The Inside Story: Soap ~ a sudsy soak

Flower-shaped fancy soaps

LATHER, LATHER, all over me. Bother, bother, every morning. I’m trying to compose a non-rhyming poem ~ my teacher taught us about blank verse ~ so that I don’t have to think about being in the bath. That’s the part of the morning I hate the most. Scrubbing all over me with a loofah and soap, when I could be reading more of Enid Blyton and Jacqueline Wilson instead. Suddenly, my eyes begin to sting, my mouth shapes up for a scream. I’ve got some soapy bubbles in my eyes, and eaten some besides, as I wash by face. Yuck! That makes me cry.

I was pouring water all over me, trying to be brave, when my invisible friend Iffy arrives. “Hey! Soap’s caused loads of other problems down the years,” he whispers. Really? I stop towelling furiously, get my clothes on double-quick. And get set to join my secret best friend on a finding out adventure.

Our first stop is ancient Rome, after hovering over Greece. What do we see? “Iffy,” I pinch him. “Why are they having such strange baths? Was there no soap at all, then?”  True, he replies, for all they did was to scrape the dirt off themselves with a knife-like instrument. ‘That’s a strigil,” Iffy says.

But I can’t help laughing out loud as I watch them wash their togas. You know, those baggy dress-like garments belted at the waist? “Stop!” mutters Iffy. “They’ll hear you. The Romans just washed their togas in lye that’s made of wood ashes, steeped them in stinky urine or pee…” I hold my nose at the very thought. But Iffy continues, “Look, they’re treading on the garments with their feet, then rinsing them in clean water.” Why the  pee, I ask. That’s to bleach the cloth and protect the wearer from gout, the deposit of uric minerals at the joints that make movements painful, he explains.

As we drift from place to place, Iffy and I find that people long ago used plant juices that created lather, like soapwort, for a while. Then, to the marching of armies, we find the Gauls storming Rome. Their supplies included real soap. “Would you believe it if I told you that the Romans used to call the Gauls barbarians?” Iffy asks. I blink at the thought.

What was this basic soap made of? “Just tallow or animal fats, mixed with wood ashes or potash,” Iffy shows me. “The Gauls used it to keep their hair shiny, while the Romans found that it cured horrible sores.”

Off we go to the Dark Ages in Europe, when folks thought it was godly to be filthy. Whew! The stink almost bowls me over. Their skin is crusted with dirt, their hair with lice, and their sewers are overflowing. But from the 10^th century onwards, the upper classes decided they did not feel clean without a bubbly bath ~ and soap’s been a part of our lives ever since.

In the European Middle Ages, we watch candle-makers working on soap. Why them, I ask Iffy, puzzled. “Because they rendered fats and oils for candles, similar to what was needed for soap,” he responds.

A soap-cutting machine today

I try washing my hands with a bit of their soap, which was cut to order from a huge hunk at the shops. Ouch! It stings. So, soap remained a crude, harsh product till the 1830s or so. And then, the soap industry began to boom in both Europe and North America. “What about soaps like ours?” I want to know. “The first ones in wrappers, cut to small sizes, were made in Newburgh, New York, about 1830,” Iffy says.

How did soap come into our daily lives? Iffy points to a spiffy office in America. It’s an advertising agency. “They quickly made soap seem like something we couldn’t live without,” he says. And so, advertising transformed even the Lifebuoy soap, which was first kept with the family’s medicines, into a ‘health soap’ during the American influenza epidemic of 1918.

Why are some TV serials called soap operas, I ask. “That’s because soap products usually promoted these tear-jerking stories,” Iffy replies.

But what about environmental pollution from soap, I say, recalling all our weekly classes, which made us give up on crackers at Diwali because of the pollution. “That’s a huge problem,” Iffy says. “The first synthetic or non-natural soaps or detergents were non-biodegradable.” What’s that? Their bubbles could not be destroyed by sewage systems. So, mountains of foam grew in lakes, rivers and other water sources.

That’s awful, I think to myself. “But that’s not all of it,” Iffy continues. “These synthetic detergents were very popular because they could be used in hard water with a high mineral content, as well as in soft water. Often, other chemicals were added to the soaps, making them worse for our water bodies.”

Browsing the Net, Iffy and I find that Americans buy soaps and detergents worth over $2.2 billion a year! But will that make the Great Lakes vanish in a froth of bubbles, I wonder. That means each person there uses about 30.2 kg. of soap per head! The very thought makes me want to scream.

“I wish we could do something to stop Indians using so much soap,” I tell Iffy, though we don’t have figures on that yet.

Our soapy, sudsy adventure reminds me of my three-year-old cousin, Adil, who refuses to wash his hands ~ because they’ll only get dirty again, he says. I think he’s right. From tomorrow, I’m going to start on a campaign to persuade Amma not to use soap. But won’t she think it’s queer if my bar of soap lasts for over a year?

As Iffy and I rush back to my bedroom to pick up my schoolbag, I look around for a palette knife. I find two. I give one to Iffy. We’re going to use them to scrub the dirt off ourselves until we find an original strigil to do what the Romans did best. Are you on a strigil hunt, too?