Delhi, like a lot of cities of Northern India, witnesses extremes of climate. While I remember dreading the summer all along (with peak temperatures effortlessly hitting 45 deg C, who doesn’t), winter was always welcome. Come October and woolens would gradually usurp cottons from your wardrobe. One of my first lessons in domestic affairs was related to winters – more specifically it dealt with profound subject of washing woolens at home – something necessitated by the persistent smell of naphthalene balls that were used to keep the woolens moth free during their summer vacation, and by the fact that if given to the neighborhood dry-cleaning shops, they would almost always do a shoddy job. Regular detergents were unsuitable for woolens because they would do bad things to them (shrinkage, loss of color, and other perils). Only two liquid formulations were deemed gentle enough for this purpose – Genteel and Godrej Ezee. For reasons unknown to me, both of them would come in a sky-blue bottle of an almost identical shape and material. The only way you could tell one from the other was from their labels. Godrej just had the product name on the bottle, Genteel had extreme close up of a model draped in a saree.

Over the years the labels on the bottles have remained unchanged. The lady on Genteel’s bottle – thanks to years of seeing the bottle in my mother’s hand, had formed a motherly sort of association in my mind. She had not aged on the bottle but she had aged in my mind; like a close friend of my mother. When I moved to Bangalore and had to pick a liquid detergent for my sweatshirts, I instinctively chose Genteel.

Then one day Genteel decided to give their bottle a facelift. The bottle got a new model. She does not wear a saree. A smart pink cardigan is in. A dowdy coat of dark lipstick is a no-no. A light gloss color-coordinated with the cardigan is in. A bindi is optional. She conforms to a notion of beauty that is very “21st century liberalized Indian” and therefore universal. A sense of dressing that conforms to a global ethnicity – and would be comfortably accepted in New Delhi, London, Paris, Milan or New York. She is not my mother’s friend. But then Genteel would now rather sell to my wife. Or perhaps a silk saree does not quite convey the broad scope of the detergent’s utility – for I’ve been washing woolens in it all along!