Dear Brother

Dear Brother,

How are you?

I am writing this letter to focus your attention on an issue which is close to my heart and has disturbed me from last few days. The social scene in Urban India in last one decade has seen the emergence of Metrosexual men. These are the men who will go for gymming to keep themselves lean and athletic. They would love to visit art exhibitions and attend country music concerts with their female friends. They will sip small pegs of vodka and gin rather than guzzling bottles of beer in boozing parties. They are the pedantic and chivalrous people. They will dress well as per the occasion. Their clothes would be clean, well ironed and embellished with designer labels which are awkward tongue twisters of obscure French and Italian fashion designers. They will probably own seven pairs of shoes and about a dozen pair of chappals.They will prefer to visit a hair stylist rather than a neighbourhood barber for their hair do. You can smell the fragrance of rose and scandal when in vicinity of such a person. You would find the posters of Arjun Rampal, Hrithik Roshan and Milind Soman in the bedrooms of these people. They will use Dove soap, L’Oreal face wash and Nivea cold cream to maintain the fair, smooth, tender and moist look of their face even in the freezing cold of Delhi winter. By now, you must have got a fair (and handsome) idea about a metrosexual guy. Oh, last but not the least, Metrosexual is not an antonym to Heterosexual :D

In an obsessive trend to blindly follow their leading Bollywood icons to become metrosexual men, the urban youth of India is voluntarily chopping off the potent symbol of his Masculinity, about three to five inch long line of hair growing between the upper lip and nose portion, referred as Moustache and fondly called as mooche in North India. The swagger of a macho, dark, rough and rustic looking guy with broad shoulders and beefed up chest gently waving hand on his long trail of thick moustache seems to have lost appeal with the young generation X. Today’s youth fail to appreciate the importance of their moustache in defining the personalities of some of the greatest men of past and present such as Shivaji Maharaj, Mangal Pandey, Adolf Hitler, Albert Einstein, Josef Stalin, Nana Patekar , Rajnikant, Shakespere, Tipu Sultan, Anil Kapoor and Piyush Pandey.

The reasons for such a turn around of Indian Male psyche can be attributed to the emergence and later on dominance of Multi National beauty and male grooming product companies in India post liberalisation of 1991. In order to lure more than half a billion Indian men to use their products, these companies introduced the concept of Metrosexual men in the Indian market. With huge marketing budgets and deep pockets, they could rope in the leading male celebrities to endorse their product, arrange for free shaving camps provide price discounts and come up with the controversial and disparaging campaigns such as Gillette’s Shave India campaign. The free flow of western culture after liberalisation made the way easier for these companies to push their products. Soon the beards and stubbles were gone. The rough, tickling sensual touch of a man’s stubble was shown to have ceased to ignite arousal within a woman. She was convinced to fancy about the soft, smooth and clean shaven cheeks of a guy. In the end, the deadly blow to the public symbol of manhood of the Indian male came when he pickup up a pair of scissors and chopped off his moustache. With it, he also chopped off his connections with the tradition and culture of his society. Historically, the moustache of a man also depicted his origins. The length, shape and curls of the bristles on the upper lip of a Royal Rajput is different from that of a Mard Maratha, which in turn varies from that of an intellectual Bengali babu or a Brave Southern warrior. But everything is not lost. Despite the foolish attempts made by people like you and me to get rid of our moustaches in the past, Mother Nature has been patient enough to allow us to correct those mistakes. Our moustaches have so far not been made extinct by the irreversible process of evolution of mankind. Unlike a few of once fertile lands of Punjab and Haryana who have become barren due to over utilisation of irrigation, chemicals and pesticides, the fertile lands above our upper lips have not lost their yields to the use of shaving creams, foams and after lotions. Let’s make a pledge that we will grow our moustaches once again and flaunt them in style. And remember, it’s a Man’s Promise!

God Bless you…

Yours Truly,

Mindpuzzle

P.S. I hope the following video motivates you to think and act like a Man :D