Spice Sweats: How I Think About My Armpit Cyst

Nana Dingucha in Gujarat’s Gandhinagar district lies just a few kilometres from the village I live in. 

On January 19, four members of a Gujarati family from the village froze to death in minus-35 degrees near Emerson, Canada, while crossing the border illegally. They were found 10 m from the American border: 10 m. If you know what spice sweats are, you would know that those four might have got spice sweats — even in minus-35 degrees. Incidents like these happen but are not usually reported, so when I read the news on the first page, I had spice sweats. When my American friends ask me the meaning of ‘Nana’ — ‘does it mean to be old?’ — I tell them again and again that it means ‘small’. ‘Nana’ means ‘small’. A small area, smaller than a village in terms of the strength of the population, which resides in these vast barren lands with no job prospects for the young, no money for the old when they need it to mend their hips, cure their cancers, fertilize their unyielding hardscrabble lands and no life for a woman unless she knows how to cross borders with two children in tow or bury her pride and wash utensils in ‘mota’ gaams or villages which have maybe more utensils. So, every family has someone who goes to foreign lands. To dreamy places with snow. To Targets. To a room of forty people, toppled on top of each other. To malls and gas stations that pay. To toilets which need cleaning, every hour of every day. Spice sweats. 

The first time I went to a beauty parlour, it was a living dome of artificial things right above from where we lived — a small dingy balcony which was turned into a closeted space, filled with mirrors and smells from the thousand cheap ‘got it on the Republic Day sale’ products which were crammed in the little space of a bait. Bait for beauty. A treatment centre where you went to cut your hair but you found that you were in for a hair spa and a Brazilian wax by a middle-aged Punjabi aunty, wearing wrong long sleeves. She had a knack for providing me with validation by removing all the bad things about my body, which were bad for the eyes of the men who beheld me, the skin rough at the touch — a patchy sore foot (in need of a pedicure) and dark hairy upper lip, overflowing underarm hairs like waves caught in an ancient dance (in need of strenous waxing). This dance was going to be a prolonged lifelong staph fight for God knows this even if I did not at that time. Spice sweats.

She asked me after waxing my body if my underarms needed some shaving, too. “Nobody looks at the pits, under there,” said my Saviour, pointing my shame to me, “but it looks like an overgrown jungle, so you might as well.” On the fourth visit, I had nodded ‘yes’ for I was finally permitted to wear a spaghetti top and hot calendula-flavoured glitter wax was spread on my hairy virgin underarms. I had winced in pain as she had swiftly provided me with a rash and some blood clotting — red had beheld me at that moment. Red was the colour of my shame and my validation. For now, red spots and an open wound infection under both arms would slowly result in a cystic blast — a painful rash called impetigo. Spice sweats soon followed.

The underarms started swelling — in misshapen ball-shaped, pus-filled cysts. I was wearing my father’s old tees to let my spice sweats bleed, breathe. Few boils here and there, enveloping the tenderness of the skin on that part of my body where if I hid them, no men could set their eyes to judge. Out went all the sleeveless-es. And as always, my pus-filled boils or cysts were more hidden than other open-view hindrances — the flab of my bat-arms, the double chin-triple-chin, the fatty shoulders, the hidden collar bones, no gap thigh and fat over my knees without a thin dimpling. Spice sweats.

Spice sweats I called them when they were ripe — staph-infected, pus-filled, bulges which hurt when touched and oozed when I was in the middle of a makeout. Oozing when I ran to lose the flab of my bat-arms, the double chin-triple-chin, the fatty shoulders, the hidden collar bones, no gap thigh and fat over my knees without a thin dimpling. Oozing when I slept and dreamt of spotless skin in a white gown. Oozing when I wore a sleeveless shirt, the very first time ever at my birthday party in my backyard after believing in myself that a sleeve or two could not necessarily define me, or limit me. Oozing with confidence when I took the many rushed cold baths. In reading the internet, I came across — ‘6 Signs of a Staph Infection You Should Never Ignore, according to Doctors.’ Spice sweats. My doctor had asked me on my umpteenth 'regular checkup' visit- "Why do you call the cysts- spice sweats?"

Then, before I could answer and before his line of patients got impatient — standing outside, waiting for their turns, some in worse pain than mine — he recommended:  

“Do not eat spice. Do not let sweat form in your armpits. Keep the internals and externals clean. Make sure of this.” 

I had gone back to my house, thinking how was I to not eat kaali mirch and hari mirch, two loves of my life, and how being an Indian in India, was I not supposed to sweat those Indian spices I ate.

My mother had asked me in a ceremonious tone as if I had already won the battle by being told not to sweat or eat my food, “Finally, you will not. Finally.”

I had remarked nonchalantly, “Like everything, this won’t be final.” 

“Why not?” pat came the reply

“Because finality is found in sweats and spices. Without them, my cysts won’t feel accomplished, without them, I will feel less, now that I am accustomed to them oozing, unbelievably like your god.”

Staph infections need to be treated immediately — and treat them, I swear I did. After a minor surgery, the staph came back. When I was asked to gulp the white, grey medicines — 6 in total, I lied to everyone but my own underarms every time I was late in gulping, every time the oozing became more. Every time the oozing resulted in an open wound, sepsis and shock. My armpit was not my friend but it surely still was a part of me — even if it was a bad part. A massive armpit cyst. Dr Khaled Sadek rightly says on the internet, “An underarm cyst is like a gift that keeps giving.” Spice sweats. Spice sweats. Spice sweats.

I never applied antiperspirant twice a day as my brother or my American friends said they did. For someone who never wore sunscreen, an anti-perspirant is a luxury. Not a necessity. But isn’t everything a luxury? Until it is not — then it is a necessity. I remember I almost bought a facial sanitizer but when it was time to experiment with my armpits, I disregarded the need for experimentation. Neem, eucalyptus and you name it — ‘all gharelu daadi ke nuskhe’ — were put to use. On a witch trial, smelling of my mother’s garden, I lay wide awake with my boils as they grew, as they crept, a copy of the newly acquired ‘Wise Blood’ beside me, Flannery O’Connor’s words ringing in my ears: “It’s easier to bleed than sweat...” 

I was taking showers regularly and washing my armpits with slow lukewarm bordering on hot baths. Thrice a day, I applied a disinfectant powder — my skin blackening, the cells dying, the swelling dancing out, bulging more than ever before. It got better and then worse. Spice sweats. I was grateful for this. At least I did not stink now. My pus might kill but not give away death. Against the advice of everyone, I should have listened every time I went south with my sweetened deals — I tried extracting the pus out and later, I regretted all the decisions to be impatient with zits all throughout my adult life. Now, in one of the most uncommittable places on my body, some cysts were heralding cancer. A cyst invades your body, soul and mind. Spice sweats it was all along. Spice sweats. 

Likewise, while running in the neck of the woods, the snow never melts, the eyelids freeze, bloods freezes but there’s still those sweats: the remnants of fear, wonder and sweat smells really bad then. Like death. Evident from the deposits of salt when the dead bodies were found: Does sweat freeze? 

Shivering in minus thirty-five degrees, spice sweats
Sweating in fifty degrees, spice sweats


(Shalini Singh aka belladonnaoflavender lives her life in extremes and apostrophes. She has a Master's degree in Law and for work she reads, writes on most days. You can connect with her on shalinisingh301993@gmail.com)