ME AND MY BEARD

ME AND MY BEARD

This is the story of me and my beard and I decided to write about it after a prolonged conversation on ‘Beard Facts’ with my friends on facebook. Weird isn’t it that a discussion on beards can generate so many opinions especially when there are more pressing matters to be dealt with? But I can understand looking to the fact that there has been a spurt in the growth in population of the bearded kind. Naturally the smoother ones feel threatened. Apart from increased cognitive ability to acting as a homing beacon attracting the admiration and jealousy of the beardless and other traits listed there what really made me look at myself was that it quadruples handsomeness. I stood up and walked to the mirror to appraise my handsomeness. As I peered at myself, I felt satisfied that I did not look bad at all. In fact I picked up a comb and ran it through my beard to smoothen some unkempt hair and returned to my chair a fulfilled man. As I write this, the discussion still rages on the subject of beards. They are now talking of a World Beard and Moustache competition and the creation of a bearded brotherhood to bearded Gods and rishi munis of yore. I am certainly in elite company.

I never knew that there were so many different kinds of beards- sentimental beard, emotional beard, pessimism beard, religious beard, intellectual beard, rebel beard, aesthetic beard, functional and wannabe beards, until my friend KV listed them out. I tried to find out where I fitted in but could not decide. May be I underwent all those phases since I have been having my beard for three decades now. Now I know that I can call my beard as a balancing beard, for I have no hair on my head and having been taught in the course of my carrier in the Bank that all books should be balanced, I thought it is only appropriate that to balance the amount of hair on my head there has to be a beard. Convoluted logic you may say, but now I have no better explanation.

Now coming back to the story of ‘Me and My Beard’, it all started with (now don’t get the idea that I am lifting something out of the ‘It all Started with’ series of books written by Richard Armour some time in the sixties) the sprouting of hair above the upper lip when I was in school. I guess that’s what happens to everyone. I was not born bald either for babies do have some hair on the head at birth. I remember that when I was in high school I had a fairly thin line of moustache like the filmy heroes in the south, especially with their pencil lined moustaches. I waited for an appropriate time to shave it off. It happened the day after my high school exams were over. I bought the necessary paraphernalia and proceeded with the operation. At the end of it when I looked in the mirror my first reaction was that I was standing naked. My face was smooth but I felt stripped. For the first few days my hands always went up to cover the place where once my first moustache had been. I got used to it and so did the others around me.

The moustache and beardless face saw me through my college days. My wife first saw me as a smoothly shaven and handsome(?) young man with stylishly cropped hair on the head. You see she had no choice but to get married to me. That was her destiny, I guess. When I was asked sometime ago by some of my friends as to how I came to grow a beard, I told them that it is a tale of ‘Three women and a man’ and I was planning to write a book on it (obviously inspired by Jerome.K.Jerome).

You see soon after my marriage I grew a moustache, not the pencil lined stuff but a thick bushy one. May be I wanted to look a bit menacing and show who the master at home was. What I found out subsequently was it had no effect, she was still the master. But thereafter I never shaved it off for I became fond of twirling it in my spare time of which I had plenty. I tried different styles, the favourite being the Kamalahasan type, may be inspired by ‘Ek Duje Ke Liye’. Of course I used to look in to the mirror from time to time to ensure everything was in place. The second major event was when my first daughter was born, I grew a beard. I have had it ever since and do not remember shaving it off anytime. Of course the shape, size and density used to vary from time to time. With my spectacles, hair on the head and a thick beard I could have fitted in to any of the classifications listed above. It was with the arrival of my second daughter that I started losing the hair on my head and in course of time all of it had gone. When I relate this to them they retort saying that they have given me a personality where I had none before.

You see beards are great destressers. At time when you go through your lows as they call it you just need to walk up to the mirror trim your beard, shape it and admire your new look. When you feel bored you can always run your hand over your beard, this happens when you are in deep thought also. It is happening to me right now as I sit here writing all this on my computer. I cannot remember when I last visited a hair cutting saloon. There was no need, for you see that I trim whatever remnants are there on my head also by myself. Sometimes I sit down to evaluate the amount I would have saved in the process. I have become an expert at beard and hair trimming so much so that I am now having serious doubts as to whether I was a barber in my previous birth.