The Lost ‘hair’
Cinema, is thy name paradox?
The edifice of cinema is built on the success at box office. If the hero fails to pull in the crowd, the film sinks without a trace yet nothing touches the macho hype surrounding the hero. He rises like the Phoenix from the dead. After all, in the first place ,he only attracted the financiers like a magnet to fund the project.
A visit of an aunty or a grandma, from the neighbourhood, is all it takes to stir a hornet’s nest- in this case a balding man’s nightmare! Instead of confining themselves to any other harmless topics, the small talk veers off course and lands unerringly on bald heads, like a guided missile.
The speed and passion with which the matter is discussed depends on personal likes and dislikes. If the host’s son is showing signs of early balding, sympathy and remedies are dished out, when he is on the right page. If he is on the wrong page, the same sympathy is extended without forgetting to slip in loaded comments like ‘my sons have such a beautiful curly hair’ or ‘my son-in-law’s hair looks like a ram’s wool’ etc; These talk do not end even if the concerned gentleman walks in.
Pushed into the realm of baldness, he has no other choice except consulting the App - Lost ‘hair’, to search for hidden biological clues in the genetic jungle. The App has an added advantage too; it can help in settling the family dispute arising out of baldness – whether this genetic misbehaviour is an endowment from father’s or mother’s lineage?
This App is driven by grandparents & great grandparents, who assiduously climb their respective ancestral family trees to find the root causes. The search results in throwing up an occasional exception of a bald head in the family tree. Thus the person going or gone ‘bald’ has no other recourse than accepting their grand wisdom: It has been running in the lineage and be proud to be an exception!
Apart from the psychological bearing, the baldness has seeded the growth of ‘hair rising’ solutions – traditional and modern medicines and techniques. Doctors turn agriculturists to transplant hair patches, like a gardener manicuring the lawns.. Cosmetics and pharmaceutical companies churn out coloured lotions in exquisitely designed containers.
Having set aside the dispute and the disillusionment, the affected individual can now indulge in the task of identifying the different types of headgears (baldies & wig walahs) walking around; surreptitiously and without any intent to hurt anyone’s feeling. As a guarantee, he could proclaim a statement that the observer himself falls in one of the categories about to be described, just to take the sting out of the operation!
The first thing that comes striking in the mind is the skating rink type. The pate rivals the smooth ice surface of the rink and even under a microscope it reveals no such signs of hairs or their roots ever having been there. This type of bald men might feel a little happy to know that a phrase ‘as bald as a coot’ is also in usage, even if one does not know what it exactly means. Another way to look at the bald pate will be from a religious angle, the custom of ‘tonsuring’ one’s hair at the altar of a favourite deity as an offering! Alas! The tonsured hair grows back to get ready for another offering whereas no such miracle is possible in the case of baldness.
Horse shoe or Niagara Falls type has the baldness spread over almost the entire cranium except the lower head portion, spanning the temple to back of the neck with a sideburns beside each ear. Since this meagre crop cannot be swept back to cover the baldness, the hairs usually hang strait and short. The top view, if the person permits, will resemble exactly the sight you get when flying over the horse shoe falls of Niagara. If this type of baldy has snow white hair, then it will resemble a frozen Niagara.
Lagoon type baldness occurs, when a patch of hair runs like a bund, from ear to ear, on a person who is yet to fully acquire the Niagara type baldness.
The solar eclipse type has the present and counting hairs covering the total head except in the central circular region on the rear part of the cranium. That shiny bald pate surrounded by the healthy hairs resembles the disc of the sun with the visible corona, during a total eclipse. The size and location on the head of the baldy might vary adding variety to this type balding process.
The swept-over type baldness occurs when shiny bald spots comes into being among a forest of healthy hair. A clever ploy by the sufferer is to sweep over the available stock of hairs, from front to back or sideways, to camouflage the exposed cranium as much as possible. Being a self conscious person, for whom the appearance of hair matters, this ritual of combing is as an involuntary action as breathing. This makes one to stand in front of a mirror and constantly worry about strands of hair.
By quirk of genetic confusion, a partial solar eclipse type and the swept-over type occur together leaving that unfortunate male more miserable.
In Caricature type baldness, the hairline recedes beyond the crown leaving the crop of hair to appear like a 2D cartoon character, in case the person has casuarinas type of needle like hairs.
Any person who accepts that going bald is natural and learns to sport the signature of the family tree gracefully will be the happiest man as far as the fallen hairs are concerned.
The desperate ones can still compile a list of yoga gurus and religious pontiffs to get a clue as to how to grow and keep a pate full of hairs! They can pass on this knowledge to the next generation, for full benefit, and in the meanwhile try to save their own standing crop from further loss.
Anyone who believes and attempts to go against the earlier grand wisdom feels disillusioned at the end – losing money as well as hairs. For all the bald men, there is this consolation: there is no chance for the feet and palms going bald – thank god, hairs don’t grow there!
The scratching of one's bald head is a unique feeling and a person with thick hairs cannot even dream to experience that ecstasy! Instead of splitting the remaining hairs on your head, find a reason to be happy, however small that may be.
For all the bald men, there is this consolation: there is no chance for the feet and palms going bald – thank god, hairs don’t grow there! More often than not, healthy growth is assured in the side burns, beard and moustache – twirl the hairs and forget the bald head!
The edifice of cinema is built on the success at box office. If the hero fails to pull in the crowd, the film sinks without a trace yet nothing touches the macho hype surrounding the hero. He rises like the Phoenix from the dead. After all, in the first place ,he only attracted the financiers like a magnet to fund the project.
The first glance of the chopping knife falls on the glam-heroine, forgetting that she delivered the ‘bare minimum’ performance required, spoke in borrowed voice, , flew to foreign locations and danced on snow in flimsy attire, while the hero stood by heavily swathed in thermals as if he had just been discharged from the hospital with a multiple fracture.
If this is not performance what else she could have done? The glam-babe wonders after getting the axe for the next film proposed with the same hero. The grapevine in the industry picks up this weak signal and amplifies it – the heroine gets tagged as an ‘unlucky number’.
Next in line stands the screen play writer, for no fault of his. He came up with a good screen play write up. The macho hero, the director and producer, under duress, took turns to maul the script word by word – introducing punch dialogues, (which stood like a sore thumb even while writing it) killing the narrative to include a few foreign locales, operating upon the script to provide opening for exotic stunts in a story portraying a loving personality.
By that time the shooting is completed, he somehow senses getting another chance will be a million dollar question. He wondered how an over cooked plot like this could hit the cinemas hoping to reach the box office?
He got his answer and the axe together, after the film did a Houdini in the theatres! He only felt guilty for not allowing the character of the heroine to over shadow the hero’s – which he and the heroine could have paired and performed better.
The part played by the Music director is slightly different. The music director and the song writer work on the situations explained at the composing sessions. The gifted musician builds upon the mood and the words, plans the harmony of instruments to dovetail with the voice that will render the songs. In this effort, every one collectively nursed the song along, as a brain child of the team.
Along the path to success he also had to resist the pressure to engage a particular singer whether that voice suited the tune and genre or not. May be these are the reasons, sometimes the movie did well at the box office to become a musical hit, even if the on-screen presentation was pure murder.
One formula for success has been put in place. Filmywood latches on to it and producers make a beeline to the office of the music director and sign him up to work in their proposed films. Half a dozen films release with music scored by this ‘hit’ music director and team.
After one or two flops, the soul stirring music of the composer suddenly finds ways to fall only on deaf ears. The producers of the dud films have no time to analyze the cause – yesterday hero paired with tomorrow’s heroine, a story shorter than a ‘haiku’ poem or out of sync animated scenes. The ‘hit’ team gets axed, as if music alone sank the film. The composer and his team are on notice in Filmywood.
Fortunately for this talented team, a long forgotten movie makes it to the theatres, after coming out of an extended hibernation due to schedule and financial constraints. The delay puts the story of the film back by a few years, turning out to be a blessing in disguise; a neat story with a fresh outlook, good acting, and lilting music etc working in its favour. The music director and his team begin a second innings.
For the discerning, the quality of the music was one and the same – in the first innings or the second. One thing that escapes axing is the penchant for astrology and numerology in Filmywood. Mainstream cinema is yet to learn to do without the ‘pundits’ of these sciences. Yes, cinema is stranger than the fiction it dishes out!
