Personal Care & Household

Personal care in South Asian families often starts with oil. Many of us remember a grandmother massaging oil into our hair on a Sunday morning, a ritual called champi, and a warm oil rub for babies and for aching legs in winter. This department brings together those traditional oils with the everyday care and household shelf, so the things you buy with your groceries in the UK can go in the same basket.

Hair oils include pure almond oil and castor oil, used for scalp massage and for conditioning the lengths of the hair before washing. Body massage oils are mustard oils, sarson ka tel, labelled for external use and warmed for full body massage in North Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi homes. Every oil in this department is sold for use on the body only, never for cooking.

The department also covers skin care, oral care and laundry: soaps and creams, toothpastes and brushes, and detergents and fabric care suited to cottons, silks and everyday washing. These shelves hold the familiar names of a South Asian household alongside British essentials.

If you are looking for oil for the kitchen, it lives in a different aisle: see mustard oil, coconut oil and the rest of oils and ghee. The bottles in this department are labelled for external use and are listed here for that reason.

For a massage, warm the oil gently by standing the bottle in a bowl of hot water for a few minutes, never on the hob. Try any new oil on a small patch of skin first and wait a day. Keep oils tightly capped, away from sunlight, and wipe the neck of the bottle after use so it does not turn sticky.