I wish I Were a Pig

If you remove the first letter from the word Fairy and replace F with an H, you get the name that I adorned once upon a time. I even hate to mention the word 'Hairy'. It was in class 11 that I first started becoming conscious about having facial hair. I remember the first day of school after the board examinations, there were many new students who had joined and one girl named ‘Waxed Skeleton (WS)’ came up and sat next to me. She scanned me from head to toe, as if she was preparing for my postmortem. She stared into my unshaped eye brows, my un-waxed hands and made me realize the presence of a mush I never had.

Miss Waxed Skeleton soon changed her place and sat next to the girls who had uprooted what they thought was unwanted off their skin, and made sure it shone like the glaze of morning sunlight on water. WS was one woman who always preferred wearing miniskirts and short sleeves. Her eyebrows were perfectly shaped, her eye lashes were of the perfect length and her hair was coloured with copper streaks. She was one woman who never had a bad hair day and her hair do was always perfect. She came to school in a chauffeur driven Ambassador car and tip toed her way through the corridors so carefully, making sure she never hit against anything or anyone. It wasn't long before everyone started raving about her looks and she was the new sensation.

WS proved to give a huge complex to girls like me, who did not drive to school but instead rode to school, wearing a single plait and pinned our Dupattas to either ends of our shoulders. In life sometimes we hate people without a reason. We hate some stars although we have nothing against them. There are people whom we hate with a strong conviction. For me, WS was on that list. I hated her for multiple reasons. She dated the second biggest crush of my life, and she called me badly groomed and hairy. It was she who gave me the name that gave me the biggest inferiority complex of my life. I wasn't hairy by choice. It was nature that conspired against me and sowed too many seeds of Keratin under my skin, that sprouted out as dead black long cells to make me look badly groomed and wo'manly'. In class 11, grooming to me meant nothing more than wearing starched white ironed uniforms, polished shoes, having clean nails and neatly combed hair.

Grooming to us humans is about what we shouldn't be doing rather than what we should be. Our definitions change as the perceptions of the common majority change. Today, our definition of Grooming would not match that of Adam and Eve's, and their definitions would not agree to that possessed by Ramapithecus. To suit a hypothetical proposition of grooming proposed by a hair- free majority, to get oneself a good groom and later to appeal to him, every woman goes through a painful ritual. The worst part is that we have to pay for the pain.

With utmost courage in my heart, I went to get myself groomed and more importantly rid of not just hair on my skin, but also the name that I disliked the most. I went to ' New Star Shiny' beauty parlour. The board outside had a photo of the Bollywood actress Kajol and a note saying 'Only for ladies and kids'. As I entered, a woman escorted me to a separate room and there I was paying for pain, pouring a hot liquid over my skin and uprooting a layer of it. Every time she poured the hot liquid over my skin, I clenched my teeth and tears rolled out of eyes. As I came out after the ordeal, looking like a victim of the Bhopal gas tragedy, only one thought ran over my head.

I WISH I WERE A PIG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!