Dead on the crimp

After buying a 15-mg tube of an ointment recommended by the salesman in a pharmacy to get relief from a swelling on the little toe of my left foot, I drove back home. Taking it from me, my missus looked for its dates of manufacture and expiration since she was well aware that I would mostly fail to look for them when buying. Her attempts to find them anywhere on the tube proved futile, and she returned it to me with a frown.

A soupçon of space on the tube with letters reading, “See the crimp for Exp. Date,” caught my eye, with the figures on the crimp indistinguishable from the ridges. Caring not a groat for the expiry date, I punctured the seal with a small spike, squeezed the tube, and put a dab of its content on the swollen spot of my toe. The next day itself, I felt a little less pain in my baby toe. My missus, however, cautioned me never to be callous about looking for the date of expiry of items in general and medicines and edibles in particular.

On another occasion, I bought a quarter-kilo packet of mixture (chudua) that was a combination of fried cashew nuts, peanuts, and chickpeas. Popping some nuts into my mouth—given to me by the shopkeeper as a sample from a loose packet—and finding them toothsome, I bought a packet. My wife, as usual, asked me if I had confirmed its period of effectiveness or validity. Nodding my pate in the negative, I turned it from side to side, riffling through all the minutely printed details on the packet, only to find the expiry date nowhere on it.

As the next step, I cut open one end of the packet and sloppily dipped into it to scoop a handful of nuts. Bang, sticking to my fingers, came a piece of paper displaying the expiry date, MRP, batch number, name of the company, et al!

Such essential details printed on the food packets or on the bits of paper shoved into the contents, informing the customer of important product information, are to be painstakingly looked for before buying them. Shouldn’t they have a better display?

Once I chanced upon an insertion in a packet of wafers ludicrously reading, “Best before six months from the date of manufacture.” Twigging it to be the act of overlooking by the manufacturer, I handed it to my better half, who placed it on the kitchen shelf. I have now learned to exercise my Caveat Emptor prior to buying snacks and unguents.