Straight

So you wanna know how to straighten hair?

Actually, it’s not hair that needs straightening - For hair, we’ve got great products in the market. Sunsilk maybe?

More than hair, it’s we, the people, who need to get straight.  Indulge me by considering a few recent happenings: 

• Not many people know of Bhanu Athaiya, who is now affected with brain tumor.  Way back in ’83, she bagged the Oscar for Best Costume Design for Richard Attenborough's biopic Gandhi – yup, she’s India’s first Oscar winner.  Recently, she was in the news as the 86 year old now sent her Oscar back to the Academy.  "I do not trust anyone in India to keep the statuette.  If Rabindranath Tagore's Nobel medal could be stolen from Shantiniketan, what is the guarantee my trophy would be safe?  In India, no one values such things, and we lack a tradition of maintaining our heritage and things pertaining to our culture", is what she said.   Hmmm… Rabindranath Tagore's Nobel was stolen, eh???

• TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) is a globally recognized set of nonprofit conferences conducted across the globe to disseminate "ideas worth spreading.”  TED has always selected speakers purely on the basis of the strength of the idea and has been successfully running across countries since ‘84.  TEDxChennai, that organizes TED conferences across India, got its license cancelled last week for “repeatedly flouting internationally followed rules by holding a press conference with sponsors, having a venue sponsor as a speaker on stage and speakers that were part of another conference.” The concerned parties has shrugged off the claims, given token excuses and moved on, never mind that their act has in a way, damaged that idea people carry in their heads of India. Ho hum.

• The guy sitting next to you in office – could be a girl too; or could be you yourself – but he sits too late at the office so much so that your manager has made a note of it.   Managers jokingly claim that he’s seen both when they arrive and leave the office and that he should spend more time home.  But he doesn’t.  He’s told you that the reason he sits so late in office is because he doesn’t have anything to do back at his room – here at least he facebook, youtube or just browse.   And yes, if an employee sits after 8PM at the office, company policy is that he’s provided food and transportation.  He's aware that he’s screwing the work atmosphere for everyone by doing so as other people, who do have a life outside office, are unnecessarily forced to put in late hours in front of the manager. Because of him.  Oh ya, Narayana Murthy wrote about this too.  But really, who cares?

• So another rape happened in the capital again.  And as is now the norm, social media is abuzz with messages condemning the “bastards”, suggestions of castration and nomenclature of the city as the rape capital.  People have liked, shared and commented against it.  Politicians have made the right noises.  Newspapers have sold more by providing various types of analyses. Judiciary has shifted the blame to someone else.  The Police chastised again.  Pretty soon, it would be forgotten till the cycle repeats with the next one that’ll surely come up.  So far, nobody knows what ever happened to the guwahati one and seriously, is anyone really bothered?  I mean, really bothered?  Dabangg2 releases this week.  Yippee.

  

As you can see, forget hair, it’s us that need to be straightened out.. But we don’t have the balls for it.  

But oh well, guess it’s easier and surer that hair will be straightened.

So let’s go straighten some curly hair.

written for the Sunsilk Straight Hair Experiment.