Man's quest for beauty

Man has always been besotted with beauty in his beau. But with the woman moving from kitchen to boardroom, the child becoming more mature – or cheeky – at a younger age and the inanimate object becoming sleeker and technologically advanced, it is only appropriate that man is no longer stuck to this hidebound, restricted notion of beauty. He now desires it for himself.

After writing about this phenomenon (in my usual incisive fashion) last fortnight, I met an old friend Sumit Chatterjee at his club. Chatterjee, careful about his appearance even in college, had become increasingly dapper and well-groomed over the years; therefore I was surprised to see his shaggy look today.

“What happened?” I asked. “Did you lose your razor? Are you waiting for an auspicious day to buy a new one?”

He looked annoyed as he softly ran his fingers around his stubble-bearing cheek and chin.

“I don’t use a razor any longer,” he said coldly. “I use a beard trimmer.”

“That’s not a beard!” I corrected him. “Grow it two more weeks; then call it a beard.”

“I have no intention of calling it a beard,” Chatterjee said. “It’s fashionable stubble. Have you typed ‘Brad Pitt images’ into Google?”

Beauty and... where's the beast?

In my early days of living in Singapore, I remember sitting through the movie ‘Beauty and the Beast’ with difficulty: the film had lacked that drama and pizazz necessary to hold the raptured attention of an action movie buff whose last cinematic experience had been ‘Mission Impossible II’. I had got suckered into this outing in the first place, along with my wife, by a friend whose children had been pestering him for days to watch this Disney entertainment. “Let’s all go,” my friend had said to me enthusiastically on the phone, “I understand it’s fantastic.” Later I learnt that he had understood this, not – as I had assumed – from some eminent film critic of the New York Times, but from the very six-year old twins who had wanted to watch it in the first place. Talk about a biased sample! Anyway where was I? Yes, I was walking out of the theatre with relief that this particularly move experience was behind me.

“How did you like the movie?” my friend Ravi said when we exited.

I smiled gently to convey: “It was awful, but I’m too polite to tell you that.”

He interpreted it differently. “Exactly! I loved it too.”

“Me too,” said his wife Rita. “But the concept of ‘beauty and the beast’ is no longer valid.”

My God! I thought, don’t tell me watching that drivel wasn’t enough: we’re now going to analyse it too?

The internet in your face, literally

The mobile phone came into our life several years ago and immediately began to shape it.  No longer did we have to give our spouse an estimate of when we’d be home before we left the office. If our children wandered off in a crowded railway station while we were not looking, we could locate them in an instant. And we could tell our boss that we were stuck in traffic on the way to work when, in fact, we were still at home, preparing to shave. Having shaped our life, the mobile phone then began taking control of it. It became swifter, sleeker and smarter. I’m not sure if we correspondingly became slower, sloppier and stupider, but we definitely became increasingly dependent on it, using it to take pictures, find our way, communicate on email, buy movie tickets, check in for flights, read a book and – every now and then – make a phone call.

Till a couple of years ago, my wife and I used to lament that our teenage daughter spends far too much time on her mobile phone. But now everyone is behaving like her.

The other day I went out for a boys’ night out. The plan was to meet Ravi Bhaskar for a drink and then have dinner with two other college friends. When I got to the bar, Bhaskar was already there, a drink at his side. He was deeply engaged with his smart-phone.

“Hi Ravi,” I said.

“One sec,” he said, head down and fingers scrolling.

“Hi!” he said after a few seconds, looking up briefly before turning to the screen again and flicking feverishly with fingers. “Just checking stock prices.”

A healthy Mediterranean diet

As we sat down at the Mediterranean restaurant, I beamed at my wife.

“Why did I suggest we eat out tonight?” I asked.

“Because you love food?” she said.

“Yes, yes,” I said with a trifle irritation. “But why did I suggest this particular restaurant?”

“Because you love Mediterranean food?”

“That may be true,” I snapped, my good humour vanishing, “but it’s a stupid answer.”

“Sorry,” she said. “I thought it was the obvious answer.”

“It’s so obvious, it’s stupid. When I ask a question like that, I’m not really looking for you to answer it.” Then I shook off my irritation. After all, I thought, my wife had shown previously that she is sometimes not very perceptive. She misses the subtle nuances of conversation.

“Let’s try this again,” I continued with a smile. “Why did I suggest this particular restaurant?”

“I have no idea,” she said and smiled sweetly. “Please tell me.”

Well, she may start slowly, I thought, but she surely picks up the cue fast.