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Three times a wipe saved the day.

Nobody buys wet wipes for the drama. They sit in a bag or a drawer until a perfectly ordinary day goes slightly wrong. These three are the kind of small rescue an all-purpose wipe is actually for.

A caricature of a woman in an auto rickshaw stuck in Bangalore traffic, holding a pack of purause Ocean refreshing wipes purause

Bangalore · Tuesday · 8:52 am

The 8:52 to Whitefield

Meera had budgeted forty minutes for a twelve kilometre journey, which in Bangalore counts as optimism. At 8:52 the auto was stationary short of Marathahalli bridge, the sun was doing its worst through the open side, and the interview was at nine.

She got there at 9:04. Her hair had survived. Her face had not.

The building had a lift with a mirrored wall, which is a cruel design choice for anyone arriving anywhere. Somewhere between the ground floor and the fourth she found the pocket pack of purause Ocean in her bag, pulled one sheet, and spent eleven seconds putting her face back roughly where it had been at eight o’clock.

The panel asked whether she handled pressure well. She said yes.

They did not need to know how recently she had proved it.

Ocean Refreshing Wipes
A caricature of a man at his desk watching a cup of chai tip over, with a pack of purause Lemon refreshing wipes in reach purause

Koramangala · 3:20 pm

The chai that jumped

Nobody has ever knocked over a cup of chai at a convenient moment. Rohit managed his forty seconds before a client was due to walk in.

It went across the table, across two printed decks, and across the cuff of the only good shirt he owns. The table was the real problem. You can hide a cuff. You cannot hide a lake.

The pack lived in the drawer for exactly this reason. Lemon, because the office had voted and Lemon had won. Three sheets for the table, one for the decks, one for the cuff, and one, quietly, for his hands.

The client sat down, sniffed, and said the room smelled clean.

Rohit said thank you. He did not elaborate.

Lemon Refreshing Wipes
A caricature of an Indian train carriage: a small boy in the window seat covered in mango, his mother beside him reaching over with a wipe, and the aunty across the aisle watching purause

Past Jolarpettai · 4:10 pm

Seat 23A, and a mango

There is no polite way to eat a mango on a moving train. Aarav, who is four, did not attempt one.

By Jolarpettai the mango was finished and Aarav was, by any reasonable measure, part of it. Hands, chin, both elbows, one knee, and a stripe across the window he had been drawing on. The aunty across the aisle had stopped pretending not to watch.

His mother was not going to walk a sticky four year old down a lurching carriage to the washroom at the end of it. She reached into the side pocket, took out the purause Watermelon, and worked through him in the order the damage had happened. Hands. Face. Elbows. Knee. Window.

Aarav asked whether he could have another mango.

The aunty across the aisle laughed, and then asked where you buy the wipes.

Watermelon Refreshing Wipes
Your turn

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