Leaving behind a healthy household (it was health & hygienic from my comfort point of view and I can see Gols, Murs and Govi grinning from ear to ear reading this), a lavish lifestyle, and a comfortable city for all purposes, I have shifted to Chennai. Pune is the city that I will always remember for giving birth to who I am today. Pune gave me a second life. But coming to Chennai, despite mixed reactions from my friends and family, I am confounded by a myriad of feelings. I am confident to do something new, I am apprehensive about the weather and all the new people (anyone who knows me, knows well enough that I do not like new people, be it Tamizhs or Biharis), I am ready to explore and find newer avenues, some which I might not have found in Pune, and above all I have the desire the excel at my work. It’s a challenge I am willing to accept and overcome.
But all this is a part of a long list that will take time for completion. I would, for now, settle down to observations and one of the curious things I observed was the Fair and Lovely phenomenon. I have had in my life the pleasure of interacting with a few unique people and observe from close quarters their personal grooming process. A lot of the middle class young men (I am stating this at the risk of generalizing) seem to be pre-occupied with two things. The hair, the length of it and the gloss of it and the skin the gloss of it and the fairness of it. A comb in the pocket and a tube of Fair & Lovely on the dressing table. I have seen similar skin tone in South Africa and found that among the “blacks” an amazing sense of pride in their skin color exists. I saw a hoarding advertising for a product called “Dark & Lovely”. This to me sums up the entire colour skin debate sparked off a few hundred years ago. While the most oppressed in the matter have moved on and started taking pride in their skin tone as a sign of struggle and liberation, some here have bought into the advertising imperialism / colonization and have become rampant consumers of a product whose results are at best unfounded and imaginary.
To me the most surprising is the fact that those who can afford this product are educated young men!! The drivers for consumption of this product could be many viz. getting a fair girl for marriage, attaining a supposed social norm. I might never be able to find the underlying cause, but one thing I do know that trying to change who we are in order to attain what is socially acceptable is not just trying to lie to oneself but also a small step towards a Unitarian society, where independent thoughts and new ideas seize to exist. Once that happens, we would be mere puppets in the hands of the nefarious social engineers. Like a herd of sheep being led by the mountain goat.
But all this is a part of a long list that will take time for completion. I would, for now, settle down to observations and one of the curious things I observed was the Fair and Lovely phenomenon. I have had in my life the pleasure of interacting with a few unique people and observe from close quarters their personal grooming process. A lot of the middle class young men (I am stating this at the risk of generalizing) seem to be pre-occupied with two things. The hair, the length of it and the gloss of it and the skin the gloss of it and the fairness of it. A comb in the pocket and a tube of Fair & Lovely on the dressing table. I have seen similar skin tone in South Africa and found that among the “blacks” an amazing sense of pride in their skin color exists. I saw a hoarding advertising for a product called “Dark & Lovely”. This to me sums up the entire colour skin debate sparked off a few hundred years ago. While the most oppressed in the matter have moved on and started taking pride in their skin tone as a sign of struggle and liberation, some here have bought into the advertising imperialism / colonization and have become rampant consumers of a product whose results are at best unfounded and imaginary.
To me the most surprising is the fact that those who can afford this product are educated young men!! The drivers for consumption of this product could be many viz. getting a fair girl for marriage, attaining a supposed social norm. I might never be able to find the underlying cause, but one thing I do know that trying to change who we are in order to attain what is socially acceptable is not just trying to lie to oneself but also a small step towards a Unitarian society, where independent thoughts and new ideas seize to exist. Once that happens, we would be mere puppets in the hands of the nefarious social engineers. Like a herd of sheep being led by the mountain goat.
