'Hair' and now!



Not many years ago when Vinod Khanna and Amitabh Bachhan raised their ‘hairy’ arms towards the sky, Gods answered; and skies spoke. When Rekha (the actress) felt romantic… she put her head on Amitabh’s (really) hairy chest and sang ‘ye kahan aa gaye hum…’ and the ladies in the cinema hall felt like taking her place. Not many years ago. Not many.

One of the many evolutionary things I’ve completely missed is the disappearance of hair on men. Mostly by design, I’m sure, not default, unless global warming has affects that nobody yet knows.

It may also be; because I haven’t watched TV in many years, and the films I watch; are what I have in the DVD collection, and all from before this decade. The point is Rhea (who is barely 10) knows more about what ‘good looking’ men ‘should’ look like; than everybody else in the family. She is also (being barely 10) the most honest in the family…and how I wish she wasn’t (sometimes).

“Dad, why can’t you be more like Shahrukh Khan? Look at him!” she pointed to a picture of his in a magazine, “he’s so clean”. I first thought she was referring to the fact; that I had had a long day and maybe the deodorant had given up. “Look, no hair” she continued, putting her finger on his well toned upper body, on the cover of this popular Bollywood magazine. She then flipped the pages one by one and introduced me to one ‘clean’ man after another. “Look Dad , this is Hrithik…no hair, he’s clean. Salman, no hair. Akshay, no hair. Saif, no hair. Oh! Ranbir , so clean…no hair.”

At the end of exactly 142 pages, 39 advertisements, and many glossy pictures of young (and some not so young), but ‘clean’ men, I knew something was coming.

We had barely put the magazine away, when I found Rhea looking at me intensely, as if she had asked a question; and the answer was awaited. I raised my eyebrows, to ask what she meant. “Don’t you want to be clean, like Shahrukh Khan” she muttered softly. Mehak, the Mrs. just laughed at the state; fathers like me manage to get themselves in with daughters (who are barely 10).

After much to and fro, and convincing from both sides; why the definition of ‘clean’ should be re-looked at …Rhea slept, right on my lap, her head on my chest. The chest that isn’t ‘clean’.

I just looked at her (barely 10) and started singing ‘yeh kahan aa gaye hum?’ wondering if Rekha would have taken my side.

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