Foot tapping at a spa
Fish spa treatment is the new rage. But what's the big deal?
W here do I submerge my feet?” I asked reluctantly, shifting uncomfortably on a wooden bench that looked like it had been hammered near the area where a faux mini pool was created. The therapist at Happy Feet, a humble spa outlet located right behind Barista in New Delhi’s Select Citywalk, was adept at his work, cleaning my feet patiently with cotton and spray water. He pointed to the pool in which — I kid you not — 800-odd fish were swimming. “Eight hundred, are you sure?” I asked, while the therapist smiled in acknowledgment, dipping my feet in the pool.
My instant reaction was to shriek. Having put my feet into the pool I complained of being attacked. “Your dead skin getting attacked, ma’am,” explained the therapist patiently.
I thought of my friends who said that they had experienced a ticklish sensation when fish crawled and nibbled non-stop at their feet. They’re crazy, I thought, taking my feet out the pool twice after a few seconds, scared that I’d walk home with no flesh, only bones.
But after the first three-four minutes of the treatment it gradually got better. After my feet had become fodder for the Garra rufa “doctor” fish, as my therapist mentioned, and after these “especially imported from Turkey” fish gnawed at my feet, I began to enjoy myself. Because the spa treatment is done out in an open area, it was also nice to feel the gentle evening breeze and be tantalised with the whispering aromas of freshly buttered corn-in-a-cup from a neighbouring kiosk.
It’s a treatment you should indulge in with a friend, a companion with whom you can chat and catch up with for 20 minutes while the treatment goes on. I went with my husband who kept wondering if the fish were fed anything else other than dead human skin. He also wondered aloud, much to my embarrassment, why the fish suspiciously resembled Indian tadpoles.
The only glitch: because it’s in the open area, it means you’ll have a little army of kids laughing away, pointing at your feet, while the water creatures hog — and burp, perhaps? — at your soles. It also means getting inadvertently clicked in photographs where a husband wants to lovingly capture his wife’s hairy legs while she gets her treatment.
Score: 7/10. Kids, aunties pointing at your feet is unacceptable.
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