WHAT'S IN A NAME..ER..PACKAGING?

A lot, actually.

Especially if first impressions have a way of lingering...as they do with me.

I have this favourite skincare brand, Forest Essentials. They are made with natural ingredients, they are made in India. Open a jar or uncap a bottle and delicious smells of jasmine and rose, sandalwood and orange neroli waft out to seduce your senses. And their creams, gels, oils, pure waters and lotions are light as air and soft as flowers on your skin. And they come in this aesthetically minimalistic natural packaging. Clear bottles and jars with stark black caps, small, neat brown and green lettering, and the whole delicious elixir packed in a classily unobtrusive brown-paper colour packaging. I'm getting carried away. But they are really really good and lust-worthy.

Till they changed their packaging. Today, I stepped into a nearby Forest Essentials outlet, only to have my eyes assaulted by the brightest assortment of "Indian" colours outside a Sabyasaachi show - magenta, purple, and oodles of gold. 

It's true that the earlier packaging was so blend-into-the-background kind that although I have had my Forest Essentials stuff right arranged on my bathroom shelves, my inquisitive mom and mom-in-law never noticed them. Or disapprovingly frowned at their printed prices.


But that discretion in packaging was half the charm of Forest Essentials. Right down to the discreet and intricate Tree of Life logo in an antique gold colour. And now they look like a tacky gold-bedecked cousin of Shahnaz Hussein products.

CONFESSION: I have never been able to buy a Shahnaz Hussein product because I get completely put off by the heavily-red-henna-haired, heavy-duty-diamond-beringed, heavy-kohl-lined visage of Shahnaz herself. If this is the way one looks after using the products, then I'd rather use Biotique, which is also in the same price brackets but which are eye-pleasingly packaged in subdued green and sober white.

So, there I was - ready and eager to pick up a Forest Essentials aloe vera day gel and a Forest Essentials jasmine and patchouli night cream. But so disappointed was I with the too-bright too-new too-glossy packaging that I walked out, saving myself a couple of thousand bucks. I know that it is all the same INSIDE, but it just does not seem the same. The drool quotient has gone, for me at least.

Maybe later, when my eyes have got better adjusted to this gracious-lady-turned-circus-performer change.

Have you hated it when a favourite product suddenly underwent a change of appearance/packaging?

STORIES AROUND US

When I'm out of my home, I'm usually very un-observant. Too engrossed in my mental cobwebs.

Sometimes, though, I look around with eyes open. And see some person at some particular moment which gives me a glimpse of a back-story. A history. A lifestory.

Let me explain.

The other day I was at the neighbouring Sahakari Bhandar, a local departmental store where you can get groceries and other stuff at reasonable rates. I always go with a list (rice, wheat, oil, sugar...) but I always overshoot the list (adding 'Buy 1 Get 1 Free' and '30% Off' and 'Offer of the Day' stuff to my cart).

As I was standing in the queue at the cash counter an elderly gentleman, rather doddery and dressed in a manner that novelists usually describe as 'shabby gentility', came up to stand behind me. He had a shopping basket, not a trolley, to hold his meagre purchases - a bunch of 'palak', some brinjals, a broom and a (very economical) tooth-paste.

I saw him looking wistfully at the nearby rack stacked with chocolates. Hesitating, as the queue inched forward, looking away, and then yearningly looking again. Finally, he made up his mind. And reached out with a slightly shaking hand to put TWO SMALL DAIRY MILK WOWIE BARS in his basket. With a happy smile that made my day.

Immediately, sentimentally, I imagined his story. He was a loving grandfather buying treats for his grandchildren on their weekly/monthly visit to his home.

Or maybe it was a treat to be shared at with his fluffy white-haired plump-cheeked wife.

Or maybe he was a diabetic...and this was a pure self-loving indulgence in a forbidden pleasure.

Or maybe... HOW WOULD YOU END THIS STORY?

Image Courtesy: thehindubusinessline.in (Google Images)

FLIPPING OVER

Probably I'm late, as usual. Probably everyone of you have already been there and done that.

But I'm just so, so excited about about this on-line bookshop I've just found out about - FLIPKART.COM.

They have the most amazing collection of books that most other bookshops (even my favourite haunts like Landmark and Crossword everywhere) do not have in stock. And they offer you pretty decent discounts! And they'll deliver it home, if home is in India, without any shipping charges!

I managed to track down a whole lot of completely delicious and completely unavailable-elsewhere women detective fiction authors from the 1940s-1960s. Everybody's heard/read/seen/bought/trashed/loved Agatha Christie. Her contemporary, Dorothy Sayers, - more erudite, and, ergo, less popular - graces Crossword/Landmark shelves in her shiny reprinted avatars. But I totally flipped over when I found rows and rows of juicy murder mysteries by Margery Allingham, Ngaio Marsh (Christie, Sayers, Allingham and Marsh are together revered as the Queens of British Golden Age Crime Fiction), Josephine Tey and Patricia Wentworth! Virtually close enough for me to reach out and touch! Now I can't wait to bite into them!!! And it's great fun just browsing along and adding random favourites to my wishlist!

But if you are completely unmoved by Miss Marple and Miss Silver, Lord Peter Wimsey, Roderick Alleyn, Inspector Grant or Albert Campion and the rest of those ancient genteel-detectives, you can always search and find your own poison!

A site for all bibliophiles to flip over!! I have!

HOLE = HOPE

Having recently purchased a black leather belt, I was very pleasantly surprised to find that it was too loose for my waist. The goody-goody guardian angel in my mind praised, “Maybe the tummy tyres have deflated a bit.” But the nasty devil in my subconscious said with a sneer, “Must have been an oversized man’s belt. Or a belt with manufacturing defects. Which explains why it was on sale. And what with the amount of ice cream you are hogging (during the break from work because of the ongoing teachers’ strike), fat chance you have of reducing all that tummy fat.”

I shooed the horned horror away and went to the friendly neighbourhood mochi (shoe-repairer) to get an extra hole drilled into the belt. The gentleman in question knows me quite well, courtesy my umbrellas with the broken sticks and my shoes with the broken straps. He asked me, “Kitney holes chahiye?” (How many holes do you want in the belt?).

Hesitatingly ambitious, I said, “Do bana dijiye.” (Make two extra holes).

Deftly poking new holes in the black leather, he aked, “Aur ek bana doon?” (Shall I make one more hole?).

Banishing a wildly improbable vision of myself with a clinched hourglass waist, I despairingly said, “Kya fayda? Do se zyada to lagnewala nahi hai kabhi.” (What’s the use? There is hardly any chance of me ever needing more than two extra holes in the belt).

Lifting his head from his work with a huge encouraging smile, the man urged, “Aas rakhney mey kya harj haye?” (What’s the problem in hoping?).

And so I agreed. And purchased MOTIVATION for the minuscule sum of two rupees. And returned home with a belt that has three extra holes to tighten around my waist. Three extra notches of hope that “YES I CAN...trim the tummy" (Sorry, Obama, for frivolously misapplying your slogan).

DUDE OR DUD?

Do you belong to the PRE-DUDE or POST-DUDE generation? At 36, I firmly belong to the generation which used the Dude-word sparingly, using it to describe boys who had real, genuine, rebellious ATTITUDE.

But this century manufactures attitude along with Yankee baseball caps (worn wrong way around), low-slung jeans (worn with chaddi compulsorily showing), and cheeky-slogan T-shirts. And so, we have a serious case of DUDE-CLONING. Every male under the age of twenty-five is either a cool dude or trying to be one. And the funny thing is, these clones do not appear to have distinctive names of their own, they are all called, you guessed it, DUDE.

Sample this: standing at a slow-moving queue at an up-market garment store, I observed two such clones talking to each other. They were carrying shopping bags full of, presumably, even more slogan-tees, low-waist jeans and baseball caps.

“Hey, dude, didja get good stuff?”
“Not really, dude, these sales are a total rip-off.”
“Y’know, dude, you’re right, dude.” And so on and so on …blah…blah…blah…Dude…blah…blah..Dude. Period. Dude.

Till they came to the payment counter. Then the smartly-dressed shop assistant suddenly became a clone as well, because these young dudes called out, “Lemme take my card out. Dude. Why’s the line so slow today? Dude? Can you pack that separately, Dude?”

The dictionary tells me that the earliest Dude was spotted in 1883 in New York. That limited-edition dude was a “man extremely fastidious in dress and manner.” Well, today’s dude has made fastidious sloppiness his fashion statement. And, he has two more added qualifications – an extremely limited vocabulary (consisting mainly of dude, and a dozen or so words like, cool, yeah, chill, and the like), and a tendency to forget first names (otherwise why will all the Raj-s and Rahuls call each other Dude?). In fact, so linguistically-challenged are they that I was almost convinced that the dude-species must have evolved from Dud. Or D-u-h?

P.S: Any Dude reading this post can dismiss it as the rant of a typical Aunty. Aunties and Dudes, divided by gender and generation, have always been on opposing sides, and never the twain shall meet. Hopefully.

HEAD OVER HEELS

That, unfortunately, has never been the case with me. My head has, is, and always will be, over feet which are encased in flat footwear. Not heels.

Once upon a time, long ago, I had tried heels. Drastically high platform heels. Wooden ones making a horse-like racket on the hard cement floor. It had not been a successful stride. In fact, it had not been a stride at all. After a failed falter, heels became another one of those allergy-inducing objects which I could see, but could not use.

And, thereafter, I have always been a Cinderella in rubber slippers. No dainty-toed high-heeled glass slippers for me.

So I know all about the platform, the wedge and the vicious/vertiginous stiletto (the lady-boss of all heels). I even know about the non-threatening kitten heels, which are less than 1.5 inches in height. These innocuous-looking low-heels are treacherous creatures, because they can tempt heel-allergic flat-footers like me. But I am, and sadly will always be, a full-grown tabby cat, and no longer anything like a kitten. And so, even kitten heels trip me up.

Any heel, and my ankle rebels. A self-defeating rebellion, as it ends up getting twisted in the bargain. But I end up all in a tumble. Embarrassing!

Any heel-thy person will diagnose my disease as vertigo. For me, heel-thy is definitely not well-thy. I am scared of heights. Not on a rollercoaster (I love them on an empty stomach). But on my heels. I prefer facing life with my feet planted solidly on the ground.

There are distinct disadvantages. Shoe shops are apparently meant for the well-heeled, as most of the shelves are devoted to the sky-high variety of shoes. Whenever I enter a shoe-shop and say, "Flat sandals only, please", I am directed to some obscure corner where a shelf and a half displays the frumpiest of designs in the most boring of colours.

Even when flat shoes are 'in', like they were 'last season' with ballerina-flats, this is usually a passing fad, and women soon abandon their firm-on-the-ground-walk for a balancing-totter. Even the once-flat Kolhapuri chappals have turned traitor and sprouted heels.

I can be the darling of feminists (who rage against the tyranny of heels and the consequent commoditisation of body-image) and the podiarists (who rage against the foot and tendon problems caused by heels). But that is a limited appeal.

Alas, I can never be a Posh Spice, who apparently even goes gymming in stilettoes (I hardly ever go gymming, so I do not wear stilettoes). All heel-addicts will rave about the sex-appeal of heels. How a shoe has to have a 'defined heel' to be in the 'sexy shoe' category. How heels transform us into objects of lust and desirability (check out any heel-vocabulary: 'stripper shoes' have 3" platform heels, 'hooker heels' are at least 3-4",'slut shoes' have 5-5 3/4 " heel...). My head is reeling after all those vertical stats.

To come back to the issue of sex-symbols and heels, I had once read that the legendary Greta Garbo (the reclusive and unattainable silent-era Hollywood beauty) always used to wear a pair of flat and comfy men's bedroom slippers (size 10 or thereabouts) under the long, trailing, lovely ballgowns she wore while filming.

That settled the matter for me. I chose the classic Greta Garbo over the upstart Posh Spice. And I'll stick to my slides and mules and unsexy-but-safe flat Dr Scholl's-type foowear. And my lovely red mojris from Mochi's, which make me feel like royalty. Even when I am not on a pedestal.

WHAT DOES YOUR SHOPPING TROLLEY SAY ABOUT YOU?

A few days back, my daughters and I had gone to Hypercity in Malad to pick up a few things (one of our last jaunts before summer vacation ends). As always happens when the kids come along, we strolled along the aisles picking up unnecessary things from the shelves. Things like lollipops (the sweet kind), easy-to-make crème brulee and vanilla pudding mixes (the very sweet kind) and chocolate donuts (the very very sweet kind) – you get the drift?

And, with our trolley groaning under all those superbly superfluous calories, we waited in the check-out line, using our time to pick up a few more mama-please-I-want-them-so-much-otherwise-I-will-bawl-my-lungs-out stuff like bubblegum and chocolate-bars.

In front of us in the queue stood a lean and muscled television actor (Gaurav Chopra? I have a BAD TV-celebrity-quotient) accompanied, presumably, by his slim and pretty girlfriend and two overloaded trolleys. I STARED – at them and at the trolleys:

Dozens of Sofit soymilk tetrapacks – check
Tubs of low-cal yogurt – check
Countless tetrapacks of Real Active fruit juice – check
Kilos of cucumbers – check
Quite a few watermelons – check
One tiny bottle of olive oil – check.

I looked from their calorie-low shopping trolleys to the six-pack abs and the sixteen-inch waist. Then, with a sigh, I looked at my calorie-flow trolley and my tummy-tyres (spares).

It figured.

HPY BDAY 2 U

I celebrated my birthday sometime in February and I was overwhelmed by the amount of attention I received. My mailbox was flooded and my phone beeped throughout the day as a flood of sms-es poured in.

Crossword, the bookshop where I am a regular browser-buyer and a member, sent me a card, a gift voucher for a spectacles shop (smart connection, that) and a discount coupon (smart business strategy).

My beauty parlour rang me up to wish me many happy returns and to remind me that I would get any service for Rs 100 free, an offer which I promptly accepted (resulting in a few golden streaks of hair upfront, and an additional spending of Rs 260).

Shopper’s Stop mailed me their greetings to ‘celebrate in style’ (presumably clothed in outfits purchased at their premises).

HDFC Credit Cards sms-ed me their good wishes, and the un-smsed hope of greater card usage in the next 365 days.

HSBC Bank did almost exactly the same (the differences were perhaps due to the fact that there I have a debit card).

Various Mutual Fund Managers e-mailed me their wishes, advising me to ‘invest in a happy future’.

Even my LIC agent joined the birthday-bandwagon by sms-ing similar good wishes with ditto advice.

Amazed at suddenly being showered with so much technologically-preset TLC and pre-recorded public attention, I felt like a virtual star. Nobody can feel lonely in today’s technology-enabled corporate world. I was bowled over by PR-pyaar (love). Care and Comfort for the customer is just an sms-away. I purchase, therefore I am. I buy, therefore I get wished on my birthday. WOW, that’s absolutely great for my self-esteem, is it not?.

Oh well, in the corporate PR-whirligig, I almost forgot to mention that my mother, sister-in law, brother, in-laws, cousin and some of my friends also called (I suspect they had all set reminders in their phone calendars, the way I always do). I’m just joking, many of them would have remembered, hopefully. The spouse did, without setting any reminders (not that I know of anyway).

And then, there were my daughters. The Lil Cat folded an A4 sheet of copier-paper and made a card in her crawling-uphill handwriting (complete with a Bible Verse advising me about the value of hard work – which she had apparently learnt in school that day). The Copy-kitten followed suit with a similar sheet of paper filled with scribbles in a yet-undiscovered script. On the great day, Lil Cat serenaded me on waking up (she, not me) with a rather complicated and uncommon birthday song invoking birds and animals, which she forgot midway. The Copy-kitten enthusiastically added to the chorus, with the emphasis on all the wrong places because at that time she was sitting on her potty and had to simultaneously attend to other pressures. And then they demanded, what’s for breakfast?

So that’s the way it is. Birthdays remind you of who you are (along with how old you are, of course, let's not get into that aspect of it at all). A customer. A mother. So if you want to be sms-ed and serenaded all over again next year, better get on with the job.

ANGEL IN THE BASEMENT

I am the optimistic sort, the type of person you can easily call foolish, because I believe that most people are either openly good or have a hidden store of goodness locked inside them. It may take a smile, or a listening ear, or sympathy, or praise, to unlock that store.

But I digress. Today I was lucky to encounter a really good person.

For a long time, I had been searching for a navy blue chiffon dupatta (stole worn over a salwar-kameez). Having done the rounds of all the shops and big departmental stores that I know of, I had encountered dozens of shades of blue (royal, ink, sky, powder, and that rather virulent shade called firoza). When I did meet navy blue, it was either in cotton or georgette (which get crushed too easily) or too expensive (BIBA had a gold-dotted navy chiffon at Rs 600 – which would have been way too heavy a burden for my shoulders).

I had gone down to the crowded basement of Gokul Market opposite the cacophonous Borivili Station to buy something else altogether, when a spirit in my feet led me (as the azure-blue loving poet, Shelley, would have put it) to a small hole-in-the-corner shop which sold only dupattas.

I saw navy-blue in cotton. I asked for it in chiffon. The man in the shop showed a brighter blue chiffon dupatta. I asked if a darker one was possibly there. The man said he’d try from some other shop of his, went up the winding, narrow stairs, and came down soon with the exact navy blue chiffon dupatta that my heart had desired for so long so longingly.

Absolutely delighted, I handed over the VERY reasonable sum of Rs 110 (did not even think of bargaining it down to, say, Rs 100). With a heart as light as the chiffon, I floated up to ground and went in search of the tailor the man had told me about to get the edges of the dupatta stitched (“beaded”, as we call it).

As I was waiting in the tailor’s shop, the dupatta-seller came hurrying. “Sister, here is your ten-rupee note. It was lying on the floor of my shop. It must have fallen out of your bag. I guessed you would have come here to stitch the dupatta, so I came hurrying to return the money.”

I was amazed and humbled. This man had come all the way from his shop (quite a long way, actually), jostling past festival-shopping-mad crowds, on the slim chance that I would be still there in the tailor’s shop, just to return a small amount of money! My smile got wider, my steps got lighter and the sun got brighter, all because of this one unselfish act of honesty.

Angels don’t always descend from the heavens, they also emerge from basements. This unlikely angel just made my day.

FASTING, FEASTING

Durga Puja and Navratri are here, hand in hand with Id this year, and the crisp, suddenly-cooler air is spiced with festive feeling!

Nine random thoughts for the nine festive days and nights :

1. We have arrangements for garba dancing in our housing complex, and I love to see the colourful crowd religiously and rhythmically dance away the evenings. I am your usual sedentary Bengali, more twinkle-eyed than twinkle-toed, but even after three years in Mumbai, I love watching people of all ages dancing in ever-moving but never-breaking circles, clapping their wooden dandiya sticks with perfect timing, talking while dancing but never missing a beat, entering and leaving at will without breaking the undulating pattern.
2. My two daughters share none of my toe-tied-ness, thankfully. They put on their newly acquired chaniya-cholis (long skirts with blouses), and run around the dance venue, eagerly stepping in time with the music. And the dandiya sticks, which have to be hidden for the rest of the year because of their status as potentially-dangerous-weapons, are now wielded in the cause of melody and music.
3. Their behaviour at the dandiya is typical of their essential characters. While my elder one, the Li’l Cat, is diffident and obedient, dancing a little, watching a little more, coming back when we say it’s time, her Copy-kitten sister sways and stamps with all her heart and soul, and bawls lustily when we carry her off, reluctant and refusing to leave.
4. Durga Puja begins on Shasthi (the sixth day of the new moon). Bengalis believe that Durga comes to visit her parents on earth for these five festive days. My mother has come to visit me since September, so my joy started early. I know this is reversing the usual trend of daughters visiting mothers, but what the heck! As long as mothers and daughters meet, it’s reason enough to celebrate.
5. My maa diligently observes fasting on Shasthi, eating nothing all day and breaking her fast at sundown with fruits and a divine-tasting hand-blended mix of sabudana (tapioca)-milk-sugar-banana-and-fresh-grated-coconut. Glutton that I am, I have no intention of fasting and every intention of gorging on that mom-made stuff.
6. I also love the sheer-khurma made and generously shared during Id by my Muslim colleagues at college. This rich milk-custard drips with dryfruits and calories, but the taste is worth waiting all the year for.
7. Apart from eating, the other profane festive activity that I absolutely love is shopping. And this is a time when shopping is totally-god-sanctioned and therefore guilt-free.
8. But I do confess that I have been shopping a bit too devoutly – new clothes for everybody (including myself), new bedcovers for the house, new crockery for the kitchen, new books for everybody, even new groceries for my kitchen-store. I am penitent but ecstatic.
9. To move from self to the world, here’s praying that this festive season brings hope to our strife-torn, terror-tormented planet and happiness to all of you.