Armpits and I

I’ve never been able to understand armpits.

Armpits come from the rather less-dwelled-upon family of joints giving our limbs the bends and pivots around which they can fold and execute so many of their machine-like actions – the bends at the elbows, the knees and, perhaps the most direct cousin in linking the limbs to the torso, the thigh-joints. All pretty insignificant hinges, silently creaking through the day, faint crinkles for most parts, hardly inviting any passing thought. Only the thigh-joints get any attention by virtue of their proximity to the crotch, marking two sides of the triangle containing the reason and compulsion of much, if not all, of our existence.

And yet of these, only the armpits have hair, with an almost feminine quality to them. Compared to these fine, soft tendrils the hair on the pubes look like the bristling, spiralling horns of a blackbuck - see right. Which I can understand – nothing but the best fighters to guard the family jewels – but why the wispy maidenlike strands on the armpits? There is some sexual connation to them, we realise, but just like the G-spot and our life, we cannot put our finger on its elusive unraveling. If a naked man were to suddenly jump in our path with his hands raised over his head, we are likely to take in the hair at the armpits in the same glance as we notice the other obvious parts – and yet of all the fetishes I have heard mentioned, the graphic sex read – I have never seen armpits and their hair play any role. I mean, people suck toes for foreplay!

And then there are the sweat glands. The function of these I would suppose is to regulate the temperature of the body by evaporation – but then why have so many in a region usually folded for most of the times? Why not the cheeks which are more directly accessible to the winds?

And one question that has always bothered me is – did thakur have armpits? With hair?

Did they curl?

Image source: http://www.employees.org/~atanu/photography/albums/FTP/Folder4/Blackbuck1.jpg