Beauty or Pretty?

Whats in a name?

Disavowal: The following or in fact the entire blog is a part of the conversations that I have with the most intimate person i have come across; with whom i share and care, with whom i argue yet agree, whom i admire but not yet fully understood but sincerely wish would not desert me, come what may...and Who is that?.. its My-Self!

And Ohhh..the title, i have nothing against Loreal or Garnier!

Flashback begins

      ‘She had always been short and fat and slightly bent. Her face was a criss-cross of wrinkles running from everywhere to everywhere. No, we were certain she had always been as we had known her. Old, so terribly old that she could not have grown older, and had stayed at the same age for twenty years. She could never have been pretty; but she was always beautiful.’ “How can the author call his grandmother, a beauty?”, turning to the class after reading out from Kushwant Singh’s  ‘The portrait of a lady’, asked our English teacher in my 11^th standard.

         Honestly, i was unaware of the subtle difference and eagerly awaited the answer. I am happy that i hadn’t wandered in class that day. What came next was not a simple answer but a profound lesson.

Flashback ends.

Flash begins

       Today, after some sessions of post-mortem i came to believe in this. Being pretty is a chance but to be a beauty is a choice. As always, chance deserts us someday but choice stays on. If the former is being, the latter is becoming. The companions that each of these attributes bring along is also varied. One has pride, false friends, pomp and show in the entourage but the other has wisdom, truth and goodness as retinue showing up at the venue. Now I feel better poised to understand what Keats meant by 'A thing of beauty is a joy for ever'. As an after thought, Creams might help us for a while to stay pretty but Dreams definitely would make us a beauty.

       Hollywood seems to have understood the difference. They made Beautiful mind and Pretty Woman (both are awesome ones!...movies, i mean!) but sadly the comprehension ceases there.
          “Beauty may or may not lie in the eyes of the beholder, but ugliness most certainly lay in the 

hearts of those who set the yardsticks of beauty”.


Flash continues...