Our bathroom is a massacre of beauty pagents’ preparation that none in our family has received until now. There are three kinds of scrubs that we have. One is the pumice stone one for the really hard skin of the heels that appears like a boiled egg with some sand in it which came on the surface after artificial hardening. Second one is the simple Daanedaar type for skin below the toes. Third one is just like the second one but has bristles on its back side. Why bristles? To clean the nails once you’re done scrubbing and also to peel off the dead skin flakes post scrubbing. If you’re thinking why my family devotes so much time to foot care, I am highly doubtful that my parents are a fan of Meenakumari from Pakeezah. One reason why I hate to see cracked heels in television advertisements is because they are disgusting and as repulsive as an unwashed butt. The second reason I hate cracked heels and dirty feet is because no one in our home carries themselves over such ugly pieces of skin and bones. Anyways, we also have an old toothbrush that serves the dual purpose of cleaning the collars of shirts and also helps in removing dirt from nails. The use of this toothbrush for the latter only comes if the bristles of the third scrubber are too harsh.
Talking about toothbrush, there are three different types of toothpastes that I get to choose from every time I plan to brush my teeth. My father uses the sensitive one which he doesn’t keep in the bathroom but on the wash basin. He doesn’t have sensitive teeth but prevention is better than cure, he says and blindly follows this philosophy. I use the green coloured one by Patanjali because it tastes good. My brother uses Patanjali kids. He is in college but still uses it because I guess it must taste good to him. I tried it once but it felt like moving a solution of boiled Center Fruit inside my mouth and through my teeth. So I don’t prefer to use it now. Moving to hair oils, there is a huge variety in our bathroom ranging from mustard, coconut and almond which you can decide from once you’re done bathing. Different strokes for different folks, similarly, different oils for different heads. Also, my mother uses some repulsive smelling oil which shamelessly stands on her dressing table with its lid resembling a sticky odour reeking mouth. Why does she use it if it is so bad? Because it got expired lying on the bathroom shelf some time back and now it helps her in smoothening the skin of her hands after she’s done washing utensils and clothes. Soaps are another kind of trouble. I use Dove because it doesn’t leave my skin dry. My brother uses Pears for fragrance reasons while my parents use Dettol because the brand claims that it kills more than 99 percent germs. Motivations are diverse when taking care of body is a concern.
Similar to the soap department is the face wash section. Clean and Clear for me, Everyouth for my brother and a fancy coloured organic kind for my parents. There is one spare face wash that got expired. It now works in conjugation with the scrubs to clean the feet. Nothing ever gets wasted in our house except for soured milk. Even that is served to the neighbourhood dog by me just so that he gets diarrhoeated and stops barking at little kids who play in the park. I don’t know what the use of face scrubs is because my mother nowadays uses Multani Mitti and Besan in replacement of them. All the people in our family have a thing for chasing natural glow so we have shifted to natural face scrubs like the above two I described. I personally use salt mixed in curd to not only open up the pores of my skin but to simultaneously fill them with nourishment. This is the kind of genius you acquire when you’re a freelance writer and have plenty of time to experiment with life and skin alike. Sometimes I use the uselessly lying face scrub on my knees in order to give ramp walking models a challenge in grades for beautiful legs. There has been no considerable change in the appearance of my knees though. Next, there are multiple shampoos to give you a dilemma while picking one up because thankfully, we have good genes for hair and no one in our family is balding as of now. Dove for soft hair, Patanjali for deep cleansing, Head and Shoulders for dandruff and Clinic Plus for the post usage perfuming it leaves in the scalp and two inches below the roots of hair. My brother doesn’t have dandruff but still uses Head and Shoulders because you know, prevention is better than cure. This lineage of thought came to his genes from our father, I believe. The day someone uses Clinic Plus, my mother doesn’t have to light the incense sticks in morning because the smell of that shampoo is strong enough to wake up an unborn foetus from sleep. As if this shampoo choice offering was already less brain cell damaging, every week some person or the other will bring a sachet of a new kind of shampoo to try. More often than not, that person is my brother and never ever me. Maybe that’s why his worn down strength lacking hair is visible on the pillow every time he wakes up from sleep and my mother yells at him for not having a balanced diet. Poor thought process of hers in this time and age where outside materials are hurting us more than what we are taking in.
Besides having these daily use necessities, there also are some rarely uses items such as the mouthwash, conditioner, serum and Dant Manjan. I don’t know what credits to give to a conditioner because I am clueless of its importance and benefits. At one point in my life I thought it is an inexpensive remedy for straightening wavy hair. To add to the grooming ignorance that still persists in an average looking not so classy guy like me, once I mistakenly applied serum thinking it was some new kind of oil because it looked like one and had a sexy smell. I was expecting beggars turning their heads when I’ll walk from their sides but nothing like that happened. My mother later told me that serum is only meant for long hair. Considering her wisdom, for the next five months I didn’t have a haircut because I was all excited to use the serum on my hair, this time to see what it really does. This is high end motivation, you see. Products don’t serve our purpose; we become the purpose for a product to ultimately serve. Fight Club told me that the things we own end up owning us and when this memory came back to my intellect covered with Dove shampooed hair, I ditched the plan of using serum even if my hair turn long enough to be my blanket. Mouthwash nobody uses for whatever reason. I don’t like the smell of it to even try. I suggested my mother to use it for scrubbing the Tava to make its black residual deposits go away fast and this worked very well because the mouthwash had alcohol in it. At the very sight of a mouthwash cleaning our household Tava, I remembered it was originally meant for teeth. Thanks to the God of shiny jaws that we don’t use it for its actual use otherwise it might have scrapped away the enamel within one week of gargling. It is high time television commercials market it as a supremely efficient teeth cleaner which is more than capable to reflect your face in a Tava that has not been properly washed for more than a month. Talk about dangerous and toxic chemicals in laboratories and we have plenty in our bathroom, I am telling you this secret. There also is a Dettol solution bottle that my father recently got because it is antiseptic and prevents infections and whatever. Though I know in my heart that he wants to combine it with Dettol soap to kill even more than 99 percent germs on his body. On the other hand, my mother got one of her tooth removed a month or so back. If she had used the toothpaste more smartly than the serum, we would have saved thousands at the expense of an item which costs within a hundred bucks.
We buy things we don’t need to impress people we don’t like, it was also written in Fight Club. I don’t think anybody in my home is fan of such writing but the message of minimalism is not reaching them by other means. Television is only forcing them to buy more and more and if this goes on and on at this rate and pace, in a few years our house will become a gigantic version of our bathroom with goods scattered all around while we’ll sleep in the loo. Apparently, some scientist will improve Harpic to such an extent that we shall be able to kill every germ present in the four walls of a toilet and eat while we sit on the commode with its lid either down or even up. I hope that day never comes when people will start buying big houses not for themselves but for the stuff they have bought. Residential areas will turn into government leased godowns and the Yamuna river in Delhi will show us a new shade of black which will have more sooty material than half burnt coal near the mines of Jharkhand. Whether that happens or not, I’ll still use Dove because it is one fourth milk protein and is not like other soaps which leave your skin so dry that you can effortlessly write your name on your own belly with your own nails.
Arpit Chhikara 