Bald and pitiful

Many people concede that there are standards of Beauty. One of the factors determining beauty and handsomeness is the amount of hair on your head, and not the amout of mass inside or the amount of work it does. Long hair is considered more beautiful for females and denser its spread, it is considered handsome for males. No religious text has prescribed or defined beauty, for no oracles referring to hair has been found. It is only the poets and lazy people who have defined beauty or handsomeness. It may be recalled that until sometime ago, males had grown long hair like females and in some communities they still consider it sacred for males to grow hair. It appears that god is already bald or he is growing bald for he has not passed any commandmens on this subject.

Hairlessness creates permanent scar not only on the head but also in the mind and heart of the males. It is a nightmare for a man of twenty to foresee a future without a strand of hair on his head. But there are others more fortunate who are bald before twenty five. Fortunate in that they can reconcile with their baldness with boldness in mind without waiting for the hairlessness to come at a later age.

One of my friend had tried the medicines prescribed in a television advertisement by a one- eyed Bengali doctor who talked of curing baldness thousands of times. As they say if you repeat something thousands of times, people tend to believe. My friend had spent thousands of nights worried about his bald head and its impact on his illicit love with another man’s wife and scores of girls with whom he had fallen in love. Except for the illicit love who cared for something more than the bald head, none of them were impressed either by his baldness or by the growth of hair on his head visible only to himself. Like god, it was visible to the blessed and invisible to the not so blessed. For these scores of girls were not blessed. Blessed not to marry him.

He had spent hundreds of rupees and many hundreds of hours before mirrors looking for any improvement in his lock of hair. After sometime he also tried to hide his baldness with the camouflage of long stretched hair from the back of his head, bringing it to cover the bald patch like a general bringing in additional troops to cover his fighting front. After 5 years of counting his hairstrands he left the habit only when there was none to count. All the girls he he tried to love also left him high and dry by that time. I narrated this only to show that girls do not love a man without a hair on his head but they may love a man who has nothing inside.

Life of a Bald headed man is not all that gloomy. There are some advantages of baldness. People, particularly the intellectual type, may think that you must be wise, for most of the wise men are bald. If you keep some books in your drawing room and pretend to read books by wisemen there are chances that you may be considered a wise man and people may flock to you for updating their knowledge. This may a diversionary tactic. They may not discuss about your glowing hair or shining forehead, but about something else. They may over rate your age but also your wisdom. Your wife may have lice but it will never stay in your head. When all your male collegues may scratch their head in office albeit for bringing out some idea, but actually for killing a louse that is irritataing at the wrong moment, you need not. It may show itself in your hairless head with distinction and others may wonder as to how is it possible for lice to stay on your slippery head.

Once when my friend, who had know me only as a hairless emperor, saw my photograph of a bygone era when I had curled, step-cut hair, he wondered that it was a museum piece. For he had not known the times when combs were useless to keep my hair in order. I forgave him.

When you have a fight with your wife, if you are bald, she may not be able to catch you by your hair. You may have the advantage of doing that. Some people ( particularly biologists) may say that the reason for their baldness is exactly that their wives had caught them by their hair and when it was repeated often, their genes had developed baldness in defence. Think of biology. Baldness is the result of evolution. When men lived in forest, they needed hair to protect their skull from the heat, rain cold and what not. Now, when most of the time, Man stays inside, there is no need for such a protection. He can run into an AC room to cool his head.
Increasing I notice that women (particularly working women and old women, who have neither time nor energy for looking after their locks of hair) also prefer shorter hair.

Oh, my bald headed brotheren, don’t be bald and pitiful. Think yourself bold and beautiful(even if others don't think so}.