Idiot, It Was A Shaving Cream Poem by Bashyam Narayanan

Really very long back
It was when we were not using
Any branded material for cleaning teeth
And it was also a luxury to have a tooth brush

It was only finger brushing or cleaning that prevailed

Morning, as we would get up
We would go to the backyard of the house
And look for ash remains of cow dung cake
Or for a powder generated by crushing bricks
Or any such dust which we believe would rub off dental coatings
For teeth cleansing

No one knows with what the
Other person has washed his or her teeth
It remained any body's guess

Some youngsters managed the show without
Even cleaning the teeth

Dental health was not at all a concern those days
As hardly any one complained of tooth ache
Let it be youngsters and elders

We children had no clue how a dental cream or powder tasted
My dad used to have a tooth brush
And a dental cream safely kept in his wooden cup board
Under lock and key

His first job in the morning would be to open this cup board
And help himself with a ribbon of the white dental paste
On his tooth brush
The menthol fragrance would hit our nostrils for a second
By which time he would have locked the cupboard back again

We used to stand around him with an expectation
That one day he would show us the grace
By allowing us to have the taste of his paste
It never happened

On the above back drop
Imagine the excitement in me
When my cousin sister landed
For the first time after her marriage
We knew she had a sophisticated living
As her husband was earning much better than anyone at home

My, if not of all, expectation was that she would have a tooth paste

Early morning she came
We did not sleep the whole previous night
We were keen to listen her new life experience
In a far off place

She started opening her travel baggage
And one after the other new and so-far-unknown-to-us things
Surfaced and got displayed by her
And my awaited thing was also there
She showed two tubes
One of them was the dental cream and the other
I did not care to mark it

After initial briefing and welfare queries
We all went again to sleep

I did not know what time I got up
But it was still dark inside
I thought it would be wise to experiment
With the dental cream
Before others got up

I probed her baggage silently
And got hold of one of the tubes
She was showing
I was happy and felt smart

I squeezed it so that I got a finger long ribbon
And went to the backyais soon tal cleaning
I never thought my dental cream dream would come true so soon

And without allowing any further delay
I started applying the paste on my teeth
Suddenly I noticed that the fragrance was different
I did not mind
And went ahead brushing
It was soapy and a lot of lather appearing
And my mouth was full of it

I realized that something really went wrong
I spit the entire mouth content
And started washing the mouth repeatedly with water
So that I would get of the soapy feeling at least
And at the earliest so that others would not notice

My cousin sister appeared there suddenly
And I saw in her the other tube
She went ahead squeezing the contents onto a tooth brush
And cleaning her teeth

Just then did she notice my plight
And the froth laden backyard floor
I did not know how she could make out what happened

And she simply said
Idiot, it was a shaving cream