Tandarin

This is the kind of post that would either have you in splits or have you thinking that the positions of my brain and something else have somehow interchanged.

I started shaving (my beard) when I was in Std. IX (13 years of age) but I would usually go to the barber once in 3 or 4 months to get the job done. After joining college I bought my own shaving kit but I would use it only in case of an "emergency" or when it just caught my fancy to shave - just for fun.

I still continued going to the barber and would get shaved only once in 2 or 3 or 4 months (usually tied the job with a haircut).

My friends never got that. They would repeatedly ask me whether I was inconvenienced by the bushy beard. It never troubled me, though, and I never got why they all thought so.

Apparently, stubbles itch may probably make one feel awkward. Somehow, I never felt that way.

I thought that whole thing about regular shaving making one's skin and beard hard were hogwash and I was special and everyone else was just going crazy setting a lot of store by urban legend.

Then a barber told me one day that it was *very* easy to shave off my beard (I told him it was around 3 months old). That got me thinking. After all, here was a guy with experience, and he ought to be right.

And then I got married, and thereby lost the freedom to "maintain" my beard as I would really have liked to.

Actually, in a very narcissistic sort of way, I actually liked to grow my beard for long periods of time just to gloat at the look of surprise on people's faces when I got it shaved off.

And I can't do this any more now. I'm now like any average Joe, shaving my beard on my own. Ah, the drudgery! You know, it's quite a pleasurable experience sitting down on a reclining chair, all tucked up, listening to some olde worlde music and getting royal treatment.

And to top it all, most supermarkets do not stock the kind of blade that goes on my nearly 10-year old razor, a Gillette SensorExcel World Cup Edition (1998 vintage with the blue-coloured grip strips rather than the standard-issue grey strips). They would rather have me spend a few hundred bucks and get a new razor and a new set of blades.

So much for the backward compatibility we pathetic little enterprise software designers and engineers have to ensure with every freakin' piece of code we write. Luckily, I ultimately found a set of blades that would work with my razor and I was all set to go.

So these days I'm doing the job on my own, religiously, five times a week. And horror of horrors, my stubble now starts to itch!

What have I done to myself?! I've absolutely managed to spoil something so pure and innocent and made it into this irritating monster, and it is definitely *not* going to change for the better.

Oh!!! What a life......