Jay Rege’s Blog

After a long time I received an email from a friend. The subject said ‘IMP, Please Read’. The email contained a long story of how some foreign politician, some actor and many others, ended up with severe bad luck just because they had ignored the warning in this email. At the end of the email was a note in BOLD which threatened the reader saying that, if the email didn’t get forwarded to at least a dozen others, then doom was inevitable. Reading this email brought about mixed feelings. I was a little saddened at the thought that my friend, whom I had assumed to be a sensible chap, believed in this superstitious crap. But at the same time it was quite gratifying to know that I actually featured amongst the top 12 list of people he remembered when he thought his life was in distress.

This email once again raised questions that have been boggling my mind for long time now - questions, not about the authenticity of this email, but in general about forwarded emails. I have always wondered on where do these ‘forwards’ originate? Who writes them? Since the time I started using emails, I have received umpteen forwards, but yet not a single what I would term as a ‘firsthand’ forward. By the time I receive the forwarded email it has usually passed through the mailboxes of so many people that in ALL cases the original writer’s name or identity is lost in the hierarchy. I have NEVER received a ‘firsthand’ forward – an email that someone I knew wrote and sent it to me (and others), that eventually went on to become a ‘forward’. Whatever be the kind of forwards– be it an email about Yahoo and Microsoft paying money to forwards emails; a Banta/Santa joke; pictures of some funny hoardings; some pretty/weird looking artistic decorations; a video on cannibalism; a PowerPoint presentation reminding me on how attitude is only thing that matters; a hopelessly romantic story that they think would make me cry; or just a calculation on how every misfortune in the world till date, right from JFK assassination, to Diana’s accident, to 9/11 is somehow associated with the number 11 – I have never received any of these emails directly from the writer. Now there are some people I know who always sign their name at the bottom of these forwarded emails hoping to take credit for the work, but I know too well that they are not the originators of these emails.

But that’s fine. Most people I know aren’t creative enough to come up with their original stuff. But what really surprises me is how come the stuff I write never ends up becoming a ‘forward’? I write good stuff, don’t I? How come those very people who claim to enjoy reading my blogs, send out forwarded emails written by anonymous people (and sometimes include me in their ‘undisclosed-recipients’ – bcc list), but don’t send out my writings to others? When the essay written by an IAS aspirant on ‘The Cow’ can end up becoming a ‘forward’, why can’t my writings become one too? Hmmm, maybe I should start forwarding my own writings and also put a warning in BOLD RED at the bottom saying that if you don’t forward my writings to at least 20 people and don’t laugh for at least 30 seconds on reading it, you will be engulfed by the dark clouds of misery and misfortune. He ha ha ha ha ha ha (that’s my evil laugh by the way!).

Well someday I plan to publish my writings as a book. Till then, at least let my writings end up as email forwards. So readers, please forward my stuff :) but yes, please don’t let my name and identity get lost in the process.

In continuation with my previous write up on Toiletries…

Now can somebody tell me the difference between the variants of Gillette Shaving Gel: ‘Original’, ‘Sensitive’, ‘Conditioning’, and ‘Ultra Comfort’? How does one decide which one gels with you best, especially when all are priced the same, all come in similar looking cans, and all are greenish blue in color. They have similar variants in shaving foams too. So every time at a retail store, I walk past the shaving accessories isle, I get bogged down by questions - questions that I haven’t found an answer for yet - Does their original shave gel not offer a comfortable shaving experience? Is so, why do they still have it when they have managed to invent the ‘ultra comfort’ one? Why would you want to condition your stubs when all you want is to get rid of them? Would an insensitive man feel less macho if he shaves with a ‘Sensitive’ gel? Why did they have to make a simple thing like shaving so complicated?

And I thought the shaving accessory shopping could not get any further complex, until a few days back I saw a shaving gel (yes again from Gillette) which said ‘for tough beard’. Now what is tough beard, and how am I supposed to know if I have tough beard? Aren’t beards supposed to be tough? Isn’t that the reason why we shave it off? Does anybody have a soft and silky beard (apart from those old Chinese looking guys in some martial arts movies with long white beards). And how tough is ‘tough’?. Is my beard tough enough? Well I don’t know. Definitely mine’s not that tough that I have ever cracked a razor trying to shave it off. Nor have I ever caressed the face of any adult male to experience a ‘Teri daadhi, meri daadhi se ‘tough’ kaise?’ moment. So how am I supposed to know if my beard is tough enough for me to actually use this shaving gel?

Nevertheless, you still start investigating. You carcass your face trying to assess the toughness of your stubs. ‘Yup, it’s tough’ you say to yourself with a hint of machoism. But you are still not convinced. So with the hope of deciphering the toughness of my own stubs, you start scouting for unshaven faces in the store. Checking out people (irrespective of their gender), I should admit, is an art which I have not yet mastered to perfection. Hence my endeavor of checking out the stubbed faces, often returns strange glares and at times odd smiles. Eventually my uncomfortable demeanor, my attempt at checking out the not to pretty faces, and my idling at the same isle for durations longer than necessary, draws suspicion in the minds of the store personnel. They start hovering around me trying to ensure that I don’t succeed in, what they suspect, are my shoplifting plans. Some even go to the extent of asking me ‘May I help you sir?’, and while I am tempted to say ‘Yes, I need help. I need help trying to figure out if I have a tough beard’, I just politely decline the help saying ‘No, thank you’.

The last time this happened, I actually picked up the can of gel for ‘tough beard’. I don’t know why, but when I took it at the checkout counter, the cashier gave me the ‘hmmm, so you think you have tough beard? haaa..’ kind of looks, only adding to my confusion. On a prior occasion when I had checked out the shave gel for sensitive skin, the cashier had the ‘Ohhh, Mr. Sensitive skin…sissy’ kind of looks. Now come on. Don’t give me those looks. I just like trying stuff out or maybe I am just a well groomed metrosexual. What’s the big deal? Don’t give me those looks. I seriously think that cashiers at retail stores should be blindfolded so that they don’t give you those judgmental looks based on the items you check out, especially when you are shopping for personal stuff.

Anyways, I have now tried out all versions of shave gels and foams. All feel the same. All are as comfortable as that tiny soap that came complimentary in that hotel room. Wonder what brand that soap was?

A few months ago, on a two day business trip, I forgot to pack my can of shaving gel. I realized this the following morning in my hotel room when I was ready to head for a shave. I could have run down to a nearby store and purchased shaving cream, but I didn’t. Instead I built up a lather using the small complimentary soap that the hotel had provided, spread it over my stubbed face and put my razor to work. Did my razor complaint about missing its daily shaving mate? Not really. At least it didn’t make me feel that way. Did the many people I met that day notice the difference? I don’t think so. At least nobody walked up to me saying “Oh.., you shaved with soap today?”

That day, that tiny little soap had quadrupled as handwash, facewash, bodywash, and as shaving cream too. I would have promoted it as shampoo too, but then the hotel had provided me with a tiny bottle of shampoo that I didn’t want to let go unused. But as I was admiring that tini-tiny soap for its accomplishments, my mind raced back in flashback mode to a time around a decade ago. I was young and naïve then, and I had committed the blunder of washing my face with a handwash liquid. This was at an acquaintance’s place (in the USA), in whose bathroom was a nice looking bottle which oozed out a sweet smelling milky white soapy liquid. The bottle even had a picture of some fruit on it (must have been papaya), and I had used the contents of the bottle to cleanse my face. Well nothing happened to my face, if that’s what you are thinking – no rashes, no redness, no blisters of any sort. My face just got cleaner, and smelt nicer too. But when my acquaintance found out that I had used that handwash liquid to clean my face, she freaked out. “How could you use it on your face, that’s handwash !!”. Her expressions were as bizarre as if I had just washed my face with a toilet cleaner. “Isn’t it soap?” was what I said in my defense, but all I got back was a ‘Duh…how dumb’ kind of an expression.

Well you can’t blame me for what happened back then. As I said, I was naïve and my knowledge on toiletries was fairly limited. Soaps, shampoos, and shaving creams were the only three broader categories that I knew existed. I didn’t know of the existence of the finer nuances in the form of handwash, facewash, face scrub, foot cleansers, shampoo, and of course bodywash (to clean up the remaining parts of the human anatomy). But I am well educated now. Now I know that these products exist. But at times I wonder on why can’t the bodywash liquid be doubled as handwash? Would hands be any less clean if washed with the bodywash liquid? Never mind. I still use my red colored lifebuoy soap for most of my cleansing purposes and I have no complaints with it. But still some questions remain unanswered – would it really make a difference if one actually had a complete shower with just handwash soap or with shampoo for that matter? - And no you wouldn’t have hair growing all over your body just because you scrubbed yourself with shampoo :) (if that’s what you are thinking).

Shopping for toiletries is yet another complex thing. There is so much variety out there to clean you up, that at times you are really tempted to get dirty (no double meanings here.. :) plzzzz). But when it comes to brand loyalty, toiletries are the worst products to be loyal to. The moment you start showing a little attachment to a brand, there comes a ‘new and improved’ version of the same and that too at a discounted price, only to make you feel cheated. Seriously, I mean it. When something like this happens I get the feeling that all these days I was being duped into using a product that was not just inferior in quality, but also overpriced. It’s like heartbreak, and I have been through it often.

But the most complex of them all is the shaving cream/gel/foam and I completely blame Gillette for it. They have taken a simple thing like shaving to a whole new level of complexities. I will blog about it soon.