satire: Bathed With My Soap? Face arrest!

 

 

I had always heard that women can be a hugely sensitive about their cosmetic/beauty products, but someone could be so possessive about her bathing soap that when her own husband bathed with her soap, she actually called the police—this I discovered only after reading a recent newspaper report.

 

But then, think about it! The poor wife combs through half the city to find the newest, most glamorous beauty soap—the one that smells like a bouquet of roses, the one the movie stars use, the one whose price alone could disturb your monthly budget. And this soap barely lasts five days as it is. Now if the husband, who is hardly aware of  the protocol of using such expensive soaps and makes mess of whatever toiletries he has, also starts bathing with it, forget days—how many rounds will it last? Bathing soap is a deeply private asset; practically an inseparable part of your body if not, soul. Once the husband lays his hands on it, she’ll either have to throw it away or just hand it over to him permanently. For all you know, the soap might be imported, or gifted by a friend who just came back from some exotic country. You can’t just bathe with anyone’s soap. There is great danger for your dermis in this practice.

 

I even remember a man proudly boasting at work that his wife and Hema Malini have a lot in common. His friends asked, “Oh, really? How come?” The man replied, “Both bathe with Lux soap.”

 

Anyway, the police must have given the poor husband a good, thorough ‘wash’. So thorough that he must now tremble at the very mention of the word ‘bath’. Maybe he’ll take a vow to bathe soap-free for rest of his life.    

 

In our childhood, the entire household bathed with one single Lifebuoy bar. And to top it off, there was just one towel for one family. Now that we can afford better, everyone has their own soap/soaps our own individual towel/towels and even own bathroom. Once, when a group of us friends visited someone’s house, the LOH (Lady of the house) went a step further—she offered us the used toothbrushes of her family! “Here, use these!” she said. I stared at the toothbrush, then at the hostess, preferring to do it without toothbrush. 

 

Earlier, we lent shirts and pants to our younger brothers without a second thought. They returned them without a second thought as well. Sharing a cot between two people was absolutely normal. Today, forget the cot—most people can’t tolerate the presence of another human being in their bedroom. In Mumbai, a teenager, once murdered his grandmother just because his room was assigned to her to sleep, whenever she visited Mumbai (from her village) The teenager cribbed “What about my privacy?”. This new disease called ‘Privacy’ and ‘My Space’ seems to have spread quite a bit.

 

But the real question is—why did the wife call the police? Perhaps the husband was a habitual offender. Perhaps she finally decided enough was enough and it was time to teach him a lesson. Think about it—at one end of the spectrum are celebrities who reportedly shared even their toothbrush; at the other end is this poor chap who merely bathed with her soap and got arrested. Who knows how far the police took it—did they detain him? Put him in lock-up? How many days of remand? Was it a Police remand or judicial remand. After a few rounds of third-degree interrogation, he must have confessed every crime he ever committed, including the ones he didn’t. By now, forget her soap—he must have sworn off bathing altogether. Maybe they even took him away in handcuffs. A lucky man, honestly—he escaped after paying some fine and arranging a few bars of soap as compensation. Had bhabhi ji wanted, she could have gotten far more creative: hired someone, ordered cement and a blue plastic drum, or taken him on a final ‘trip’ to Shillong hillock/gorge.

 

Here is the final lesson:

 

Bathing with soap is hazardous—not to health, no, no—not to health, but to the very life itself. Haven’t you heard? Soap causes skin dryness. If you want to live, stop bathing with soap. You’re a lion—why should a lion need a soap bar? How can a lion go around the police station just because of a tiny bar of rose-scented soap? It simply does not augur well for lion of a man that is you.