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Although I never had much of a bushy mustache or beard, daily shaving has been my habit for over half a century and more (I like to have a smooth chin, and cheeks that I can fondle lovingly).
And so shaving has been part of my daily ablution triad (shit-shave-shampoo...not necessarily in that order).
James Thurber wrote that Salvador Dali claimed to remember what it was like to be in his mother's womb (Dali's).
Clearly one (or both) of them is bluffing.
I have read about kids who suddenly recalled their past lives, and led their folks to the neighboring village where they remembered to have lived and died, coming up with correct dates and names; and spotting their surviving widows :)
But memories of adventurous kicks in the womb are strictly no-no...thank heavens...
Anyway I vividly remember everything memorable from my age of 2 (when my next sister was born in Nellore).
And one of those routines I recall with pleasure is my father shaving his beard and clipping his mustache every third day.
He would squat on a stool and place his shaving-kit on another stool in front of him. Most of his toolkit came in an LG Hing Box.
Ever since I started reading, I would try and read everything printed on top of that magic box in English...it had many other scripts that I couldn't decipher.
And I read again and again the charming words "Laljee Godhoo". The spelling itself was mystic and the name exotic...Godhoo meant something like wheat in Telugu...
I thought for long that Laljee and Godhoo were brothers like our Ambanis. I saw just now that it was only one chap (most audacious business guy...his hing sells under his own name even now after 150 long years).
By the way it was NOT written 'hing'...it was written 'Asafoetida' (aka "Devil's Dung"...try and pronounce that fetid word correctly...what a weird spelling!)
The English name is derived from asa, a latinised form of Persian azā, meaning 'resin', and Latin foetidus meaning 'smelling, fetid', which refers to its strong sulfurous odour.
The other LG (South Korean) is a fairly recent thing. It started with GoldStar Radio and now is into practically everything electronic. After merging with the 'Lucky' Company it became Lucky-GoldStar. Recently it turned smart and says it stands for "Life's Good" (for them).
Anyway that LG Hing Box survived for all of 125 years till that metal-box became costlier than its contents...now into plastics and polymers.
Apart from father's shaving box, mother had her own LG Hing Box in her kitchen in what was always referred to as "Shelf with Glass Windows" (అద్దాల షెల్ఫు).
That box had a few coins, copper and nickel...the highest denomination was a cute circular ridgy 4-anna piece. And the box was called "God's Cash Box" (దేవుడి డబ్బుల పెట్టె)...God's Cash...not God's Box...
I used to beg and squeeze from mother one 4-anna coin in order to watch films like Patala Bhairavi screened by our Touring Talkies. The cheapest ticket was of 4-annas by which I could sit on the sandy floor under the vast tent and watch the screen close from the first row along with a couple of my friends.
(Between us...I once stole a 4-anna coin from that box to buy 'glass marbles' and was caught by my mother post-haste...and had to catch her feet begging her not to report the matter to father).
LG Hing Box was airtight. But it didn't come with a latch...just press the lid with both thumbs here and there and it sat down stiff on the box...great design even then.
Father's LG Box had in it a small rectangular mirror with a foldable stand. The mirror was held in a metal frame.
When, by chance, the mirror fell down on the floor and broke into two diagonally, father had to carry it to the photo-frame shop in Nellore and get the broken mirror replaced with a new one in the same old stand. And he used to carry the two triangular broken pieces back home and keep them in his LG Box...maybe nostalgia.
By when I grew up to my high school, I used to play with those broken mirrors. It was fun to touch the sparkling red lining behind the mirror. Much later I learned that it was a thin film coating of mercury...some TF-technology there (for Choprajee).
And I used that broken mirror to shine our sun's disk from outdoors onto the dark interior walls of our house through the front door...all houses in our village came linear with rooms like railway bogies one behind the other...space crunch maybe.
And I used to wonder how a triangular mirror piece always cast a perfect circular image of the sun...it took another 30 years to learn the queer geometrical optics of the pin-hole camera...not obvious...the wall (and the sun fortunately) has to be far away from the broken mirror...How far? Depends on many things.
During our sunny matinee shows in the movie theaters of Vizagh, when a new chap arrives and while the gate-keeper opens the black-cloth-entrance-curtain a wee bit and admits him into the darkened hall, we used to watch 'inverted movies' of running cyclists of the street cast on the wall opposite the entrance...some fun...pin-hole need not be a 'pin-hole' strictly...
Mother had a vow that she wouldn't eat her lunch unless she saw the sun;...on totally cloudy days she skipped her lunch and ate 'tiffin' for dinner (that was what we waited for :)
And her vow meant that in the rainy season one or the other of her kids had to watch out and beckon her outdoors for a fleeting glimpse of the sun.
Once, she was laid up with a sprained ankle for a few days and it was my duty to shine the image of the sun with a mirror into her hungry eyes.
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To be continued
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