session; apparently the whole
> week's observations of each
> > and all of them was under review. Meanwhile, the
> temperature in the bath rose,
> > and rose, and rose. Finally, it was unbearable, and
> my poor reporter was in
> > danger of being cooked alive like a lobster. In
> desperation, he leaped out and,
> > er, streaked for the safety of the house, accompanied
> by shrieks of mirth from
> > the maidservants.
>
> I think if he had just calmly gotten up and gotten dressed,
> they would
> have just as carefully not have noticed him.
Something tells me that he was not in the right frame of mind to emerge fully
nude and dress calmly in full view of the maidservants, especially as another
story about this residence explains the significance of pillows. He was in full
flight mentally after understanding the significance of the pillows.
>
> > The bath, alas, was damaged as he kicked it over in
> his panic flight,
>
> This part I don't understand. Most o-furos are pretty big
> and sturdy,l
> they have to hold enough water for an adult to soak in up
> to their
> neck. But I could see it getting damaged by a panicky
> exit.
>
> -- Charles
Please see the explanation below.
On returning to the original text, I find that he was in desperate trouble. An
earlier effort at getting a bath had led him to the public bath, where he was
unnerved at the prospect of public nudity. He fled accompanied by amused
laughter, and his flight was speeded when he carelessly blundered into a room
where there were unclothed females along with the males. It is not clear from
his account if he fled back to his lodgings with only the towel in which he had
originally taken refuge girt about his loins, and what happened to his clothes:
perhaps his companion retrieved them for him.
By the time this happened, he must have been smelling like a ripe Italian
cheese. Considering that he was from a part of the country where there was more
water than land, and where a bath was a mere matter of walking into the nearest
pond and walking out again, when in desperate straits, or of doing a
wash-soap-wash cycle as often as needed under a tap in the warm tropical
climate of the Ganges delta, this would have been a life-threatening situation.
The bath-in-the-garden episode is three paragraphs long. If you might find it
amusing, I can forward it translated with the original alongside for comparison.
Some clarifications based on a re-read (I have the book open in front of me as
I write) next to your comments.
He goes on to describe his introduction to the facts of life, at arms' length,
according to him, through the signalling mechanism of pillows.
I can forward just these few paragraphs, the bath and the pillows, offline, in
the unlikely event that anyone is interested.
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