About touch

You know what touch is. It’s the most pleasant of experiences. I often think it is the only pleasurable experience that we really have.

May be you don’t agree, there are other senses too isn’t there?

Yes there are. Sight, sound and taste are pleasurable of course but to my mind not in the way touch is.

I will illustrate it for you.

Have you ever had medicine oil applied to your wounds? May be you haven’t. I know the modern medicine would abhor and shudder at it. But it’s the most pleasant of feelings; it’s applied with feathers so that the wounds wouldn’t hurt.

Some background.

I was a very unruly child and used to play in the mud and dirt all the time. Actually none really cared what I did; they always let me have my way. So I would be digging up earth worms, chasing squirrels and crows, following ants, climbing all the trees that I could in the vicinity, poking with sticks inside every single hole that I found around the house, upturning old stones and discovering all the inhabitants under it, sliding into terribly antique old ponds that we had around the house which was infested with water snakes, frogs, and fish, assist in directing the flow of water throughout the length of our country estate when plants and areca nut trees were being watered in the summer and so on.

Falls, cuts and bruises are the part of such exploits. Of course none was concerned about hygiene back then; also they thought that contact with the nature made children strong and immune from diseases. I am not a medical person and so I can’t say if it was good or not for the health, but I can say one thing, I liked every bit of my exploits.

Of course all of these were done bare foot, and possibly in the nude too. I may have had enough dresses or foot wear (I was the boy of the manor after all), but I had a great aversion to them in my childhood. I was a free soul, a rustic soul, I liked the sun touching my bare body, the breeze caressing me, and rolling in the dust. I still remember girls employed to look after me running after me with dresses and giving up in the end.

I was fast with my legs and possibly it stood me in good stead when I was in sticky situations later in life where the only fight one could think of is the ‘horse fight’ namely good old fashioned running.

The girls used to tease me that the crows would peck at my little thingy if I did not wear trousers or some stranger would come and steal it otherwise.

I may have felt some fear if I had known Freud’s castration complex then, but luckily, my mother only chanted hymns when I was in her womb and I was quite oblivious of anything which would have taken my little self away by way of force.

Freud seems to be all muddled up over the issue too. In fact he muddied up everything with his infantile analysis of human psychology, he may have been acting out his own sexual fantasies by way of writing about it.

Anyway back to medicine oil.

I would always have cuts and wounds then on my feet.

My mother would bring out the oil and apply it on them when she feels like it. It was a pleasant time for me. I was intensely interested in what she was doing on my sores with the feather. May be she would be thinking about several other things at the time, but I always felt her to be very mysterious then. I would alternately look on what is she doing and at her face to catch her expressions.

My mother has the most fluid of faces; it is still a delight to watch her in any kind of moods even at this late age. You would catch her at her best when she is angry. I still manage to make her so at times to watch her. I can’t describe what happens to her face then because it is totally beyond my powers to do so. Every single muscle in her face would behave delightfully then.

But even otherwise watching her was fun. In fact most of our women are fun to watch when they are emotionally involved in anything. Other than the most sophisticated and the deadened ones that we have now, our ladies could call up such minute and fleeting expressions on their faces (Please believe me when I say that these are not the stylized feelings of wonder, delight, anger, distaste etc in the general sense, these are a myriad of fleeting expressions which are hereditarily coded into them and speak of thousands of years of refinement in the back ground) all the time. As for my mother she is the absolute mistress of it. Interestingly most of her female relatives are too. I love them for it.

Sometimes she would look totally unconcerned while applying the oil and I will be disappointed, but at other times something will catch her interest in the cut or wound. There would be a series of indefinable movements of the lips, eyes, nostrils, eyelids, brows and the entire face. Though I had great delight in the touch of the feather on my sensitive wounds I would forget that and look at her face to see the wonderful display on it.

But that was only a side dish; the real thing was the feeling of touch of the oily feather. It would feel hot and cold at the same time. Eagle feathers are the preferred ones for the job I think, may be any father would have done too. The wound would be lightly washed by a lotion of diluted Dettol before the oil is applied. She preferred Dettol over all others and still maintains that it’s an antidote for all kinds of skin problems.

Naturally I would not be in a good mood after that. But the moment she takes out the medicine oil I would be again all attention. There is way in which she applies the oil, with very soft deft touches and concern that tells me of her love for me.

Mothers here never show their affection by hugging and kissing their children unless they are very little. In fact they would most probably be chasing us the year round to beat us black and blue. And they don’t ever tell their children what they are doing with them and we never ask them what they are doing to us. Both parties have an unshakable belief that the mother is always right in such cases. So there would not be any explanations at all. You can watch and learn what is being done.

But their affection is tangible to us at all times, it is a physical feeling, it’s as if it’s an entity by itself.

Well back to medicine oil.

I would place my mind at the spot where the oil is applied and would catch every little feeling that there is. It was an absorbing job. Sometimes I will close my eyes and try to see what is happening while the feather is at work. It was a sweet experience, I would be aware of every point the feather touches both on the wound and outside. It was as if my skin had become an eye and was seeing what’s going on. The little ridges and the rises on the surface and around the wound would be exquisitely sensitive to touch. You need to close your eyes and concentrate to feel it in its entirety.

Now when I occasionally notice the scars that I have on my legs from those exploits in the childhood, I would also try to recall the sensations I underwent while medicine oil was being applied to the wounds and cuts that once were.

Even the memories bring some of the original feelings back. I think touch is the most remembered of all things in our lives.