She is beautiful - Winner of Blog Junta's Editor Choice Award

For most of the girls, beauty defines and personifies an elegant face, chiseled features, sharp nose, a curvy smile, batty eyelashes and lustrous hairs. It is right to say that the inner appearance and the outer appearance that complement each other is the most beautiful pair in the world.

But there is more to life and its beauty …

Rationally being burnt is the last way anyone will consider to end his or her life, even the small light brown mark on your right face where your mother immediately applies Burnol causes you to weep and worry about dimming prospects of marriage and career. Many a times we see on road a woman or a girl who becomes the object of our glares, our blinks, our frowns and our tears and by doing so we think that we have done our duty for someone who is unlike us. For someone whose face and body have been burnt badly beauty can have little or no meaning. To live with it for the rest of their lives becomes a bane or a life that we sitting in our house and thinking about a beautiful tomorrow cannot even imagine. But Saira has proved this wrong, for me beauty is she.

Before I write anything further on this I would like to mention that I haven’t met Saira and haven’t even talked to her, all I know about her is from her story which I came across several times while I was searching for some Burn Victims documentaries for a recent awareness campaign in our locality.

Saira, was burnt callously by her fiancé, when she wanted to complete her education before moving in with him. Saira lost all her hope in life and was left with a marked face and partial vision.

(Saira with her photograph, after and before)

But who you see today is not the Saira, who was shattered by the atrocities of her own life partner who had beseeched her. Nor is she the one who sits at home to shy away from the eyes of relatives and neighbors smirking at her face. She joined a beauty salon and started her training and work there. Covered with mirrors all around, the confidence and inner power one need to face the world and help others look beautiful is not what can be put into words.

(Saira working as a beautician)

There are many Sairas, whom we do not know, who have faced the wrath of the society and their dear ones and still have risen strong showing us what beauty really means.

The will power and the strength to fight against all odds, the unlimited courage to change your life, the effort to glow outside keeping your inner self pure - is what defines a beauty for me. Women are god’s most beautiful creation.

‘Your soul, your heart,

The smile you bring,

The courage in life that you have shown,

Always smiling and not a single frown

The beauty that is above the skin

And also there inside the self

Standing strong a day and long,

Even if things went very wrong’

(Many illustrations, links and mentions in the article below are from a series of videos and knowledge I attained on the internet – the back links for the same are provided at the end. Irrespective of the instances, my views are indicative of the opinion I have on what beauty is)

Links and references:

http://felixfeatures.photoshelter.com/gallery-image/Pakistan-Burn-Victims-by-Katherine-Kiviat/G0000s0KkMpLDn5Q/I0000nNBUodqkivs

http://blogs.tribune.com.pk/story/5019/will-you-help-acid-burn-victims-smile-again/

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=8277584966&v=wall

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/3114323.stm

Check out : yahoo real beauty

Too old to be 16

I had just read a collection of short stories by Khushwant Singh, and was too much inspired to buy another one of his charming descriptions of life, when I walked into Crosswords the other day. Crosswords or be it any decent book store is my favorite stop for writing, having coffee and reliving myself. I took a checkered red stool and dragged the lousy thing to the end of the Indian fiction gallery. I sat down, and started to flip through the ‘To be bought Next’ books before I actually went for the ones I had to buy that day. I got 2 of KS, side by side – ‘Burial at the sea’ and ‘The company of women’, the others seem to have been bought by others. I had read the former longtime back, and so picked up the latter. It is my habit to read at least 20% of the book before I decide to purchase it, and this habit is simply not a reflection of my money mindedness but an activity which I engulf in for the joy of witnessing things at these particular book shops. While I was reading KS with his most vivid and utmost livid encounters, a girl of about 16 came near the rack where these books are piled up. She looked at me disdainfully (yes disdainfully is what I mean) and then knocked by my long and confused stare went away to the other part of the shop. I gave pride to myself that she will not be able to understand the story anyways, unlike me. Focusing my attention back on the book, I decided to purchase it without fulfilling my 20% reader thumb rule, there was only one copy on the stack and I had no desire to go home empty handed. While I was just giving a final look to the future buys, she came again; This time with a sleeky, kinky, and the –ky adjectives guy (‘I am the Dude, and I can puke’) , the guy looked like Leonardo Dicaprio did in Man in the Iron mask(Physique wise). He was wearing jeans that couldn’t be shredded more, I believe he would have wrapped the denim around himself and asked the tailor to stich it. How the hell does the skin breathe in that THING- I thought, The Dude had spikes, no not spikes but hair resembling to ‘Kroor Singh’ one of the fascinating Villains of a famous Hindi Tele Soap in 90s(Chandrakanta), wore some shoes equipped with pencil heels ( I used to wear those as a Kid and I am still not Old) and the T-short he wore said it all ‘ F*** the Shit out’. I thought for a moment that he could not mean it literally but then who knows. He smelled of Red Bull or some higher version of it, I had to make way and so I did. He stared at the book I was reading, a long stare.

They both sat at some distance from me, on the floor, and started searching for some magazines. I do not need to mention what kind of magazines they were reading together but I couldn’t stop myself from telling them ‘You could find all this on the internet, really no need to come here all the way’. The girl replied ‘And so can you’. I was not flabbergasted, I WAS ANGRY. Khushwant Singh is known for his candid works, and wrote very openly about Life and its stages but nowhere the acclaimed books and their very close relations to life were similar to the magazine content these guys were reading.

I got up before my mouth could blurt out some more unnecessary advices to them.

The first thing I did after coming out of the shop without the book was to call my younger brother , ‘ Can you send me the snaps of your latest tees, also any recent snap of yours will be fine’.He said ‘Are you nuts, I am in the middle of a test’ and hung up.

I just stood there asking myself whether I was nuts. I had forgotten my house keys at the store and the sun was on its way reminding me of the dawn.