Hairing Differences

Those who have an aesthetic distaste for proverbial cheesy saas-bahu serials on TV (and the faux rural Rajasthani feudal sagas that currently dominate non-English language TRPs) are naturally quite taken aback by the constant bombardment of images of a flamboyantly flocculent man in a saffron dhoti and little else.

He has jumped into their consciousness via channels that are more the preserve of the suited than the hirsute, so a culture shock was inevitable. Moreover, he seems to be (h)airily unaware of the fact that shaven chests are so de rigeuer these days for a cool quotient that even Bollywood’s most profoundly pileous pecs have been totally defuzzed.

It would seem that the shaggy sage truly exists on some other terrestrial plane —read, non-English TV channels as opposed to the relatively cosier worldspeak of social networking. That could have been tolerable, only he has also somehow ended up redefining the word jetsetter, that too in a not-altogether aspirational way. Worse still, his hordes of followers, all hailing from unknown, unsung, and best forgotten small town India, have snatched away the term Babalog as well.

The privileged originals, obviously outnumbered and most probably unwilling to open their club to vernacular membership, may consider renaming themselves the BBMlog instead. It will take a while for that term to be commandeered by the masses.

If it does not come in the way of his yogic exercises, the unrepentantly bristly guru could consider a more comprehensive cover-up to win over the aesthetically sceptical, given his current predicament. After all, today’s opinion-making, social-networked classes are as suspicious of men in loincloths (orange or otherwise) as Winston Churchill was in the previous century.