Soap is a funny thing. While living in Britain, I discovered Pears. Endowed with a pungent fragrance that had a touch of India to it, the soap was unassuming and rather affordable. And I missed it when I came to Croatia. At some point I even got a few bars of it from friends aware of my unexpected loss (“Such a Wondrous Thing,” December 21, 2004). Not long after my move to Croatia, my beloved found a replacement, though. It was Karma soap made by Lush, another British company. The Indian fragrance was quite to my liking, as ever, and she bought me a load of it. It was cut up into bars in the store, where it was made in molds. Whenever I would come to Zagreb, I would replenish my store. It was on the pricy side, but I did not care. Until a month ago, that is. As my beloved and I were coming out of one of the Lush stores in the center of the Croatian capital, I suddenly felt appalled by the price. “Hey,” I said out of the blue, “this bar of soap costs about twelve pounds sterling!” By comparison, a bar of Pears would cost a pound or at most two. “We must stop this foolishness,” I shook my head in awe. She agreed without much ado, and we are now looking for a worthy but less expensive replacement. Soap is a funny thing, as I said. Creatures of habit that we are, we fall for all sorts of crap. And it can take an entire decade to discover our foolishness. Indian fragrance, my ass.