Mooch Nahin to Kuch Nahin…

MOOCH NAHIN TO KUCH NAHIN….

‘Saar, ab ya to mundwa do ya dye karwa do..bahut safed ho gayee hai mooch” (Your mouche is greying very rapidly…either dye it black or shave it off…to look younger). My barber, Saleem, has this to say everything I visit him.

“Have you ever…? Never ever??”

This is a question I am often asked when a routine conversation with new friends (or sometimes old ones) eventually veers towards my moustache. And whether I have ever shaved it off.

There is nothing unusual about my ‘mooch/ mucchi’, as they say in Hindi.

Except, that I really love it. Really really.

And it has been there since the longest that I can remember. It forms a prominent part of my face, so prominent, that once, many years ago, when my brother-in-law saw me for the first time (courtesy a passport-sized pic), his immediate reaction was, “he seems all mooch, no face”. Well, not that I had such a huge mooch, but I have always sported an upper lip growth which I have loved and, without sounding immodest, most people remember it as trademark me. Rather fondly too. So I would assume.

‘No never ever’ was basically my response to the question whether I had ever shaved off my mooch. Never have. Never ever will. (I am hoping I don’t have to).

Hence, this blog.

A blog idea also triggered initially by a rather natty corporate type 40-something neighbor who walked into the building society meeting the other day, looking rather sheepish. He looked ‘different’, to say the least. Initially, I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with him. He was seemingly very uncomfortable with whatever he had done. Then the penny dropped. He had shaved-off his moustache. “Hey did you shave off your moustache??” I asked him, rather incredulously. Yes, am I not looking seven years younger, he asked. You have almost shaved off your manhood, I almost blurted out.

It wasn’t about the shaving or keeping the moustache that had bugged me. But the fact that he had done it hoping that a ‘chikna’ look would add more life years. Or reduce his actual age. Unrelated, but I remembered an unforgettable dialogue from an eminently forgettable Sanjay Dutt movie . Here, Dutt is chiding his side-kick, who is about to blow some candle-flames off his birthday cake. “ Birthday celebrate kya kar raha hai…pata nahi kya tera ek aur saaal kum ho gaya hai”…(why are you celebrating a birthday (you fool), don’t you realize you have lost one more year of your life?”

I wondered if shaving off a moustache meant you actually get to alter your birth certificate.

I noticed asimilar ‘looks’ of desperation while watching the IPL not so long back. ‘Shaz’Ravi Shastri. In his avatar. Fairer, meaner and…err…umm..Younger?? He may have thought his new, mooch-less look would mean he looked chikna and younger. But, here, even his staunchest admirers (of the past) , me being one of them, (I still love watching his Australia performance which won him the Audi decades ago) was unwilling to make a concession. (If there are any such fans of the mooch-less Ravi, please do write in).

The list is endless; the list of such not-so-young men clutching at their youth, by the last remaining hair of their non-existent upper lip hair,seems to be growing by the day. This list also includes many of those who have taken life memberships of the (Hair) Weavers association. Viru and Harsha lead the brigade.

In South Mumbai, as you drive the Babulnath temple, a portrait of a suited booted ‘suddenly turned young’ man greets you. Thats Arun Lal. former Cricketer. Played cricket before Viru was born. But, ‘Mera Hair Dye tumhare hair dye sey kaala kaisey’.

But then, to each his own. Maybe I am wrong. Even Darwin could be wrong. So what if Bachchan said “Moochein ho, to Natthulal jaisi”.

Maybe the life span of the mooch just got shorter.

For the uninitiated:

The word “moustache” derives from 16th century French moustache, which in turn is derived from the Italian mostaccio (14th century), dialectal mustaccio (16th century), from Medieval Latin mustacium (8th century), Medieval Greek moustakion (attested in the 9th century), which ultimately originates as a diminutive of Hellenistic Greek mustax (mustak-) “moustache”, probably derived from Hellenistic Greek mullon “lip”.

ends