Why nostalgia tastes like sweet Gripe Water, smells like Boroline
An ode to simpler times.
‘Wasn’t there something that used to stop our crying instantly?’
I asked my mother as my six-month-old nephew was crying profusely. My sister-in-law was looking for the remote of our television set, as one particular music channel apparently calms my nephew down instantly.
“Doctor has asked us not to give him gripe water. All paediatricians nowadays advise to avoid gripe water,” my sister-in-law said.
Well, that’s when I vigorously typed gripe water on Google to check whether it was actually a medicine.
Because I always thought — from how elders describe it — gripe water is some magic water.
So, I found out that the original Woodward’s Gripe Water contained 3.6 per cent alcohol, dill oil, sodium bicarbonate, sugar and water. But that was in 1851, when the product was first launched. Nowadays, the alcohol is not there. A little research told me that gripe water has actually had quite an embattled history, facing objection from various authorities; the latest being no more of ‘Granny told Mother and Mother told me’.
This brought me to a number of similar ‘devices’, which used to unlock happiness and comfort at a simpler time — and can now unlock a very precious vault of memories.
Of course, Boroline is there. (But more on that later).
There are many more before that.
Remember Waterbury’s Compound?
No, I didn’t think it was a magic potion for colds. But I don’t know why I used to rhyme Waterbury with Canterbury and that’s how it remained with me.
This is not everyone’s story. But everyone, it’s surprising, has some stories all their own with childhood medicines — be it Gripe Water, Waterbury's compound, Aqua Ptychotis (ajwain ark), Milk of Magnesia, Burnol, Barley Water, Isabgol, etc.
Aqua Ptychotis, like Boroline, is a very much Bengali product, a Bengal Chemical product, to be particular. And there has to be something problematic with the PR (public relations) of Bengalis’ digestion that every digestive medicine gets unofficially patented by Bengali users.
I am sure Pudin Hara and Gelusil will follow in the footsteps of these seniors and get fable-status this way. I already have a number of friends who don’t consider Pudin Hara as medicine at all.
(Now, don’t even get me started on homoeopathic medicines because that’s a Pandora’s Box).
Arnica, Calendula, Nux Vomica, Belladonna — any given day, any given time, all four of them have been there in my home since ages. And they don’t expire, apparently.
Why I kept Boroline for the last is, of course, because I wanted to save the best for the last.
I never knew it’s this big a brand outside West Bengal that it actually represents Bengalis. Did you know ‘Boro’ in the name actually stands for Boric acid and ‘oline’ is a variant of the Latin word, ‘Oleum’, which means oil?
What I want to hammer home is that it’s just ‘boric oil’ that became entwined with fragrant memories for the ages.
These are all medicines, but with sweet memories.
As we graduate to harder times and forgettable medicines, an ode to all of them!