Thursday, April 21, 2011

Mirror, mirror on the wall..

Spending two hours and a disproportionately large amount of money in a salon to make one look adequately put together for a cousin's wedding, one encounters a lot of strange people.

The girl who bites her nails on account of nervousness and then comes to get artificial nails made of protein gel no less so she can hide her habit.

The middle-aged lowest-rung-politician who dyes his hair black so he doesn't look absolutely ridiculous standing next to his twenty-nine year old wife.

The young woman with two children who decides to get her hair permed becoz her husband prefers curly hair and asks me for advice on how to get a liposuction done (also becoz husband prefers slim waists, it seems) when she learns I work in a hospital.

The grand-dad who accompanies his grandkid becoz the said seven year old demands a 'Taare-Zameen-Par' wala haircut on his birthday.

The teenage college boy who frets over his pimples and wonders if those 'fairness creams-only for men' will actually work if he bought and used them.

After these two hours spent in trying to reassure people, and quite frankly, after attempting to jolt them back to some semblance of reality, one does realize that vanity is, hands down, the most pointless of the seven deadly sins. And also, by far the saddest.

12 comments:

Tripthi Battapadi said...

Haha :P

iLike! :)
So much for all that. :P

Hibakusha Pigmeat said...

It is, indeed. And the 21st century encourages vanity like never before.

I missed reading your posts, Kay . . .

Soin said...

its when these people ask you for advice that you grow two evil horns and ask that lady to get that surgery, ask that kid to go for the latest haircut and so on. you missed all these chances? damn

Ramya said...

wow! tare zameen par wala haircut!

Unknown said...

:)

afforded an opportunity to smile and think....acute observations, kk.

Deeksha said...

Ahem.
I will take this personally ;)

And since I am :)......I feel I have a demanding aesthetic sense which is very sensitive to offences :P

Honestly, I love having fun with vanity. I will never let it become powerful. I will never wear high heels or spend 45 minutes blow drying my hair everyday.

Or wax my bikini area. Ouch.

Tangled up in blue... said...

Periwinkle, Thank you. :)

Pi, I missed reading yours also.

soin, I have a feeling they'll do it regardless of my opinion. :|

ramya, oh yeah! :D KIDS!

rohith, Thanks. :)

Tangled up in blue... said...

Dee, I think it's alright if it's fun. But people seem to use it to give them an increased sense of self-worth. And I know I shudnt judge how people get their kicks but I really feel like telling them they feel deficient for no real reason.

And you know, especially when I watch people like a woman with second-degree burns all over her body come to the ESR screaming for some water that you cant give her, one cant help feeling these people really need to get a reality check about how lucky they are. They shud just stop pitying themselves!

Nitisha said...

Haha, I loved this blog post. :)

It's true what you say though. The sense of self-worth in people seems to have depreciated over time. In this world of Photoshopping, airbrushing, vanity and selfishness, people are running on an esteem-deficit, and that is sad.

Tangled up in blue... said...

Nitisha, thank you. :)

S R said...

Interesting observations..

Self esteem issues aside,maybe being a doc has made you less susceptible to outer appearance,as you see and deal with on a daily basis that beneath the skin,everyone is just the same bag of organs and blood and sh*t and whatnot

"For behold your body -
A painted puppet, a toy,
Jointed and sick and full of false imaginings,
A shadow that shifts and fades.
How frail it is!
Frail and pestilent,
It sickens, festers and dies.
Like every living thing
In the end it sickens and dies.
Behold these whitened bones,
The hollow shells and husks of a dying summer."

--The Dhammapada

Tangled up in blue... said...

Arumugam, that verse is absolutely extraordinary! Thank you for that! :)