Lifetime Supply
of Deodorant
by Hal Holt
In 1998 I
embarked from San Francisco on my way to a one-year
volunteer stint with the Seva Foundation at
Aravind Eye Hospital in Tamil Nadu, India. The
night before I left I asked some of my Seva
friends what I would do about deodorant,
realizing it was not advisable to bring my normal
aerosol can type on the long flight, as there is
a risk of these cans exploding at high altitudes.
My friends took me to a pharmacy and introduced
me to something I theretofore wasn’t aware
of, a roll-on type of crystal rock deodorant
comprised of natural mineral salts. This
deodorant served me well; it was not only long-lasting,
but very effective in eliminating body odour
induced by the heat of India. Some months later
when I was starting to run out, and just before I
was planning a trip to visit my brother Ron who
was living in Bangkok at the time, I noticed that
the container indicated it was a ‘product of
Thailand’. How convenient I thought,
thinking I could replenish my stock while
visiting Ron.
I showed my
dwindling deodorant stick to Pui, Ron’s
adopted son, who was about 13 years old at the
time. Pui examined it and shook his head no,
indicating that he did not know what it was. He
then left the house and came back about ten
minutes later, all excited and jabbering away in
Thai, presumably indicating that it had just
dawned on him what this rock was. Ron then gave
him a few bahts and asked him if he could go out
on the streets and find some. About half an hour
later Pui came back with a boulder of it, over a
foot in diameter. We broke the boulder up. Ron
kept some and I took with me what seemed like a
lifetime supply. In fact, over twelve years later
I still had some. The interesting thing is that
this whole boulder cost the equivalent of about
80 cents Canadian, yet a small roll-on jar of
this in a pharmacy in Canada costs over four
dollars pre-tax.
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