This Blog is in Progress

This is what we lose when we shower.

Let’s talk about “head baths,” which is what I call the Indian version of a shower. It involves a bucket, a fire, and some water.

I have an oddly vivid memory of bathing at my great-grandmother’s house in a small village in India. The mud house, stretching back towards the trees behind the house. At the very back were two walls enclosing a bathing space. On the outside of the wall was place for firewood, which heated a large metal tub that held water. Next to it was another tub of cold water. There was a lot of joy in starting the fire, waiting for your water to heat, then mixing the two in perfect proportion and trying to finish your bath before it went cold. There’s something different about the way we just turn our showers on and off. It’s disconnected. Showers are becoming increasingly common in India along with Western toilets (although I think bidets still reign supreme over toilet paper there). Where does it start? At the top. The wealthy adopt first, then as they abandon, it gets slowly left for the middle and lower class to pick up. Less embodiment, less conservation, luxury as top-down normalization. What do we lose? Why is it being adopted (time, capitalism? Western imperialism)?