Aes Triplex -2

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Last night I posted the yarn about Father's 'Medicine Box' and Of Inhuman Bandage.

Now for the next of Father's 3 enduring boxes:

2. Shaving Set

Let me confess right away that hirsuteness is not in our family genes, either side.

This however never bothered me. But I know of teenage friends of mine pine for facial hair, applying lotions and creams, and even praying.

As Bertie Wooster (?) said of mustache, either you have it or you don't; there is no half way.

So much has been written about mustaches that nothing original can be said of them any more.

But I have seen closely and minutely a Software Professional who has a thick unkempt mustache, twirling its drooping right end with his thumb and forefinger constantly when he is not keyboarding and chewing it while keyboarding. It must be a tension-release mechanism like smoking, nail-biting, nose-picking, belching and such other unmentionables.

Talking of teenage boys pining for superficial symbols of masculinity, my wife tells me that pre-teen girls were even more morbid about lactiferous bulbosity till the size-zero thing wisely caught on with the realization: "Why sweat about glorified sweat glands?"

Tangentially, this reminds me of the controversial 1960s stories of symbolic feminist mass incineration of Dirac's left kets much like Gandhijee's picturesque burning of British mill-cloth.

But I have digressed too far away...sorry!

Father's 'Shaving Set' (he never called it kit) was housed in an LG tin of hing...my wife uses this brand even now though she doesn't know what LG stands for...no, not 'Life's Good'...it stands for 'Laljee-Godhoo'... I would certainly love to meet him or them as the case maybe.

I clearly recall the yellow tin with 'asafoetida' written on it. This long-winded word somehow got etched in my mind...they call it 'imprinting' nowadays.

To call hing 'asafoetida' looked to me like calling Railway by its Hindutva name: 'lohpathagamini'... sounding very like Husain's Gajagamini...sorry I go at a tangent again...Madhuri happens to be my favorite...

Coming back to Father's enduring Shaving Set, it had a plane mirror that could be set with difficulty against an improvised stone, having lost its back-tackle much before my time.

The mirror itself was curious...it had many whitish blotches here and there that I learned only much later as decayed 'silver' coatings.

Then again, it has its 3-piece razor made of whitish heavy metal into which he used to insert a 7 O' Clock Blade taken gingerly out of its 'butter-paper' cover.

There was also a curious translucent heavy blue glassy block with a concave cylindrical bowl taken away. I don't know what it was (or is) called...but the glass must be harder than steel...that much is clear...for, Father used to insert his 7 O' Clock used blade in it, put a drop of water and vigorously rub it to and fro on the glass thing, both sides, till he was satisfied.

The rest of the Operation is routine...

All that I learned from this prolonged Operation are 3 lovely words which I treasure:

1. strop

2. whet

3. hone.

It is always an advantage having an English Teacher as father...teaching goes on even while shaving...

That brings me to my:

Last Laugh

For the past 4 years I have been trying my blogspot and Ishani booklets on several Hyderabadis, but find only about 5% get to read or relish them.

This depressing statistic reminds me of the celebrated Nehru-Lohia Contests.

During the 1950s, Ram Manohar Lohia, the Socialist Party Leader of the Quit India fame, used to make it a point to contest against Nehrujee time and again from the Phulpur Constituency and lose Deposit.

When asked by jeering Reporters why he lost so badly, getting only 5% of the votes polled, he would quip:

"That precisely is the percentage of literacy here"

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