A Thing of Beauty

12^th of July was not much of a red letter day (except of course it is your birthday); but for the rest of us, it’s just another day and for me, it’s just my date night. Which, I decided to make special by actually dressing up, masking my face with make-up and attempting to bewitch my boyfriend. So I put on a little blue dress, matched it with a pair of star shaped earrings and a pair of blue wedges. To top it up, I applied light make-up: just some kohl, pink lipstick and brushed my cheeks with some foundation. Yet to successfully lower my spirits, my boyfriend didn’t even react (not that I wasn’t acclimatized to the reactionless, non-romantic charm of that guy whom I had hand-picked to be with). But that day, I had dressed up. And if not a “Wow! You look beautiful”, the least I was expecting him to say was “You look different”- thus proving that he had noticed, thus providing ample testimony to the fact that he still did care and most importantly, thus making me believe that I was beautiful.

Now do you get what I’ve been trying to say? If not, then let me explain further: the next morning, after a night of feeling hopeless about my looks and finally deciding to do away with my blue dress, a friend of mine complimented: “You looked good in that blue dress”. That was the “apple to my pie, straw to my berry”. And I’m keeping that dress!

‘I do look good after all’, was my first thought, even before I smiled a heartfelt thank you.

But that is not the way I looked any other day nor was I comfortable wearing the kohl (I couldn’t rub my eyes for the next three hours). I was just trying to fit in the utopian definition of beautiful. Make up is every girl’s birthright and I in no way am against it. But the question here is, are the ones who don’t choose to look fair, pluck eyebrows, and straighten hair ugly? Or maybe it is just us who have defined beauty as having perfect eyes, nose and lips. And it is also us who go out of our ways to get that approval from others despite knowing the fact that what others say doesn’t matter as long as I feel the same from within. Even the most gorgeous person might feel ugly from within. And even the one with a big mole over her lips may walk with her head held high emanating a beautiful aura.

Dear girls, we are all beautiful- with or without face paint, we are beautiful- keep this at the back of your mind- even while you nod to others kudos or denigration. We don’t need others to approve of our magnificence. We are beautiful being just us. As long as we can brighten up our surroundings and lighten up others, we are beautiful. Now if of course, plastic defines the very aura of being beautiful, then we all can be that, if we choose to be.

So next time you wear a dress and no one comments, don’t be disheartened: you’re beautiful.

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Me as a kid: The born Doctor

People say: “The best way to predict a future is to create it”. I probably knew it back then when I was a three year old. And henceforth, I tried and created as many avenues for me as possible: so that my future prediction would be just as easy (I do hope that you guys don’t mistake me to be some kind of a future predicting kid prodigy for I’m still confused with what I’ve become and what I’d still want to become). But back then probably I knew that ointments, balms and creams would later form an integral part of my life.

I used to be a pampered, covered –in- rose- petals kind of a delicate child. Cough and cold were my two “go-to” diseases. I would get affected by either at least 13 times in 12 months.

“That’s a common problem”, my pediatrician would say, “It is allowing her immune system to grow better”

My immune system was fighting- that much I realized later, but whether it was improving or not is a query that still persists.

And of course, if cough and cold decided to take a month off, to still make my day worse, I would either trip and scar my knees or probably just bang my head on the edge of a table and grow a globular swelling on my forehead.  Hence grew my obsession with band aids. But that’s a different story altogether. Right now I’m more focused on another similar episode of fever with cold.

It was the month of July, a week after my second birthday. I was down with a 100F. Maybe because I knew the enchanted upshots of antipyretics or because I was too reluctant to fuss, I was an obedient patient who would gulp down her dose of Paracetamol without my mom dad having to shove the syrup in my mouth. But for some reasons, I did not take my medicine that day.

A friend of dad’s showed up in the evening. While my parents chatted with our guest, my nanny dressed me up in an orange coloured, embroidered cotton kurta and pyjamas. She then carried me to the living room and placed me on the dining table which was at the far end of the room. That was her “ninja technique” of eavesdropping any conversation: she would make me sit there like I was some rare magnum-opus and pretend to play with me while I played with myself and she had her ears (not eyes) more towards the end where the sofas were placed and the guests sat.

We carried out the same tradition that day. But what she did not notice was that instead of playing with my yellow teddy bear, I held a tub of Vicks and was now opening the lid. She was reluctant. She let me play on my own, while she drowned in the extracts of the juicy topics that the guests were discussing. Sometimes, she would place her hand on my forehead, yet she did not notice that I was smearing the Vapourub on my body, part by part starting with the neck. By the time the guests were brought over to the dining area for dinner, I had already emptied the entire bottle and my body now ponged of menthol.

The bottle being empty, I had nothing more to play with so I dozed off. The next morning, I was covered in sweat with the oily kurta sticking to my body. My whole body reeked like those medicinal cough syrups. But my fever was gone. There was no sign of cough or cold. It was as if the fever never occurred. Mom and dad were shocked. But I wasn’t. I just got a new toy to play with: Vicks Vaporub. Who cared if it magically made my fever go away overnight?                  

Till today, this serendipity of mine rouses the same amount of laughter as it did back then. On the other hand, I wonder how I didn’t end up smearing the ointment on my eyes or gulping it down like a syrup. That would have been another piece of idiocy  to laugh at.

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Musings : #18

I’ve been going through an internal turmoil,

The man I love

Is also the one I would not like,

I wish to splice my soul

Into two – let a part love

And the other dislike.

But my heart beats for both –

Love and it’s counterparts,

And I still don’t know

What this shall become.

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