All I wanted was a jar of face cream. I went down to the local pharmacy downstairs for what I thought would be a five-minute chore. The store had changed hands and had had a makeover. Rows on rows of glass shelves, filled with an endless supply of bottles and jars. Shampoos and conditioners. Body lotions and moisturisers. Sunscreens and scrubs. Face creams and foot creams. And bright young things to help you navigate the maze.

Peaches and cream

I must have had the deer-caught-in-the-headlights look on my face. One of the pretty young things approached with an offer of help. I stoutly declined. I knew exactly what I wanted. It took me awhile but finally I was standing in front of a floor to ceiling shelf which seemed to have face creams. The eureka moment lasted for a couple of nanoseconds. There were day creams and night creams, whitening milks and brightening creams, anti-wrinkle gels and age-defying sera. Creams that promised to lighten, tighten and smoothen your path to a peaches-and-cream complexion. Miracle creams that promised to regenerate your skin while you slept so that you woke up looking ten years younger. Even multi-tasking 2-in-1 and 7-in-1 formulations!

All I needed to do now was to locate a jar of face cream with purple flowers among the rows of identical jars. There were papayas and carrots, wheatgrass and lemon, cucumbers and almonds, but no purple flowers. I gave up and turned helplessly to the shop assistant. She produced the offending article in less than a minute. I was grateful and effusive in my thanks, and weakly agreed that I needed a night cream as well as a day cream.  “At your age, specially”, was her parting shot!

Confounding creams

I put the two jars on my dressing table. The purple flowers for the day on the extreme left and the wheatgrass (or is it wheatgerm?) on the extreme right. After all, one doesn’t wear reading glasses when applying face cream. All went well for a few days. And nights. The day cream to harness the glow of the sun and the wheatgrass to work its magic by moonlight. Then, disaster struck. I had dabbed on the cream in the prescribed upward strokes when I realised I had used the purple flowers at bedtime!

creamy chaos

I was wracked with anxiety. Would the purple flowers wreak havoc in the dark? How would my sensitive skin react to this double dose of day cream, while waiting expectantly to be soothed by the gentle night cream? Would they go into a frenzy of regeneration, or wait, was that the function of the night cream? I lay awake, guilt-ridden at the chaos I had unwittingly unleashed on my epidermal cells. I longed wistfully for the days of blissful ignorance when neither my brain nor my skin knew but a single cold cream.

war of the butters

In my half-wakeful state, I wondered of the consequences if the under-eye cream strayed on to my cheeks. Or the body wash onto my face? What if the line that divided my face from my body was disputed by both parties? As if on cue, the almond, cocoa, and shea butters fought a bitter battle to prove each was better, but the aloe vera speared them down. The strawberry face-wash desperately tried to wash away the greasy mess, but the pH was not quite right, cried the green apple. 

I woke up – my face a ravaged battlefield in the aftermath of the war of the butters. My husband handed me the much-needed cup of coffee and recommended my favourite bowl of fruits (apples, strawberries, melon, papayas) for breakfast. No fruit, I gagged.

Crème de la crème

Drastic measures were required to exorcise the slippery gels of the cosmetic world.  I walked down to the house of glass. I allowed the bright young thing to help me choose a body lotion.