Hairy Tale

Yet another day, yet another morning. I stand before the mirror, razor in hand. I squeeze the shaving foam bottle but nothing comes out. Only last week I bought this stupid thing! Gone already. I stare at the face in mirror, with its nightly crop ready for harvesting. A crop that will feed nobody, and yet cost me a fortune over my lifetime, shaving it daily.

Why do we have hair? What is the great design of God or Nature (take whatever you like) in giving us humans this disgusting growth of hair everywhere? Speaking of design, the designer should have spent some time testing the prototypes, before launching the product in market on such a huge scale. I don't think it is such a great design after all. Which engineer/architect worth his salt would design recreational areas so close to waste disposal?

Some may argue that this hairy growth is a remnant from evolution. When our forefathers were bored with swinging in trees, they stepped out of the jungle and started building homes. That’s why their tails dropped off. No use having a tail, when you are not swinging from branch to branch. By the same reasoning, hair too should have vanished long ago. In that era hair was the protection from weather. When we started building homes, wearing clothes, having air-conditioned homes/offices/cars, what's the use of having hair?

Look at the economic impact of hair. Every day men (a large section of them anyway) have to shave their faces. Now calculate the money spent on razors, scissors, shaving foam, gels etc. Then every month, the usual hair cut/trim. Add to that the amount spent by women on hair removing creams, epilators, hair dyes, hairsprays, hair oils, combs, brushes, stylers, and what not! Add to that the value of man-hours lost in shaving/maintaining hair.

If you add all these amounts spent yearly by men & women from all over the world on account of hair, I am sure it will equal the annual budget of a medium sized nation. Hundreds of thousands of schools, hospitals, libraries, homes for the aged etc. can be managed in that amount, if somehow we could get rid of hair. Some poor nation could use that money to buy a few hundred atom bombs, hydrogen bombs, fighters, bombers, carriers etc. for welfare of its citizens.

See what hair is costing humanity? I am all for developing a hair-bomb using all this money. Drop the bomb and have a permanently hair-free world!

Some poets may oppose this idea. But once all the women in the world are bald, the poets will start writing poems about shiny domes, I am sure.

(c) Rajendra Pradhan