Himalaya lotion

Squeezed the last of the lovely lotion out of this today. I bought it in December in Kolkata from an old-fashioned chemist, a long, narrow shop with a wooden counter that ran the length of the shop. There were three people serving, two young women and an older man with grey hair. I was served by one of the young women and she asked me if there was anything else I wanted, some khol, for example. I said that khol was too young for me, and the older man told her off for offering me something that was too young for me.

If only advertisers did that, let me be who I am. It felt briefly liberating, it gave me dignity.