if looks could kill

"I'm preparing her for the real world."

"That hair looks so ugly, no? Let's get it removed for you."

"You people don't take care of her. She has become so tanned in the sun."

All of this is pretty normal if you're the mother of a girl. Concerns about appearance override pretty much everything, even health. As though that is the passport to a good life. So you have seven-year-olds getting their eyebrows threaded; 10-year-olds getting waxed; four-year-olds wearing lipstick and nail paint and 13-year-olds getting the works - everything from bleach downwards. 

Parents obsess about their children's weight - not because it's a health issue, but because they "don't look good." When exactly did "well-groomed" translate into hair-less, wrinkle-free, shiny, plucked, powdered and painted, botoxed, fair, size 0 bodies? Kids not going out to play in the sun  - not because of heatstroke - but because they will tan?

I would have tanned too - or rather my hide would have been tanned for me, had my parents even suspected I thought about my appearance to this degree when I was a kid. I would come back from sailing camps, tanned and skin peeling  - till where my shorts and tee covered me. 

(I was mortified when I went to the swimming pool after that - anyone would be - wearing that kind of skin contrast :D ) hair bleached and roughened by constant exposure to sun and salt. Or when I was on this camping trip in the mountains and despite the shades and sunscreen we were ordered to wear, I looked a bit like a raccoon in the reverse by the end of it. 

The point is, looks weren't really a big deal back then. Being well turned out was. Which basically meant that you had to be clean, with your hair combed neatly, and not wear torn or stained clothes. And precious little of that ever happened, because one was too busy romping around. And I don't once recall my mother clucking over the impressive collection of scars that I acquired, other than to say that it would make a nice break for me to have a scrape-free knee once in a while.    

My first experimentation with make-up (kohl and lip gloss) came on the sly,  when I was 15-16. Despite never really having bothered with make-up beyond kohl, I do understand wanting to look good or wanting a change (I just bought, of all things a RED lipstick - my first lipstick purchase in a decade or some such - hush - more on that later... But please be judicious in using the stuff since most lipstick brands, including the reputed ones, contain vast quantities of lead). 

I certainly can't claim to be immune to wanting to look good. Far from it. Yet I do feel a sense of responsibility, especially now that I have a daughter who is likely to (hopefully, later rather than sooner) want to subject herself to the trauma of hot wax, threads, the instrument of torture called blackhead remover, harsh chemicals and whatnot, all in the name of looking good. 

Then there is that entire other obsession with body shape - wanting to aspire to photo-shopped bodies which nature never made or intended. Wanting to "fix" parts of your body so that it fits in with a media-hyped image of what the body beautiful should be like.

And of course, being Indians, we have an entire industry dedicated to make you "fair". With ads promising you everything from a good marriage, to a better job to social stardom and a whole new self-confident persona, it's a wonder that we bother with working at anything... why not just buy a bleach or a fairness cream and turn your life around? 

Of course the media is to blame. But as adults, don't we recognise it? Why then, should we perpetuate these myths and ideas of beauty amongst our children? Just because our generation fell prey to these, does not mean that we should lose the next one to them.

And if undermining your child's natural confidence isn't reason enough for you to stop: think about this. Most of the commercial skin and hair-care and cosmetic products on the market are pretty toxic. It might be idea to turn to your kitchen to see what you can rustle up. There are also really safe products like those promoted by Krya which I, for one, use regularly.  

And please, I am not advocating turning into a slob. But there surely exists a happy mean between what we've become and what we can comfortably be. 

Chaandi ki saikal (sic) soney ki seat/ aao chalein darrrling/ challlein (sic) dubble (sic) seat

Ahhh - just a great feeling to just go (sic, sic, sic - bam dhishoom wham) after an exhausting few days between travel, work, the bumble bee, and whatever else I do to regularly lose my sanity. 

So the song (yes, the title of this blog really was a song - back in the day... which day, might that be, you ask? I stare down my regrettably non-patrician nose and say: the day - and think to myself in parentheses [you boor!])

Ah yes, the song... talks about a silver cycle, with a seat of gold and Romeo inviting his beloved to ride "double seat" with him. Very hummable it was too in a distinctly earworm-ish fashion... From the 1991 film, Bhabhi, starring none other than Govinda. 

The reason it came to mind recently, was because of K's current obsession with cycles. As she was spinning the pedals on our family cycle (PP went and bought a car-cycle rack and all - how sweet... especially when I spent two hours trying to figure out how to fix the damn thing and we almost never cart it around with us) it came to me that just like a cycle wheel, which goes round (Yes, I am Einstein, before you get clever) our lives pretty much spin in the same way. 

No matter how much we think we have left our childhoods behind, and how there is never any going back, something happens to trigger a memory and there you are, mentally flash-backing through a speeded-up time-lapse. Things change but still stay the same. 

When I was a kid (admittedly a cocooned one thanks to a childhood spent in Army cantonments across the country), public transport was not even a blip on the horizon for me. Sure, there were holidays where we all piled into cycle rickshaws and autos, even ikkas and tangas and the like on the way to Ye Olde Ancestral Village, but it was never something to be factored into one's daily life. The bicycle ruled at home, else you walked, or got a ride with Dad or tried to look pitiful while doing the 3-km trek back from the sailing club into a headwind, wearing wet clothes and squelchy shoes, hoping that some kindly student officer on a bike would offer you a ride home... 

The sailing club at the College of Military Engineering, Dapodi, Pune

So, virtually no exposure to public transport, because the need wasn't there. Moving to Delhi was a different matter. I clearly remember how a lot of other officers would commandeer army staff cars for school pick-ups and drops or even if they had to visit a friend's. Dad was a made of a different metal. 

School was walking distance initially and when we moved to Central Delhi, there was a school bus. Delhi also meant that nearby swimming options were limited. I had turned up my (admittedly non-patrician) nose at the then bean-shaped pool in the DSOI claiming that I refused to swim in a "puddle", so I was carted off to the Talkatora stadium with its Olympic-sized pools, where I had to pass a swimming test. That done, I ventured to ask Dad (who had done the carting off) about my daily commute to the pool from Dhaula Kuan where we lived. Would he drop me? No, I don't have the time. Would he give me auto fare? I can't afford it. Then? Take the bus. A bit daunted (I was 14 and something) I asked him which bus? I don't know. The bus stop is conveniently located just outside the enclave. Find out. And thus began my love-hate relationship with the Delhi Transport Corporation. By the time I was 15 and had my first summer job (another story - jisme drama hai, humour hai, magar koi romance nahi hai) I was a pro. I travelled all over Delhi in buses from the then unimaginably remote Anand Vihar (this was a quarter of a century ago, people) to Kishangarh village which was so deserted, it could be downright scary - no Vasant Kunj existed in those days. 

College meant yet more buses to and from my college hostel in North Campus. And to visit the parents at home over the long weekends, there were the long-distance buses from the Inter-State Bus Terminal.

So when a lot of people look horrified that I prefer to take the Metro over driving a long distance, I am a bit taken aback. I have even heard condescending statements like "That's very brave and err... ecologically conscious of you - I can't do it," accompanied by "poor thing, she can't afford it" looks. I ignore those. But when it comes to insinuating that I am being a careless mom for taking my toddler on the Metro, I am honestly in two minds about whether to have a hysterical laughing fit on the floor or blow up right there. 

Really? Even the PP agrees with me on this one and he is as paranoid as first time Papas come. Our daughter is not going to be some wallflower who has to be driven everywhere. She will learn to cope with public transport and not see it as a form of slumming. Yes, it's not safe. Our world isn't. So, I put it to you, should I equip her to deal with it? Or should I just shut out the big bad world? For how long? There are no easy answers. 

But while I am trundling around the little pampered miss in her car seat at the back or toting her in a carrier in the train or elsewhere, those decisions are mercifully still a while away, even if the questions aren't.