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The term is also used metaphorically to describe a person engaging in often flamboyant impromptu or unofficial public speaking, as in the phrases "He's on his soapbox", or "Get off your soapbox." Hyde Park, London is known for its Sunday soapbox orators, who have assembled at Speakers' Corner since 1872 to discuss religion, politics and other topics...
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...You know what the result was, naturally. Now they couldn't wait for the regular hour. They all had to sit upstairs in my lab with this little creaky radio for half an hour, listening to the Eno Crime Club from Schenectady...
...Feynman Joking
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Till I was 10 we had no soap in our Muthukur Market. Our body wash was done by a home-made powder called Sunni Pindi. My D-i-L told me just now that its ingredients are 7 or 8, some secret. There is moong dal, chana dal, rice, turmeric, dried adrak, and sundry herbs like dried lime, neem, tusli, all ground into a fine mixture. It looked nice, smelled nice and tasted nice...I used to taste it on the sly. First you pour a mug or two of water on your body, and pour a little bit of Sunni Pindi on your palm and rub it on the body and wash it off. You looked yellowish like a Chinese for a while.
Then one day there suddenly appeared in our grocer's shop two brands of soap: Hamam and Lux. And there was peer pressure on Father to discard the Sunni Pindi and buy one of these soaps. And every lady in the household (there were half a dozen) asked Father to buy the Lux soap since they saw ads in the weekly Andhra Patrika with a film star saying: "The secret of my glowing skin is LUX soap".
But Father brought a Hamam soap. He was an armchair freedom fighter and discovered that Hamam was made by our own Tatas unlike Lux which was the product of Unilever, the bloodsuckers of our nation...and Gandhiji had asked us to boycott every foreign product. But I guess Hamam lasted longer and was cheaper...
I asked Father my usual query: "What is meant by Hamam?" And he kept quiet...he was an honest teacher unlike his only son. I Googled for it now and found that Hamam is an Arabic word meaning something not very clear to me. And even more:
Hamam is the only soap to have Neem, Tulsi, and Aloe Vera, all of which protect the skin from rashes, pimples, and body odor.
Father didn't know that this Tata thing was taken over by the voracious Unilever...now Hindustan Lever Limited...Takeovers are the rage these days.
And then we saw ads for another new soap called Rexona. Its film star claimed: "Rexona is the only soap with Kadyll" (or was it Cadyl?). And everyone switched over to Rexona. And I asked everyone around what this Kadyll was but none had a clue. That is the power of mystic advertizing.
Everyone thought that Unilever had been taught a memorable Lux lesson...they didn't know that Rexona too was a Unilever product...that giant was like a many-headed Hydra...none can beat it except itself.
Much later I heard the word Soaps used for TV sitcoms. I didn't know why 'Soap'?
Here it is:
The name soap opera stems from the fact that many of the sponsors
and producers of the original dramatic serials broadcast on radio were
soap manufacturers, such as Dial Corporation, Procter & Gamble, Colgate-Palmolive and Lever Brothers.
There go our Lever Brothers again.
At our Andhra University in the early 1960s there was a terrific fight for the post of AU Student's President. It was a powerful post since it had lots of money and fame...the winner used to try and go into politics or big business.
The contenders were all from Arts College and the Law College. They used to spend a lot of money printing pamphlets and doing propaganda in the hostels. Once, a cute lady walked into our Quantum Mechanics Lecture Class, took our teacher's permission (why not?) and lectured us for 5 minutes how she would revolutionize our University standards and hostel facilities. I voted for her. But she lost narrowly...it shows the perennial male bias...the Women's Reservation Bill has been hanging fire in our Parliament for the last few decades. It is debated again and again and then quietly dumped.
Anyway, a few minutes before voting took place, there was this public debate between the two lead-contenders. This used to be a heritage event held in the Erskine Square at 10 AM on the voting day. The Chairman sitting on the dais was none other than the Vice Chancellor (supremo). He would herald the two speakers one after the other, their order decided by an on-the-spot lottery. The topic was given 15 minutes before the debate.
It was a great event, looked forward to eagerly by one and all. And I recall that the two speakers were far more eloquent and smarter than our best teachers...except Prof D V Ramana of the Economics Dept who was simply inimitable.
When I reached IIT KGP, I was aghast to discover that there was no powerful Students Union there. Just a short election for the Gymkhana Vice President post...I guess the President was a senior faculty member nominated by the Director. That shows that very few IITians entered into politics...till the other day when the Aam Admi thing came up. Its founder, Arvind Kejriwal, is an alumnus of IIT KGP (1989 ME). I don't recall taking his QM classes and boring him...yet, he joined politics after some babudom.
Anyway in the 1960s there was a Soap Box Event held in front of the students' canteen under its sprawling banyan tree. And as usual I wondered why that informal pre-election debate was called Soap Box.
Here is the wiki entry:
A soapbox is a raised platform on which one stands to make an impromptu speech, often about a political subject. The term originates from the days when speakers would elevate themselves by standing on a wooden crate originally used for shipment of soap or other dry goods from a manufacturer to a retail store.
And finally here is the last laugh:
A modern form of the soapbox is a blog: a website on which a user publishes his/her thoughts to whomever they are read by.
So, I too am standing on a soap box having 1500 soaps... and 1,20,000 soap-views...
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