Bald is beautiful

Most people take elaborate care of their hair. They spend considerable time, money and effort in attending to their hair. Walk into a hair saloon and you will notice people sitting under a fan, whiling away time. They do this with a purpose of drying henna or dye applied to their hair. Those shiny, free flowing, tinged tresses you notice are actually fed on milk, curd, egg and what have you. All in the name of looks.

Looks do matter in our increasingly look-conscious society. Good looks help in getting past both personal and professional barriers. But what constitutes good looks is a tricky thing. Baldness, for example, has been fr-owned upon for years as if it were some disease. Accordingly, bald people have tried every possible remedy for it. So much so that when a person from South India claimed to have found a cure for baldness, the press was deluged with inquiries about the contact address of the person. How is baldness taken now? Now-a-days people voluntarily go for it. See the tennis star, Andre Agassi.

While the notion of good looks varies with person, time, and society we live in, what remains constant is the real appeal of a person, which depends only on one’s thoughts and actions. All great people live simply. Yet, they attract crowds of young and old, of men and women. People throng their ashrams only to hear the words they speak, the thoughts they subscribe to, and the actions they perform.

Don’t go by looks, so goes the saying. By implication it means that one must go by the inner beauty of a person. The saying is more so in this cosmetic age where looks can be easily tampered.

This modern and more egalitarian society is characterised by burgeoning number of talented people. Talent, once an exclusive reserve of the few, is becoming increasingly common. When talented people or true professionals acquire celebrity status they put on different looks so as to make them easily distinguishable to their fans.

They color their hair, get a designer’s cut, and these days even go for headscaping, similar to landscaping. Head, so to speak, has turned into an artist’s canvas! (Did you notice the photo of a young guy sporting heart sign on his head on the eve of Valentine’s Day?) But the fact remains that true professionals never take their appearance seriously. What they indeed take seriously is their work for which they are known in the first place. It is Andre Agassi’s talent and not his shaven head that probably made Steffi Graf, the world number one tennis player, decide in tying the knot with him.People who lack substance go by looks. They blindly imitate the looks of their heroes. Seekers as they are of empty publicity, they are not happy if they just look good. They must also stand out. It is these people who have given a real boost to the cosmetic industry.

Shabana got her head tonsured because she wanted herself to be totally identified with the character role she is playing in the controversial film. Some of Shabana’s fans must have noticed her changed appearance. And some would do so when the India Habitat World celebrates “Shabana’s Week” later this month. Her fans may make her current style popular. (Imagine the hair, tasseled or unbraided, looked after so well getting discarded!) But few of them would think of her changed appearance as a mark of her professionalism.