Amiya Bhanushali has found my ticklish spots. Her fingers flutter down the side of my body after lightly touching my hair and gently rest on my neck. I giggle as they approach my waist, rousing me from a gentle stupor that the past 30 minutes of ambient electronica music, views of the monstera on her balcony fluttering in the light afternoon breeze, and her hands have lulled me into. Now, she giggles with me and stays in those sensitive zones—her left- hand fingers roving from my axilla to thigh, as my body shakes and squirms involuntarily. I whisper “stop” through quiet tortured laughter. She doesn’t. “Stop” is not our safe word.
Instead, with a sudden movement, she tightens the rope with which she has cuffed my legs and pulls it toward a second rope snaking across my arms, chest and torso, ostensibly to tie both ends (and me) into a knot. At age 38, I’m not as bendy as I used to be, so she gives up when she senses resistance. With an unused coil of rope, she gently thwacks me up and down the lateral and posterior as she begins to slowly (so slowly) loosen the knots. When she’s done, I sit up with a groan. She grins, wraps her legs around my torso and envelopes me in a warm, tight embrace—bringing our shibari session to a close.
We are no longer dom and sub. A flame-red framed artwork on her wall reads: “Be as romantic as you want. Be as romantic as you want to be.” Whatever one thinks of BDSM—the leather whips and the handcuffs—you never think of it as a stress-reducing activity. Yet, shibari feels like an antidote to modern-day anxiety. Nidhi Gupta chats with Bhanushali on how shibari is far from just whips and handcuffs and might just be the stress relief you didn’t see coming.
