Like almost everything else, most of our habits — good and bad — start in our childhood homes. And also like almost everything else, eventually, they come back sometime in adulthood to haunt us and make us aware of the circle of life.
In our home, it was the use of talcum powder. Father had a fondness for that and there was always a long tin of powder on his dresser. Despite Mother’s admonitions to open it just a little, he would puncture all the markings on the top of the tin so that he could rain talc on himself after a shower. This liberal use of powder would not have bothered us at all (he had, after all, taught us to use powder pretty freely as well). What we objected to strenuously was that he did this with the ceiling fan on full blast.
Thus, while Father thought he was wrapping himself in the fragrance of Ponds Dreamflower Talc or Godrej’s Cinthol or, when he wanted to treat himself, Johnson’s Baby Powder, what he was doing was enveloping the house in a cloud of superfine white particles that eventually infiltrated every surface. There was powder everywhere. On the bed, on the floor, on the dresser, on the cupboards, on the bedside tables — and we who had to help Mother with the housework — cleaning it off.
Naturally, we hated dusting above all other chores. It was endless. “It’s you who’s creating extra work for us!” we would point to our father accusingly, but he would just smile and ignore us — and persist with several baths a day, after which the powder would literally ‘fly’.
My sister escaped from this scenario soon enough, choosing to marry early and move to another continent, where, I am sure, the deadly combination of a ceiling fan and talcum powder was never allowed to present itself again.
I, however, chose the other path: If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. I became a liberal sprinkler as well. Under the fan, that is — three times a day.
And in time, just like Father had inculcated the habit in the next generation, I did it too. Starting with a room full of baby powder dust and going on to choosing what I thought were all manner of ‘boyish’ and then ‘manly’ talcum powders for my son.
Then, somewhere in that blink of an eye of about ten years or so, between the lovely time when a son is a little boy and the startling realisation that the same son is a grown man, the powder ran dry for him.
Did it happen when the flood of deodorants came into the house — because it seems to me that even then, there was the fine dust of talcum powder all over the furniture for me to wipe off and all of us to slip on? Or did it happen when he moved into his own house and realised that he didn’t want to dust off talc twice a day?
“Go check the shelves of the supermarket,” he orders now. “The days of talcum powder are over! It’s ‘deos’ and body mists and refreshing sprays. Only old fuddy-duddies use powder!”
We smile (as Father once did) and ignore him. And we use our talcum powder surreptitiously, not allowing a particle to land anywhere in our son’s home (unlike what Father did) and betray our partiality for something he now despises.
And we think we will wait and see what happens when yet another generation takes birth in the family. Will delicate baby skin have “deo” and body mist sprayed on it, or will there be a return to a good old-fashioned dusting of powder?
Cheryl Rao is a journalist based in India.
