No smile ok please

This morning I got a rude  shock. As I groggily brushed my teeth, something felt different. I peered down at the medium strength bristles frosted with cavity fighting crème. Sniffed. Put it back in my mouth and did a chumbawamba with the dental stick. Spat out the foam in disgust. Indeed, something was different.

I picked up the tube and inspected it closely, with my sleep-heavy-contact-lens-free aankhein. There it was – as bright as a 52 degree Celsius brutal sunny day. ‘new fresh flavour’, proudly printed on that familiar red and white squeeze-with-ease tube. Et tu, Colgate?

 I get it. The product manager is completely bored. How many variations of the  strong teeth, white teeth message can they make? You see an ad with a man in a white coat and your finger presses ‘skip’. No one really cares about which toothpaste mummy buys, it’s taken for granted, just like mummy is.  

Until one day, mummy scoots off to Thailand with her kitty party clique and posts a picture on insta in a two piece swimsuit which chachi slyly shares on phamily WA gourp. Now everyone is fondly recalling the laapata lady delicately wiping her forehead with a chunni while making world-best parathas (a fact no one has ever bothered to tell her).

Toothpaste ki story bhi kuch aisi hai. I never post about it or boast or give a status update about my daily dalliance. I take it for granted; wherever I go, it follows. I enter a hotel and there it is waiting, in collectible, miniature form. I shamelessly slip it into my toiletry bag, half used, with nary a glance at the glamorous Forest Essentials hair products.

Coz you can go a week without washing hair but brushing teeth – just gotta be done. Train mein, plane mein, date ke pehle, kiss ke pehle. Bina brush rahoge akeley.  And yet, and yet.  In this attention-led economy, koi attention nahin. Koi izzat nahin. So you went and asked 10 people, they said bore ho gaye and you changed the formulation.

Naheeeeeeen! In a world where everything is constantly changing, some things must stay the same. Kindly bring back my old boring toothpaste flavour minus any improvement. I promise to keep buying it even if my teeth eventually fall out. I’ll take it with me to the nursing home and use it to cover imaginary pimples and polish my silver.

Bas mera khoya hua paste mujhe lauta do.  Purani cheez ko purana hi rehne do.