Thursday, November 01, 2007

bucket bathing


Oh, hi there. You just caught me finishing a bucket bath... "what's that!?" you ask? Bucket baths are how you bathe when your lodgings lack bath tubs or shower heads. Basically you fill a big bucket with water then use a smaller bucket to pour the water over yourself while trying to lather/rinse/rub at the same time. I've been working on my technique these last few days but I still have a number of problems with the process.

  • It's hard to get the temperature of the bucket water just right -- at any given time you can only add hot water or cold water to the bucket, so it's a delayed feedback system with a fixed deadline (the bucket edge). After a few days practice I'm now able to get a satisfactory temperature, but doing so requires diligence and sustained monitoring of bucket temperature.

  • Perhaps the greatest mystery in my mind about bucket bathing is how I'm supposed to wash my arms. I generally pour with one hand and rub with the other, but on the arms I can either pour with no rubbing or try to awkwardly pour onto the arm holding the bucket while rubbing the arm down gently so I don't splash water everywhere. It's very inefficient; I think I use 1/4 of the bucket water on just my arm & shoulder regions.

  • Finally, bucket bathing requires me to stand naked in the middle of a bathroom and pour water on myself. Standing in a running shower is mentally acceptable, but standing around naked without water constantly running over me is strangely unsettling. It's clearly a silly cultural thing, but I'm having trouble adjusting.

While we're on the matter of washroom cleansing, let me just answer the one question I know you've all been asking yourselves: No, they don't use toilet paper in India. They instead use, you guessed it, buckets of water. No, no, you don't sit in the bucket; you pour the water down your backside.
I'm fine with about 3/4ths of this method -- feel free to read an extended critique of toilet bucket system in my new book entitled OK, My Butt is Clean and Dripping Wet... Now What?.

5 comments:

  1. Dude, I still bucket bathe when I go home! It's so peaceful compared to a shower. Do you at least have flush toilets?

    Also akshay-- for the mental image of him naked in a shower. Just for that I'm not buying your book.

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  2. the toilet flushes, at least when there's running water (which has become a problem in my grandfather's flat)

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  3. Well here's another question--if there's only running water for a few hours each day, what if you have to go at a different part of the day?

    The other thing about standing in the middle of a large bathroom instead of a shower is the draft--luckily Mumbai is generally pretty warm and toasty for standing around wet and naked...

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  4. ajit: we store extra water in big buckets and then mimic flushing by pouring the water into the bowl from the same height as the tank.

    now you know.

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  5. Thank you for your post. We have been in India for a week and have had similar questions and thoughts. Would you ever use a public bathroom's bucket? We have not tried that yet and only practiced in our host family's homes and at hotels.

    -- Group Study Exchange Team from New York Rotary District 7150

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