Moustache musings!

Men looked macho in a moustache. That was the theory. You could choose from a bewildering variety of moustaches. The “pencil moustache” was unique. It was thin and delicately outlined the contours of the upper lip! The “goatee” gave you an aristocratic feel- a ball of hair encircled your mouth! If you shaved off the moustache at the center and allowed the strands to hang off the sides, you looked like a Shaolin Warrior. Sometimes, the moustache ran riot!  It joined hands with the sideburns with no clear demarcation. The “handlebar moustache” was impressive. It had copious volume like luscious vegetation and ended in a curl. From time to time, you gave a twirl to the ends. With such a moustache, you could look at a lion in the face and watch it retreat with its tail between the legs!

The arrival of the clean-shaven “chocolate hero” changed the paradigm completely. The moustache’s utility was now in question- to be or not to be.

Maintaining a moustache requires enormous manicuring. Overgrown moustaches pose a problem. You can inadvertently chew off the ends along with your food! It takes patience to maintain perfect symmetry. Call it optical illusion, but one side always appears longer than the other. Some more trimming, and the other side is longer now. As you clip off more and more shrubbery, the moustache gets shorter and shorter, till you start resembling a certain Chaplin. That’s when the scissors are put down decisively.

As we age, the moustache ages with us. The black moustache sprouts an occasional white. Very soon, it is speckled with more white and less black! Now comes the big question- to dye the moustache jet-black or color it red, or leave it as is.

Faced with this existential crisis, you decide to use the biggest hammer- shave the moustache off altogether! Suddenly, you cannot recognize yourself in the mirror. Your wife and children scare you even more, “My God! What have you done to yourself?”

Embarrassment grabs you by the face. When you step out of home, it’s not the lack of the moustache, it’s as if you are without clothes!

You are now on the road, but no one gives you second look. At work, no one has even registered the change!  You realize that your appearance does not matter one bit.  Everyone is busy looking at himself, there is no time to look at another!

All said and done, the moustache serves a critical purpose. If there are identical twins, one good and another evil, one of them should have a moustache.  That way, the heroine will have no confusion and won’t end up chasing the wrong person!