Self-care and indulgence comes easy when you’re confined to your homes and very few choices remain on how to pass time. The fortunate amongst us would consider self-care routine and daily ritual, regardless of lock-ins, but the rest of us have stumbled into a whole new Narnia at the back of our wardrobes. I’m talking about the world of self-care products that have emerged online. They may have been around for quite some time but their existence has, for sure, just dawned upon us.

The latest revelation in body care products came to me with a birthday box from a place called Body Care Essentials. Wrapped in exotic shades of sooty grey, my first impression was that my friend had been shopping for me in Dubai. Can you imagine my joy when I realized that the products were local and came in style as well as standard. In my goody box were plush face towels, aromatic candles, organic soaps and the most delightful body scrubs ever as well as a rustic wooden soap dish, that now sits happily on my bathroom sink.

The test of any good body care product is how many senses it provokes and BCE was tantalizing many. The candles, and my favourite would be Wood Fire for the way it rekindles memories of woodfires in pine forests, appealed to the olfactory senses. The scrubs, with their natural oil infused exfoliants and cooling base gels, foamed up in the shower, leaving behind squeaky clean and velvety skin. It’s been a long time since I stopped using bars of soap but these charcoal and nutmeg with speckled orange slabs of goodness were irresistible. The unboxing and sampling process was delightful, to say the least.

The venture is brainchild of Faisal Safder, whose family have been soap-makers since 1954. He, being the third generation in the family business, decided to extend beyond soaps towards self-care products through Body Care Essentials. The business started about six years ago and has been evolving ever since.

“Our USP would be the use of hemp-seed oil in our soaps and products,” is what the BCE brand team takes pride in. “When it comes to skin-care, hemp seed oil has innumerable benefits and we were the first brand in Pakistan to utilize it in our products. All of our products are hand-crafted in small batches using natural and high-quality ingredients with the utmost care to preserve the richness of each blend.”

All three of BCE’s product ranges – soaps, whipped scrubs and candles – are popular, also becoming a giveaway favourite because who doesn’t like to be pampered. My personal favourite would be the Wood Fire candle and the Whipped Ubtan Scrub, which has a heady organic fragrance with all the strengths of organic ubtan. I would strongly recommend you check it out for yourself.