Love makes beautiful

What does real beauty mean to you?

Interesting question; and oh-so-much-fodder-for-debate.

Five years ago, I would probably have jumped to defend the school of aesthetics when asked what beauty means. I would have sung the same tunes that advertisements and popular culture hammer incessantly into our heads. And while I don’t exactly suggest you get fat now, I will not judge you, just because you don’t look like a product of the glamour factory.

Age, crows’ feet and grey hair put a lot of things into perspective. When your body starts acting in ways beyond your control (and I’m not really Madonna to want to obsessively control it), you begin to learn to find and appreciate beauty outside of it.

Through a marriage, childbirth and a couple of years of parenting, I have gone from a makeup-diet-clothes-obsessed girl to a family-career-oriented woman. Appearances have ceased to matter (much). Disheveled hair and clothes on most occasions – check; stretch marks – check; spare tyre – check; unthreaded eyebrows – check; and how could I forget my faithful friends, the dark circles – check. I ‘look’ just like your or anyone else’s mom, don’t I?

Yet, have you ever noticed how, for the longest time in your life, your mother is the most beautiful woman in the whole world? She is probably replaced by the woman/man you love, and then, perhaps, by the child(ren) you bear. The most beautiful person of your life is almost always the one you love best.

Now, think back and try to remember who was Miss Universe in 2005 (no Googling!). Too far back? OK, how about Miss Earth in 2008? How about the vital stats of umm… Jennifer Aniston? No? Me neither. For all their glitz, beauty queens and movie stars remain in our memories for as long as the circus lasts. The most beautiful people in our lives, our little worlds, however, are not who the pageants and glossies declare.

The constant of all kinds of beauty is really, love.

Like a child to a mother, a lover to his lover, a deity to its devotee, a cause to its activist, a pet to its master, a muse to an artist, the examples are endless. When you truly love someone, their less than perfect bodies, ideas and minds become insignificant. There is no escaping the adage that beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Because it is in a pair of loving eyes that real beauty is born.

(This post is an entry for the Indiblogger Real Beauty contest)

Another day, another grey

"Mirror, mirror on the wall,
Please tell me there's no grey at all..."

"pffffbht"

I remember my mom telling me to get regular facials done after 25. I was maybe 16 then. Twenty-five seemed centuries away and blessed with good skin as I am, facials seemed like the thing for 'aunties scared of growing old. as if...'.

Cut to a decade after. Today. That’s me at 26, tagged as an 'auntie' by colony ka bachchas who see me with a bachcha, scared of growing old. Suddenly mom’s advice rings scarily true.

Well, the good news is that the good skin is still holding up and I may have another couple of years before I start making a beeline for the beauty parlour asking for a Shahnaz Hussain ka Herbal facial (yes, salons are still an unjustified luxury as a result of my dad’s commie influences).  

But there’s bad news too. Actually it’s more sad than bad. Every morning as I stand close to the mirror brushing my hair, another strand of grey peeks out, mocking me in all its silver glory. I heave a big sigh, pick up a scissor or if I’m too pissed with it, a pair of tweezers to put in as great a distance between ‘it’ and me as I can. But before I can get happy about having gotten rid of one does another spring right up. "Na, na, na, na, na"....it says and I pick up the scissor again. I'm clearly losing this battle. What chances do I really have? Nature vs. Tweezers.

It wasn't so long ago when I'd noticed the first grey hair on my mother's youthful head and was very upset about it. "How can MY mommy have grey hair? How can SHE grow old?" I remember thinking. All of 8, the universal reality of decay hit me. It made me uncomfortable, but I was cushioned in the comfort of time - time that seemed would never end, would never come.

But time did come. Cut to age 16. A time when I began to think grey was sexy. You know them - that tall, grey and handsome kind - those with slight grey at the temples or a full head of grey and a s**tload of confidence. Sexy, yes, but still meant for the others.

And time did come again. A little too early for me I guess. Damn those genes. But before I let myself wallow in some premature middle age crisis-induced depression, I'll squeeze into some tight tees, some short shorts and dye another day.

Mum's hands

 I love hands. Nothing kinky – just ol’ fashioned love for hands for purely aesthetic reasons. As an occasional dabbler in the fine arts, the human body inspires me more than anything. But long, beautiful fingers sitting pretty on smooth palms attract me the most. Very often, I look at people’s hands first and their faces later. And God help them if they have handsome hands. I once told my boss that I was in love with his hands (really) and would love to sketch them some day. He blushed so much, it made me wonder…

So when my mum’s hands caught my attention today, I was surprised. Plain hands, non-manicured hands, cracked and even calloused hands. For someone so obsessed with the beauty of these limbs, noticing these ones was a little out of league. But then I realised that the person attached to these non-attractive hands was my mum. Hands that were absently caressing my leg as I lay down lazily on a summer afternoon. The same hands that have been doling out a million little messages of love, care and comfort from the day I was born.

Mum has always admired my hands. ‘You got your father’s limbs’, she has always said. Long, beautiful fingers; fingers that look real good with rings on them. Lovely, shapely nails too. ‘You must paint your nails,’ she’d say, ‘they look very attractive’. I’ve preened and preened for so long and took it that my hands were pretty, unlike her knobbly, stocky things. Her nails were also always chipped and so was that occasional coat of nail paint on them.

As I write this, I take the time to look at my own nails. Nope, no shape, no colour on them. Even a little rough on the tips with doing the dishes I suppose. So, these are a mother’s hands, I decide. Hands so full with things to do for her family that a manicure doesn’t even figure on the wish-list. The fingers are still long and pretty, but someone who notices people’s hands might easily overlook them, just as I have overlooked my mother’s for so long.

Now, in a mother’s shoes, I notice her hands – hands that still have those unfilled nails, hands still adorned with two gold bangles that clink ever so familiarly when she rolls out chapattis for dinner. She’s worn them for years now and been singed over and over when they heat up during her chapatti making sessions. She still manages to forget to pull them up before starting. I never thought much of the burns nor of the many other injuries these hands may have suffered in trying to protect me. Her hands have begun to wrinkle now, not just with age but with service - relentless, thankless service. And I see their beauty now. Not sketched on paper, but etched forever in the fondest part of my memories.

What a mother’s hands do second only her heart.

PS: Jishnu has my beautiful hands.