Shave the males

Saturday morning!

Another glorious morning in Chennai, as hot as any afternoon, and made even more glorious by the knowledge that today I will not have to shave.

Ah! Shaving. The prerogative of the male, and if I appear sexist here, sorry but a lot of females also practice now, and no I don't mean to insult anyone. Whew! All standard disclaimers aside. So to continue....

Ah! Shaving. The prerogative of the male.

In ages past males would return from battle, bearing scars, welts, and in some cases, half a blade that a thoughtful opponent had left embedded between his shoulder blades. Then our ancient hero would melt into the hands of the heroine and they would fade away gloriously into another glorious susnset, and this was the reason why many of us were born.

But cometh civalization, and the evolution of warfare, and it was no more possible to return back home scratched and bloddied, but more likely without many of the major limbs, and certain vestigal organs like the brain (atleast in the case of those who fight a lot. Scientific models of married couples confirms this fact). So it was necessary to invent a new way of getting scratched, and badly so, and so we invented shaving.

Yes! Shaving was the first of the ritualistic art forms. Long ago, somewhere along the outskirts of Mesapotamia, a village headman wanted to appear hunky and nice to his wife, since tonight he wished for that extra special salsa, and this seemed impossible because she had been complaining for the last three months that his beard stank of well..., all the food of the last months. And it wasn't possible this week to go of and raid the village on the south since that had been scheduled for next week, and this being a second saturday and what with everything else, and everybody out for a picnic he couldn't even go fight with anybody else and get beaten up, and considering the time he better do something snappish if he wanted that salsa.

Damn!

Well said our ancient village headman. I can't fight with anybody else, since I am the only person in the village.

I can't fight with my wife, since that makes the salsa almost impossible.

And well, scratch! scratch! and as he scratched his face with his long nails, he opened up a scratch on his face that bled a little.

And then he had this brainwave. O.K. I will fight with myself, and well just beat myself up a little and well this should just about clinch the salsa...

So saying he pulled out his blade and started slashing it to and fro right before his face, and appeared half an hour later, bloddy and beaten, but looking extremely hunky, very nice, and quite strange and red to his wife, since he did not seem to have the beard of months on his face instead what looked like a lot of blood.

Well, thought the wife. He actually smells bad, but looks quite o.k. and what the heck he doesn't stink and he looks like he was in quite a close fight, and carefully weighing these two pieces of completely unrelated information she decided to make the salsa that night extremely spicy.

And so was born the tradition of shaving, twin blade systems (motto: one for the beard, and the other for the blood) and the fact that shaved men have looked sexier to ladies ever since (Ladies! IF this is not true, please do inform me. Comments on the blog site appreciated).

Civalizations all over the world have adopted this tradition with quite some success. Check out the mongols, the english, the slovaks, the arabs, the indians, and almost all the world. Some civalizations have also slightly modified this tradition in ways which seem to elucidate the meaning of the term, "a rather close shave".

Check out the aborgines, who have a tradition of getting solidly tight on the local hooch before they give their young boys their first shave. Unfortunately such is the potency of the aborginal hooch, that they end up missing the boys face altogether and shave away a quite considerable portion of his chest, and we do not mean hair here. And so came the initation rites of the aborgines.

Speaking of coming, a tighter tribe in Africa, miss the upper part of the body altogether and resort to blade below, which brings a totally new meaning to the phrase "hitting below the belt". At the end of it, you have a few African's who are significantly shorter (and no! we are not speaking of height here), and a group of anthropologists clucking over a new species of humanity, till they meet much the same fate at the hands of irate Africans who can't tolerate the weaker European drinks, especially the mild and generally the bitter.

Or the natives near Cuba, whose initiation rites are best exemplified by one of their most famous subjects Fidel "Castro".

All successful men, other than the Africans, who have been increasingly confusing anthropologists around the world by becoming a dying race, though the facts are there for all to see. Or perhaps, rather not.

And so there they are, successful men, all adored by sexy young things, their girlfriends, etc. etc. and etc.

Just add a quick piece about a friend of mine, who woke up one day with a terrible hangover, and had to get to work rather quickly. He decided to play some rather hard rock, to chase away some of the demons in his head, and while he was shaving, he rather injudiciously decided to dance to one of the songs in that record, and neatly sliced of one of his earlobes. Ouch!

Bleeding he ran outdoors, to his neighbours appartments, partly because he was bleeding, but more to request them to phone up the office, and well... the neighbour ( a girl) fell in love with him, and now they are happily settled in Seattle with six kids, and the earlobe and the gillette razor stand in a solid golden frame in their showcase, and well..., that settles most parts of it.

Other than the record, which of all things happened to be a rather rave one by Pink Floyd called "The Final Cut".