The Indian Beauty. Review on General Tips on Personal Grooming

“Beauty will be the eternal weakness of man”, or some thing similar was said at some time by someone very famous. This must have been said when he was very much alive because famous men do not say something simple when they are dying. If you pay careful attention to the last words of famous persons, they will be like

'Rejoice, the comedy has ended' - Beethoven

“I am bored with it all” - Winston Churchill

“Surely I can give original music' - Anu Malik

Now this sets me thinking, what the hell is wrong with these guys? How come famous men don't have last words like'Aaargh, no .please .not Doordarshan”. No Sirreeee. Those are meant for ordinary mortals like you and me, because famous men, me think, spend their lives planning their last words in advance. So there they can be, dying of frost bite in the South Pole and our famous guys will be going

'I feel the heat of the devil'

'WHAT! It's - 70 F, Captain Scott. It is so cold that I have to drink my oxygen'

'AWWW Shut up you bloated senator. Is it my death or yours! Huh!.Ok so where was I.Er. Oh yeah.I feel the heat of the devil'

That is not to digress from what I wanted to say, which is beauty aids. I have reached a stage that the only difference between my kitchen and my bathroom is the refrigerator. Have you taken a look at the beauty aids around you?(NOTE: If My wife is reading this and I know that she is, fingernails however useful they might be to explore the inner riches of her rather generous nose, are not considered as beauty aids). These days we have Turmeric Herbal Shampoo, Tomato skin potato peel body rinse, Pudina toothpaste etc. This trend is really something all of us must pay attention to without losing any time.Provided of course that the telecast of ‘Metti Oli’ or a' Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi' is over. If left unchecked Indians are.and mark my words we indeed are. soon going to have a chettinad bindi(with mayonnaise sauce) Hair remover and a Chicken Masala Moisturizer and then we can all agree that the world would be a much better place.

This really scares me. Granted the way my US flat mate Ravi used to cook, there was indeed little difference between his chettinad bindi and a hair remover. His chettinad bindi not only used to remove my hair but also most of my spleen and kidneys the morning after. But that doesn't mean that we start losing the thin line between cosmetics and groceries.

What does that tell you? The cosmetic companies are at it again. Remember, they are the ones who started convincing people that instead of using just one standard cleansing agent like soap, we need to use different stuff for each of our physiognomic features, including a special cleansing agent for our nasal hair and some greasy liquid for the inner lining of your b*ttocks. What is wrong with these people? Face rinses, Body packs, Feet moisturizers, Lip creams, Hand lotions, Blackhead removers’ etc.

In fact most of my human anatomical knowledge was due to these cosmetic ads….and yeah of course the Playboy Annual Mega Issue 2004.Elbow pads, Knee creams, Heel softeners …you name it they have it. That’s not all. they will be pointing out your imperfections as though you don’t know they exist.

Just look at the TV shows they have, on some weird extraterrestrial channel, that shows soaps that you thought existed only in ice ages and not to mention the TSN kind of junky advertisements marketing suitable zippers for your underwear.

“Do you think people mistake your hair for a Velcro Patch? *If yes, then we can make you miserable by ranting about it for 60 seconds until most viewers laugh in your face till they dislocate their jaws.”

“Do you think your underarm odor is on the Weapons of Mass Destruction list? Then we can exaggerate it by employing our cartoon mascot Vivek Oberai, who between the two of us, looks like a cross between a cauliflower and my CEO”

Instead of making people feel good about themselves, they seem to be more obsessed with making people feel ugly about themselves. I can understand if they restrict it to Laloo(not just I, a billion others would understand it too) but to extend it to the general populace is just not done. Marketing gimmicks… all designed to trick people into buying more and more stuff without really doing anything substantially different. That's just not fair.may be they are the ones who need to use the fairness creams.

And God forbid the hair styles and colors the so-called generation-X sport. There was this funky salman kind of guy who came for a haircut and went away so pleased that he hardly notices a comb sticking outta his b*tt. Now his haircut instantly reminded me of a huge pile of crap laid by an obnoxious creature born out of a dinosaur and a porcupine.

I have seen and have been amazed at the kind of trouser some people here in US wear, which at all times cover their ankles but that all they cover. Now why would you buy a trouser size that fits all four legs of an African bull elephant plus Jayalalitha’s hip plus all nuclear warheads under general Musharaf’s pillow cover for a waist size that’s half the width of Bal Thackrey’s brain. The reason Americans are facing recession is that their youngsters time is spent in holding on to their pants with their left hand while their right hand is busy browsing through the election manifesto of John Kerry, which incidentally has more photos of Monica Lewinsky, this time with George ‘Wicked’ Bush.

Now we too are following the trend by looking more at our brawn than our brain. Beauty is just what you think you are. I can vouch that my grandpa, God bless him, is still beautiful as he thinks he is still a teenager(And that is precisely the reason why he keeps staring at girls)

Let us stop wasting time on looking good rather than feeling good.

Fashion is, by no means, loading your bathroom with more gadgets than what the Indian army has. Fashion is improvisation, fashion is comfort(nudity is not an option here), fashion is simplicity. There is NO DIFFERNCE between a fair skinned and a dark skinned individual. Given a choice, I would load the entire stock of fairness creams into the next shuttle launched by NASA and point it straight into Neptune. I have seen the matrimonial advertisements where the requirement invariably stated fair, beautiful. I mean, seriously, if everyone wanted fair and good looking people, how do you think you and I got married in the first place. This serious social taboo about fashionable people and fair skinned people has caused enough depression in the minds of millions of people. Let us give equal rights to our own brothers and sisters without mocking at their God given features.

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