Sunday Massacre

Yesterday LAXMI THE MASSEUSE rang the bell at seven in the morning. As usual she crouched outside the door, paan juice dripping from her teeth like blood. She ground her jaw as if in warning of what she would do to my vulnerable flesh. Then picked up her torture tools and walked in without a word.

Once inside, she surveyed my supine, barely clothed body looking for signs of stress and knots. A smile stretched her lips. There were many. This was going to be good. Satisfying revenge on life.

She oiled her palms and laid them on my back. Now, LAXMI THE MASSEUSE is no ordinary masseuse. You know that book that tells you to start by gently tapping, then go on to gently stroking and then gently kneading? LAXMI THE MASSEUSE has never read it. She has read the book in which you pick up an entire leg and bend it till the tissue around the folds of skin turn white. The one in which you hold up an arm and wring till droplets of blood drip from under the nails. The one in which you pick up the stressed massagee by the hair and swing him/her round and round the room till they are so disoriented that nothing else matters anymore.

True to the book, she located my pressure point and dug her thumb into it. She leaned more and more on to my pressure point till she was practically doing a handstand on it. She then positioned herself at a distance across from me and pawed the ground in anticipation. Cement and bits of porcelain sprayed up around her. One hitting her forehead and shattering into a million fragments. She then came at me at a run and landed on my spine, bursting my stress knots and a few vertebrae in the bargain.

She stood up and danced the tango on the back of my thighs. She grabbed my stomach with both hands and twisted till I had permanent 'S' marks engraved on my skin. She stuck her fingers in the sensitive hollow in the back of my neck and pressed till my brain tickled. She folded back my leg and pushed till I had a heel mark on my left buttock and my right calf was significantly altered in size. Permanently. She pulled each toe till they were long enough to dig my nose.

And after it was over, she looked at me and held out her palm saying, "Didn't you people have Christmas recently? Don't I get anything for that?"