WHAT'S IN A NAME..ER..PACKAGING?

A lot, actually.

Especially if first impressions have a way of lingering...as they do with me.

I have this favourite skincare brand, Forest Essentials. They are made with natural ingredients, they are made in India. Open a jar or uncap a bottle and delicious smells of jasmine and rose, sandalwood and orange neroli waft out to seduce your senses. And their creams, gels, oils, pure waters and lotions are light as air and soft as flowers on your skin. And they come in this aesthetically minimalistic natural packaging. Clear bottles and jars with stark black caps, small, neat brown and green lettering, and the whole delicious elixir packed in a classily unobtrusive brown-paper colour packaging. I'm getting carried away. But they are really really good and lust-worthy.

Till they changed their packaging. Today, I stepped into a nearby Forest Essentials outlet, only to have my eyes assaulted by the brightest assortment of "Indian" colours outside a Sabyasaachi show - magenta, purple, and oodles of gold. 

It's true that the earlier packaging was so blend-into-the-background kind that although I have had my Forest Essentials stuff right arranged on my bathroom shelves, my inquisitive mom and mom-in-law never noticed them. Or disapprovingly frowned at their printed prices.


But that discretion in packaging was half the charm of Forest Essentials. Right down to the discreet and intricate Tree of Life logo in an antique gold colour. And now they look like a tacky gold-bedecked cousin of Shahnaz Hussein products.

CONFESSION: I have never been able to buy a Shahnaz Hussein product because I get completely put off by the heavily-red-henna-haired, heavy-duty-diamond-beringed, heavy-kohl-lined visage of Shahnaz herself. If this is the way one looks after using the products, then I'd rather use Biotique, which is also in the same price brackets but which are eye-pleasingly packaged in subdued green and sober white.

So, there I was - ready and eager to pick up a Forest Essentials aloe vera day gel and a Forest Essentials jasmine and patchouli night cream. But so disappointed was I with the too-bright too-new too-glossy packaging that I walked out, saving myself a couple of thousand bucks. I know that it is all the same INSIDE, but it just does not seem the same. The drool quotient has gone, for me at least.

Maybe later, when my eyes have got better adjusted to this gracious-lady-turned-circus-performer change.

Have you hated it when a favourite product suddenly underwent a change of appearance/packaging?

SURPRISED BY BEAUTY

You are sitting-sweating in a BEST bus, caught in a traffic jam on the Western Express Highway. You fidget, wiggling your toes encased in ‘rainy-season sandals’, grimacing at the feel of dirty wetness and street slime. The ‘synthetic-material’ kurta (another monsoon-must) is damp and uncomfortable against your back and your lap is clammy with the wet umbrella. Squinting against the drizzle you look out of the window, looking at the sad scattered mounds of plastic and debris - the dirty suburban underbelly of the city exposed by the rains. Nothing new.

And then, you raise your eyes beyond the bedraggled bulidings, and you are suddenly transported. The grey clouds have descended low, partly hiding the green peaks of the small hills of the Western Ghats in the distance. The grey softly drifts across the green, merging, separating, creating misty patterns like a child’s watercolour. You never noticed that dull grey and drab green could offer such luminous variety. And even as you look, the hazy-breathtakingly-lovely horizon is obliterated as the rain fastracks from drizzle to downpour. Nothing new.

But, your feet sliding in the Mumbai muck, shrugging your shoulders into your already-dripping raincoat, you feel blessed by this sudden surprise gift of monsoon beauty.

HEAD OVER HEELS

That, unfortunately, has never been the case with me. My head has, is, and always will be, over feet which are encased in flat footwear. Not heels.

Once upon a time, long ago, I had tried heels. Drastically high platform heels. Wooden ones making a horse-like racket on the hard cement floor. It had not been a successful stride. In fact, it had not been a stride at all. After a failed falter, heels became another one of those allergy-inducing objects which I could see, but could not use.

And, thereafter, I have always been a Cinderella in rubber slippers. No dainty-toed high-heeled glass slippers for me.

So I know all about the platform, the wedge and the vicious/vertiginous stiletto (the lady-boss of all heels). I even know about the non-threatening kitten heels, which are less than 1.5 inches in height. These innocuous-looking low-heels are treacherous creatures, because they can tempt heel-allergic flat-footers like me. But I am, and sadly will always be, a full-grown tabby cat, and no longer anything like a kitten. And so, even kitten heels trip me up.

Any heel, and my ankle rebels. A self-defeating rebellion, as it ends up getting twisted in the bargain. But I end up all in a tumble. Embarrassing!

Any heel-thy person will diagnose my disease as vertigo. For me, heel-thy is definitely not well-thy. I am scared of heights. Not on a rollercoaster (I love them on an empty stomach). But on my heels. I prefer facing life with my feet planted solidly on the ground.

There are distinct disadvantages. Shoe shops are apparently meant for the well-heeled, as most of the shelves are devoted to the sky-high variety of shoes. Whenever I enter a shoe-shop and say, "Flat sandals only, please", I am directed to some obscure corner where a shelf and a half displays the frumpiest of designs in the most boring of colours.

Even when flat shoes are 'in', like they were 'last season' with ballerina-flats, this is usually a passing fad, and women soon abandon their firm-on-the-ground-walk for a balancing-totter. Even the once-flat Kolhapuri chappals have turned traitor and sprouted heels.

I can be the darling of feminists (who rage against the tyranny of heels and the consequent commoditisation of body-image) and the podiarists (who rage against the foot and tendon problems caused by heels). But that is a limited appeal.

Alas, I can never be a Posh Spice, who apparently even goes gymming in stilettoes (I hardly ever go gymming, so I do not wear stilettoes). All heel-addicts will rave about the sex-appeal of heels. How a shoe has to have a 'defined heel' to be in the 'sexy shoe' category. How heels transform us into objects of lust and desirability (check out any heel-vocabulary: 'stripper shoes' have 3" platform heels, 'hooker heels' are at least 3-4",'slut shoes' have 5-5 3/4 " heel...). My head is reeling after all those vertical stats.

To come back to the issue of sex-symbols and heels, I had once read that the legendary Greta Garbo (the reclusive and unattainable silent-era Hollywood beauty) always used to wear a pair of flat and comfy men's bedroom slippers (size 10 or thereabouts) under the long, trailing, lovely ballgowns she wore while filming.

That settled the matter for me. I chose the classic Greta Garbo over the upstart Posh Spice. And I'll stick to my slides and mules and unsexy-but-safe flat Dr Scholl's-type foowear. And my lovely red mojris from Mochi's, which make me feel like royalty. Even when I am not on a pedestal.

ODE TO INDOLENCE

A beauty parlour offers much more than a makeover – it offers a few hours of complete indolence and indulgence, an experience so different from the rest of my rushed/panting life that it is almost surreal.

I’m not talking about the ten minute, pop-in-thread-eyebrows-pop-out kind of visit. There you are made to sit upright and uptight in a chair while a beautician painfully plucks out your eyebrows. All tampering, and no pampering.

I’m talking about longer visits, when I can leave all my daily cares outside the opaque glass doors and enter the warm and welcoming red-and-black interiors, lie down in one of the beds in the cubicles (don’t get any wrong ideas, though, it’s perfectly above board) and surrender myself to being pampered and fussed over.

There’s a head oil-massage, which I totally adore because of the way it relaxes my neck muscles. There’s a l-o-n-g two hour facial, which includes a decent back-rub and many complicated things being done to my face (including a thick mask of gooey stuff which covers my eyes and mouth and makes me feel like a sci-fi zombie for fifteen minutes). I close my eyes and go with the flow, rather, rub. My angel of a beautician takes it as a compliment when I doze off, since the whole rigmarole is supposed to be relaxing (the dim lights and soft music help).

Especially decadent is the combined manicure and pedicure, when you have two people simultaneously attending to (cleaning and cosseting) your usually-poor-and-overworked hands and feet. I feel like a thirty-minute celebrity!!!

But the pleasure comes at a price. And some pain, as well. It is not all unmitigated blissful eyes-closed floating-in-a-scented-cocoon kind of experience. When your belligerent blackheads are being dug out of their trenches, or your cussed cuticles being poked into shape, it is a painful battle for beauty. What agonies we suffer, what waxing of reluctant hairs and steaming of recalcitrant pores in our quest for beauty.

But for me, the pain is just a small part of the beauty-parlour-parcel. Even the ‘beauty’-bit is passé. What I crave is the pampering. And the forgetting of the clock and the phone for a few hours every month. When I step out, my freshly-pedicured feet are still floating on air. Till I reach home and come back to reality with an almighty thump.

RED RIDING HOOD

After sitting on the fence for a very long time, I’ve taken the plunge. Head first, straight into L’Oreal’s Majirel hair colour, shades Mahogony and Dark Brown.

After being henna-headed for decades (to hide the grey), I needed the festive push of Diwali to dive into the bewildering and number-crunching (shades 5.6 and 3.2 in ratios of 20:80, or some such complicated equation) world of hair-colours.

If henna was DIY (Do it Yourself), then hair colour, at least for me, is very definitely GID@P (Get it done at Parlour).

And so I did. My fairy godmother, Kadambari (god bless her), who has been gently nudging me to take the plunge for a very long time, held my head and hand and led me gently into the colour-whirlpool. From where I emerged, all red-tinged hair, a local lady with a global head.

The mirror reflected a disappointingly brown head (though without a hint of grey). It was only when the light falls on it that the red shines, dazzling the eye.

I stepped out of the salon, peering at every passing mirror/glass and preening at my image. Imagine my horror when I peeped into the front-pane of a parked autorickshaw, with the sun in my eyes, hoping to see my own partial reflection and instead gazing into the quizzical eyes of a just-woken-up-from-sleep autorickshawallah (driver), who leered at me, thinking probably that I was soliciting him for unnameable services.

Like Red Riding Hood, I fled.

REMEMBERING RAPUNZEL

A few days back I was walking with a friend when we both noticed the very long, oiled, braided and flower-bedecked hair of two women walking in front of us. This is a fairly common sight in our part of the world, where many women still find the time (and have the inclination) to oil and be-flower their tresses. Unlike me, whose shoulder-length tresses are always falling out or turning alarmingly-greybeneath their hennaed-hideout under a hastily put-up perpetual-ponytail (Because of stress? Genetics? What is the bald truth?).

When I was young, my unruly-curly locks were tamed by a succession of severe ‘boys’ cuts’, and it was my secret, rebellious desire to grow-up and grow down my hair till my waist at least, sometimes to be demurely plaited (without the dodgy scent of hair-oil, though), sometimes to be left free (but miraculously tangle-free).

Alas, that was not to be. I have never had the fortune or the fortitude to grow my hair really long. And though I once shocked my family and erstwhile colleagues back in Kolkata when I appeared with temporarily truncated-to-my-ear-length tresses (somebody amiably compared me to a hen shorn of its neck-feathers), my usual hair-length varies, through steps and layers, from neck to shoulder. Rapunzel remains a distant, gradually-turning-grey, dream – to modify Shel Silverstein’s ‘The Ballad of Lucy Jordan’:
“At the age of 35 – (long ago, actually)
I realized I’d never ride –
Though Mumbai –
In a Mercedes –
With the sea-wind in my waist-length hair.”

PRAGMATIC P.S: Can anyone tell me why all the hair that falls with monotonous regularity from my head are always black, and the ones that determinedly cling on are grey?

SUMMER OF 2008

It’s official. My and my elder daughter’s summer vacation ends tomorrow. Mumbai’s summer of 2008 ends the day after; the weather department has declared the arrival-date of the monsoon (give or take a few days; weather and weathermen are not very reliable). In fact, it has raining gustily for the past few days, but that's the PRE-MONSOON downpours, insist the weathermen (as if that made any difference - Wet is WET is WET).

Though I always look forward to regaining my working-mom status (being a stay-at-home mom stresses me out totally - it's too much of hard work) and spending a few hours away from my demanding duo, I also love the summer holidays.

Here are a few random reasons why:

I can spend the whole day with my daughters (a mixed blessing, though!). We eat together, I tell them stories, watch stuff together, feed them when they are busy playing, build tents for them to play house-house in, take them to the park to play, take them to the shops to shop, sit them on the kitchen counter when I'm cooking and allow them to shell eggs and stir mixtures. I so tired at the end of the day that I usually fall asleep while putting them to sleep. BUT I WOULDN'T HAVE IT ANY OTHER WAY!

I can have countless, endless hug-athons with my daughters.

I can ditch my contact lenses (for professional use only) for geeky glasses.

I can cook to my heart’s content (I have to: the maid goes on leave – another mixed blessing!). Out comes the cook-books, my brain goes on overdrive planning menus, shopping for the ingredients and my daughters excitedly accompany me in these culinary adventures, from the market to the kitchen-counter to the dining table.

I can gorge on mangoes and black jamuns, my fave fruits! My daughters love picking up raw mangoes which fall unheeded from the many mango trees in the neighbourhood, and I love pickling them.

From our bedroom window, I can watch (with the spouse and kids) the green hills of the National Park come alive with the flame-red flowers of the krishnachura (gulmohar) - surely the loveliest of all summer-sights?

I can read/surf/blog past midnight without worrying about getting up early in the mornings…

…but that’s about to end. With the coming of a new season (monsoon) and a new session (at school and college), this summer is over.

PARADISE REVISITED

I’m just back from a trip to Goa – land of susegaad (bliss). This was our third visit, and the spell of Goa has not dispelled….we are still as much in love with the place as we ever were.

This time we went to stay for five-days-which-seemed-too-short-a-holiday at the bang-on-the-beach L’Amour Resort on South Goa’s Benaulim beach.

The hot summer of Goa made us lazy; so, in the mornings, we mostly lolled about on the golden sands at the sun-molested (rather than sun-kissed) beach, elder daughter and spouse splashing about in the white-surf-green-waves, I sitting with my younger daughter (she’s going through a scared-of- waves/won’t-step-on-sand phase) and a book in Concy’s coconut-leaf-thatched shack, watching the para-sailers and jet-skiers whooping it up, the fishing boats in the far distance, and the changing colours of the sand, sea and sky.

In the evenings, we would venture out – to see the sun dive smoothly into the sea. We scuttled back from crowded-Colva (epithet-ed ‘the queen of South Goa beaches’), but we loved the empty white sands and blue water at Varca (which is more of a private beach for the Taj Exotica – where we had gone for a day to meet up with a cousin and her family).

We would coax the autorickshaws to drop us to Madgaon, the nearest town, where we explored the streets lined with charming, colonial-era, Portuguese-constructed buildings, tall churches with wrought-iron gates and stained-glass windows or small, bright bungalows with sloping roofs and sit-outs in the garden where hens/pigs/geese poked about the flowerbeds.

We also poked about in the winding alleys of Madgaon's ancient New Market, buying bebinca (a Goan dessert), a toy Spanish guitar and a seashell-decorated, keepsake bottle of feni (a Goan cashewnut-fermented drink).

One evening we drove down the winding, well-maintained roads of Betelbatim village with a friend and his family, ooh-ing and aah-ing at the red-tiled, picture-postcard-pretty cottages along the way to gorge on the seafood at the popular (going by the full tables even on weekdays) Martin’s Corner.

The Goan fish-curry-and-rice (laden with coconut-milk, sour-kokum and tomatoes) at our Goa-baari (‘Goan house’, according to my younger daughter), L’Amour, was also pretty good, as were the roast-beef-and-onions, beef-vegetable-soup and squid-garlic-butter. I don’t know what vegetarians would do in Goa, but for us the scenic and the gastronomic delights merged into one awesome synaesthetic experience. Helped, no doubt, by urak, a fruity-flavoured, full-bodied, local liquor distilled from, what else, cashewnuts.

My senses are still reeling from OD-ing on Goa’s beauty, the natural loveliness of the beach-dotted, surf-lapped coastline, fringed with coconut trees; the calm rivers winding around the mangrove wetlands; the hills in the distance, green in summer with rocky outcrops jutting out here-and-there. And all this cradling quaint old buildings, confectionery-white churches and friendly, laidback people.

We’ll be go(a)ing back again, hopefully!

04 June 2008: I'm now sending this post on a journey to Scribbit's June Write-away contest on Going Places.

GYM-YATRA or HOW TO REACH OUR INNER/LEANER SELF

Indians, it is said, are a deeply religious lot. For urban Indians, gymming is the new religion, and the daily yatra (travel) to the gym is the new pilgrimage.
Instead of trekking up mountains where the gods reside, we fervently toil on the treadmills. Koshto korley keshto meley (hard work will lead you to divinity). So, huff puff huff puff pant pant pant pant… (are the pants becoming looser?).
The strict tofu-and-lettuce diets follow the route of self-denial and the austerity of upavaas (fasting). Detox the body and purify the inner/leaner self. Overcome GLUTTONY, the deadliest sin…do NOT drool over the DEVIL’S DESSERTS (or Satan’s saturated fats). And, if we do (and I often do) get tempted, we can do our prayaschitra (redemption) by an extra hour of treadmill-ing.

We are the new CRUSADERS (AGAINST CALORIES), seeking the elusive HOLY GRAIL OF THE SIZE ZERO/SIX PACK. Ramakrishna said, jato math, tato path (there are as many paths to God as there are faiths). So, pilates, aerobics, kick-boxing, belly-dancing or the genuinely divine yoga, all roads will, hopefully, lead us to THE ONE goal – the body perfect.
In this gym-mandir (temple), we forget the macrocosm (kids, spouse, office, home, kitchen... the whole calorie-filled world) and focus on the micro – the biceps, the abs, the little finger on the right…with absolute concentration. The reward for THE DEVOUT is the feeling of SHEER VIRTUOUSNESS that a gym-session brings in us.
The Hare Rama Hare Krishna chant is replaced with Bollywood music (the new prayer on the pilgims’ lips, er...earphones) pulsating from the speakers, egging us on, creating a trance-like self-absorption that can almost transcend the finite (and fat-laden) boundaries of the self.
And as we shed our inhibitions and, hopefully, the kilos of fat, our inner, leaner selves merge into the divine…the demi-god figures of a Salman Khan or a Bipasha Basu (or a Posh Spice or Becks). As the body is liberated from the calorie-shackles, NIRVANA (divine bliss) is attained. HALLELUJAH! HARI OM!

CONFESSION BOOTH: This PILGRIM’S PROGRESS is very tedious and transgression-filled, her treadmill-CANTERBURY TALES is more of a sedate stroll, but she hopes that at the end of the road she’ll meet the GOD OF SMALL THINGS (Waistlines, specifically).

What's your gym-confession?

AND THE (CRABBY) HEADLINES ARE...

I must have got hold of the wrong end of the newspaper today. I feel really CRABBY, like Lucy Van Pelt. And since I don’t have the Peanuts gang to snap at, here’s my WHAT’S WRONG WITH THE WORLD TODAY cribsheet, comprising only peanutty, irrelevant, random news:

There’s this fairly inconsequential film-director, Anurag Basu, who has apparently said that the extremely consequential AMITABH BACHCHAN should retire from films. Of course, it’s none of his business. Of course, it’s just another stunt to steal some limelight off a bona fide celebrity. Of course, the media/public/public-as-perceived-by–the-media are busy debating and dissecting both AB and the ‘ab-wannabe’. My advice is, Anurag, Get a Life (‘in a Metro’, or wherever). Mr Bachchan may have feet of clay (very murky, Amar Singh-ed clay at that), but the rest of him is pure 24-carat gold.

Many Maharashtra legislators are up-in-arms against the introduction of sex-education in schools. Methinks that the right-wing is wrongly focusing on the SEX -taboo and forgetting about the EDUCATION bit. Granted that children learn about the birds and bees (and babes) from friends, films, F-TV, filth-on-the-Internet and maybe, if they are lucky, from their family, but, as a parent and a teacher, I support a structured syllabi which teaches (under sensible surveillance) the basics of what-to-do and how-to-do and why/why-not-to-do and what-happens-if-done, if only to take away the surreptitiousness from sex.

These same shouters are trying to ban the hotpants-clad cheerleaders from prancing (and panting) at the Indian Premier League Twenty-20 cricket matches. I feel that if Twenty20 cricket is like instant noodles, then the cheerleaders are the seasoning – from the spicy jalapeno-masala of the Bangalore babes to the more sedate, capsicum-covered Mumbai maidens. Are they “obscene”, or should they be seen – that is the question for India’s morality-Hamlets. There is definitely something rotten in the state of Indian cheer-lessness. The moral police should remember that brevity is the soul of cheer-leading. Anyway, if they (the cheery-squad, not the dreary morality-brigade) are banned (I hope not, even eyeballing their silly gamboling burns some calories), then Shah Rukh Khan can always exhibit his six-packs. And the rest is only cricket.

That brings me to a personal CRIB. Despite ardently gymming for the past few weeks, the fat-iceberg around my middle refuses to melt. No amount of global or local warming (-up exercises) is helping. Far from becoming a sexy yummy-mummy, I seem destined to remain an educated tummy-mummy. And also to remain, like Lucy, a regular fussbudget and a “very crabby person”.

MISS IN-(ANE)-DIA

The Pantaloons Femina Miss India contest, 2008 edition, was telecast tonight with a lot of fanfare and media-hoopla. Pictures of the three PFMI (now this abbreviation is just ripe with possibilities!) winners - all glossy hair, fixed (in more ways than one) smiles, toned arms waving at us lesser mortals - were splashed across the front pages.
Later in the year, these three manufactured beauties will venture abroad, hoping to conquer the Universe, World and Earth.
I have no moral issues against beauty contests. A Ford Supermodel contest makes business sense: to select certain humans who have the looks, carriage and attitude to catwalk on the ramp or be clotheshorses.
What I find ridiculous is the attempt by the Miss India (and Miss Universe/World/et al) organisers to showcase their pageant as a platform for women's progress and personality development. To prove it, they have introduced a subcontest - Times Miss Sudoku!
I am sure somebody did manage to solve the sudoku in the end, and ended up with a crown on her brain, er, head . But my point is, even if intelligent/brilliant/exam-toppers (in India, the terms are co-referential) enter the pageant, it is because they hope to pursue a career in Hindi movies (Bollywood is the Valhalla of retired beauty-queens) or fashion (model>choreographer>designer in ascending order of age) or, at least, television (the idiot-box embraces all the Bollywood-rejects).
So why pretend to serve the nation? These girls are not role-models. They are models, period. They are not social ambassadors. They are brand-ambassadors. They are chasing name, fame and tinseltown glory, while taking a year out after winning to pose prettily with sundry orphans/AIDS patients/tsunami victims and pay (collagen-plumped)lip-service to the "IN"-charities.
So, let the contests roll on, with the assembly-line beauties striding across the conveyor belt with clone-like sameness, year after year. With a little help from the cosmetic surgeon, dentist, hairstylist, fashion designer, make-up person, etiquette-and-grooming-(and toilet?)-trainer. All bankrolled by adoring parents.
Let the judges try to catch the colours of a rainbow by dissecting beauty into 'sexy legs', 'golden skin', 'beautiful hair/eyes/smile', or 'perfect-ten figure'. Totally laboratory-like, totally surreal!
Let the contestants preen and pout, pose and pirouette. They make pretty plastic photocopies of each other, like Andy Warhol's prints.
But DO NOT let them parrot well-rehearsed answers to well-worn questions (read: cliches from the how-to-win-a-beauty-contest handbook). This year's make-or-break question was whether "WESTERN (as in evil?)" influence was responsible for the rising divorce rates in our dear-old-family-loving-husband-worshipping India. A question on which sociologists do their Ph.Ds; a question on which fundamentalists plan their andolan (propaganda). But the smug PFMI contestants answer-with-a-smile in 60 seconds flat.
So dear, dear organisers, do away with the pseudo-thought-provoking, genuinely-yawn-inducing Q-and-A rounds. Let the BODIES (part or whole; same-to-same) rule!
P.S : The only spontaneous answer ever recorded was Madhu Sapre's answer in the 1992 Miss Universe contest, when she was asked what she would do for her country if she were the head of the nation. A spunky sportswoman, she said she would build more stadiums to promote sports. Straightforward and non-conformist, Sapre lost the competition.
Q.E.D.
P.P.S: Alongside the front-page report of the PFMI winners in today's The Times of India, there is another report of a Supreme Court judgment, sentencing a man to two-years in prison beacuse he drove his wife to suicide with his callous taunts about her 'dark complexion'.
So, although we have a regressive pageant, we also have a progressive court. Thank God for that.

BEAUTY IS TRUTH, TRUTH BEAUTY?

Keats did not have the whole picture, maybe because he died young, unmarried and childless. Children often have the disconcerting habit of hitting not-so-welcome 'truth-nails' right on our heads, puncturing the notions of 'beauty' buoying our middle-age-ing egos.
Take a case in point. My elder daughter attended her new class today, and returned voluble with stories of her first day, new friends and new class-teacher. Warmly interested, I asked whether she thought her teacher was good. Taking me at face-value, my daughter relplied that she was very good-looking.
Rushing in where angels fear to tread, I teasingly asked whether the teacher was more beautiful than me, and was promptly put in my place when she shot back, "onek beshi (much more) beautiful, ma" (in an emphatic, how-can-you-think-otherwise tone). As they say, from the mouth of babes...and here I was, over-confidently assuming that all little girls look up to their mothers as icons of beauty/accomplishment/whatever. (Just goes to prove that when the physics is solid, the psychology is suspect!)
I admit that when it comes to me, there is quite a LOT to look up to (all of size XL). But I felt very much deflated by my daughter's TRUTH-fulness. You could say it served me right, after all it is April Fool's Day... and no fool like a self-deluding, way-overweight BEAUTY-fool.