Eye know that!

In a drawer of my desk at work I keep a small plastic jar with a screw-on lid. It has been empty only right after it was washed of its original contents, which I don’t even remember buying, eating or cleaning out. It could have been peanut butter, except that I do not eat peanut butter, or it could have been some kind of sandwich spread, which seems a more likely case. But whatever it was, the jar was worth keeping – stout plastic, nice shape and airtight cap. Soon after it was ready for re-use, it was filled with saunf, aniseed, a mouth freshener that changed from being mint-coated to being plain roasted, since around that time I went off sugary-sweet stuff and stuck with the more natural, easy-to-store-and-less-hassle-to-find-when-you-run-out kind of mukhwas, as it is called in Hindi.

But I ran out of that at a perfect time – just when I rediscovered the childhood charms of the round sweets called bullseyes. I have no idea whether any bull would recognise them as kin, but I remember eating through vast quantities of them when I was very young, introduced to them by Father, who at that stage in his life was rather addicted to them. Bullseyes are black and white striped fairly strong mints (they also come in ghastly fruit flavoured red, orange and yellow stripes, but those need not be considered at all). They spark almost violently in the mouth if you bite into one too soon, since the outside sugar coating is rather deceptive and tends to lull the tongue into a kind of serenity and tasting torpor. If you bite just so as to crack the sphere in half, it is not so shocking; crush it into fragments and the mint feels stronger, sharper, more fiery, blasting through the soothing effects of a nice lunch to make your eyes water and your ears sing…or so it feels, sometimes.

A good mint is the best road to travel when you are done with a meal that includes a certain generous portion of garlic, onion or anything that leaves that after-smell in the mouth. Even as you savour that last tiny fragment of kebab or that tiny splinter of pickled onion that goes with it, you can practically hear the senses clamouring for something to wash it away, especially since you have that presentation in the small conference room in an hour and you know that even though the bet way to face down your critics without saying anything is to breathe out, your own sensibilities and the lessons your upbringing taught you will not allow you to be that crass. Unfortunate, but there it is. So you rummage frantically through your bag, your desk, your pockets…but no, no mints, no mukhwas, no toothpaste. You make a mad dash into the bathroom to rinse your mouth three or six times, scrub your tongue and do a vigorous gargle. All to little avail.

That is when your friends come in handy. In whichever group you fraternise with, there will be at least one person carrying some kind of mouth freshener. Look for mints, in whatever form, from the aforementioned bullseyes to perhaps that perfidious stuff called chewing gum. I have, on one memorable occasion, when desperation demanded, even licked a little of my mint-flavoured chapstick – which was a huge mistake, because it didn’t do anything for my breath and left my tongue feeling waxy and sticky. A clove helps a little and once you have wiped your eyes dry after the first unwary chew, even makes a potential toothache feel comforted. A mint also has a side-effect: the peppermint oil is said to be a good palliative for a headache and, believe me, that one does work pretty well.

So that is the way it goes. My small plastic jar is a repository of bullseyes that much of the office makes a beeline for, especially after a lunch served up by our admittedly awful in-house catering service. I think everyone that I speak to at work, and a few besides who have on occasion cast lascivious glances at my little stash, have dipped into it. Some demand it wordlessly, holding out a hand and waiting not very patiently for me to hold out my jar in answer. Some arrive at my side and stand there, smiling sheepishly and saying nothing, but expressing it all. And some just open my drawer and dip into the small plastic jar without so much as a by-your-leave, though usually after my leave has been by-ed a long time before.