SSSSSS - Wetness on the Sensitive Skin

🪶 The Sensitivity Series #1

Dear Readers,

Thank you for your affectionate response to the essay on Minu Tai. It’s been hard, but I was moved by the way you read her story.

Thank you also, for meeting me to discuss the newsletter space of your dreams, or writing in general. It was so warm seeing some of you, that I am keeping my calendar open for all of February. 🌼

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🪶 The Sensitivity Series

Today, I am launching a series of pieces on Sensitivity. I don’t have a big banner and champagne at this launch, not even a kadak description yet. I am “sensing” my way into the series. All I can promise is that it will be a big warm hug to the sensitive people amongst us, which is all of us.

It will gently touch upon both the pains and the pleasures of being a sensitive creature in the 21st century. I will neither glamourize sensitivity nor pathologize it. The idea is to sit with it, play with it, and work with it. Slowly. Creatively.

Let’s begin.

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SSSSSS - Wetness on the Sensitive Skin

Ever splashed some water on a hot tawa? The hissing sound, the fumes, the trembling droplets. My skin might not be that hot, but I feel like that tawa every morning.

by Barbara Pozzi

Dryness is my default.

I come from the landlocked, drought-prone region of Vidarbha. Rivers, seas, and oceans belonged to geography classes. I never tried swimming class. The daily bucket of water was daunting enough for me.

At any temperature, water activates tingling and prickling sensations on my skin. For many minutes every morning, I would stare at the bucket hoping I could bathe mentally. I dipped one hand gingerly. Then I started swirling the water. After a few rounds, I would pull my hand back, and the water kept swirling, busy in its circular song. I was mesmerised. ‘Zopli ka ga?’ (have you slept in there?), Aai would yell from outside.

After the first few tumblers of water shocked my system, the water was only a bit more bearable. Many times I tried to skip bathing. I pretended to go in for a bath but just washed my face. Aai would find out somehow. I tried to make it look like I had taken a proper bath by splashing the water around and wetting the tips of my hair. She’d still find out. She’d always find out if I took a shortcut, so one day, I almost took an actual bath to convince her.. that I did take an actual bath.

by Carlos Garrido via GIPHY

I must have been seven when I first visited a beach. It was in Konkan. I kept pointing my index finger, tiny but as taut as possible, directed towards the sea, with extreme panic, “To aaala!! To aaala!!!”(He's coming! He's coming!) I was referring to every sea wave as a wicked demon who is after our lives.

I was relieved to return home, to my safe and dry territory.

For decades, I’ve had dry food, dry skin, and dry hair. Sometimes I convince myself to use more moisturiser. But a raisin can never return to being a grape.

Wetness is new to me.

I came from a womb. So it’s not entirely alien. But I’ve avoided it. Found it disgusting at worst, and inconvenient at best. Rain was pretty only that first time every year. Rivers were nice only as metaphors. Human fluids were yucky. Sweat was just nonsense! But recently, I find myself and my pores opening up to it.

I am exploring hydration, not just because the market is selling a million face masks, promising to hydrate our souls if we pay enough paisa. I’m exploring what water would mean to my body if it’s not a threat.

I’m open to forgetting my umbrella. I am enjoying my daily baths with three songs and a candle. One day I saw two beams of light on my wet thigh. One from the sun, and the other from the candle. My dryness has no wonder left in it. I want to play with water again. Because I am ready to feel again. And I have more resources than that child lost in the bathroom.

I feel thirsty at a whole body level.

I remember being fascinated with the concepts of ‘oasis’ and ‘mirage’ in school.

An oasis was a fertile body of water in the desert, a real respite for the thirsty. A mirage was just an optical illusion of seeing water in a desert where there was none, a delusion for the thirsty. I wondered if someone who is not thirsty would even see a mirage. But they would always see an oasis, because it is real, and be glad for it, thirsty or not, for an oasis encourages life in a place of scarcity. The way water encouraged life on earth way, way back.

The Hindi word for a mirage is mrigtrishna - the thirst of a deer. It refers to the story of Kasturi, a deer in search of a fragrance, which is actually coming out of her own navel. My thirst is also for the water already in me. I heard some writer say, “we are bags of water with consciousness” and I felt quenched.

by Tuttotonno

I am not just grateful for the proverbial half glass of water, but also for the water in coconuts, water apples, water chestnuts. And watermelon - water’s favourite guest house.

What if I watered myself like a plant? What’s moistened is less likely to catch fire. What’s oiled and watered moves well and feels ripe to face challenges.

I knew I am starting a new relationship with water, the day I was grateful for my tears, and spread them around my face as if it was some fancy hydrating face mist. I drank a well-earned swig of water afterwards and swam into sleep.

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How do you love/bear water? What does your skin tingle with?