Endings shape what you rememberβin fiction, love, at Sunday lunch. Anand Bharadwaj ended the 2-hour-long massage, my second one with him in two days, with a sitar recital.
It was raining outside; he might have played Raag Malhar. The room was heated, lit by an oil lamp that cast shadows of the man seated in half-lotus. I was asked to join him on the balcony when I was ready. There I drank Tulsi chai and sweeping views of the Dhauladhar. Not through recommendations or a travel magazine but a TripAdvisor search.
I had tried a Tibetan massage and a Tibetan Singing Bowls massage the day before but all the trekking around the area had left me wanting a more conventional one. The reviews for Body Temple were dubiously flattering but there were over of them, and all from registered accounts. The restaurants are vegan, the population is dominated by young Israelis living out their year post mandatory military service. There are posters for yoga, music and Indian cooking classes everywhere. During my travels, often to the annoyance of others, I have sought out massages everywhereβfrom the cobblestoned lanes of Hanoi to a Turkish hammam in Athens which the Greeks insist are Greek, not Turkish.
And I have to say my experience with Anand was out of the ordinary. It was not the conventional type I had sought. It was meditation dressed in sesame oil. At the outset, it appeared that Anand practises two kinds of massage therapyβan Ayurvedic Yoga Massage and Chi Nei Tsang, an ancient Taoist massage I had received once from a visiting practitioner at the Atmantan Wellness Resort near Pune and never found thereafter.
He insisted on an elaborate pre-therapy discussion. His practice is a mix, he said, hard to label. If I sense someone is undergoing a deep process, I leave them alone for a few minutes. In off-season months, Anand travels abroad, especially to Sweden and Japan, to teach, conduct workshops and attend to regular clients. My friends frowned upon me. Maalishwala banna hai You want to be a massage guy? Anand owes his foundation to the legendary Kusum Modak, herself a student of B.
