How to Go Bald in Style

A Requiem for Receding Hairlines

Today is my friend’s birthday (a very close comrade) and if I could buy him the perfect gift, I would gift him a magic potion for his MPB problem or simply ‘Male Pattern Baldness’.

My buddy started balding at the syrupy age of sixteen. In the sunshine years of his life, when we all stood before our mirrors, affectionately examining our emerging whiskers, he stood there anxiously fingering his barren temples. Like most mere mortals, his initial reaction to this impending disaster was one of immense and soul-stirring self-pity. For a time, he spent sleepless nights pondering over the whys and wherefores of his unlucky destiny, wondering why it had to be him and his poor pate alone.

Being however, a man of enormous resilience and coaxed by my inspirational hair-raising sermons, he decided that it was valor in the mind to take arms against a sea of troubles that to suffer the slings and arrows of an outrageous tragedy. He stood up to fights the menace of baldness that the flesh is heir… hair… too.

He purchased herbal hair oils, ayurvedic hair creams, and imported hair vitalizers and massaged them into his scalp each morning and night, outwards from the crown and not inwards from the forehead, as the label erringly advised - with a religious fervor that must have impressed even the man Upstairs. Come to think of it. I wonder if He ever had to face such a ‘hair-loss' situation!!!

The results were not exactly gratifying but he didn’t give up. After all, the number of hair strands in the bathroom following each bath had registered an remarkable decline of four and a half percent in a month. Besides, he could always try the other herbal brand I’d seen at the chemist's shop, the one with the glossy cover or the green concoction in the shapely bottle or… or… It took him one year and ten thousand rupees to realize the grave truth about hair oils and hair creams - they make you poor, they give you pimples but as a rule, they never give you hair.

A friend suggested seeing a celebrated trichologist at Bangkok, who had found a connection between sex and hair-loss and had become world famous reviving hairlines of the rich and famous but my friend having already spent a huge fortune vetoed this. One of his relatives recommended a hair-growing pilgrimage to a temple in Srilanka known for fulfilling all bodily needs while an Astrologer suggested getting the bald patches licked by a cow – apparently, a foolproof method for generating new hair but this suggestion too had to be discarded for want of an understanding and obliging cow!

During these days of unsuccessful experimentation, he had also honed up his skills of improvisation – he had developed strategic haircut patterns to camouflage the bald spots and give the barren thatch a ‘fuller’ appearance and if the situation demanded, he also wore a wig.

I shall be unfair if I do pause at this point of the chronicle to pay respects to his venerable 50 something barber who being bald himself understood the gravity of the situation. A word of advice to all balding brethren on the choice of a barber – the balder, the better. The barber who has all the hair on his head intact views a thinning plumage solely as a lucrative financial prospect. The bald barber, on the other hand, having himself been a victim to the vagaries of his disappointing genes beholds his customer with an air of compassion and views the task ahead of him as a philanthropic deed and not a materialistic undertaking. Well, barber or not - slowly but surely, he resigned himself to the terrible fact that his baldness had come to stay.

For those among you who find yourselves in the same boat, here are a few time-tested techniques to reduce the psychological trauma that accompanies this common but deeply affecting malady;

• Stop Worrying. Stress causes hair loss.

• Grow a beard. It detracts attention away from your head.

• Utilize remaining hair to cover maximum area of your bare scalp. Caution - while doing this, always stay away from ceiling fans.

• Stop being ashamed of your baldhead. Accept gracefully, the fact that your hairline and neckline are working towards a merger. Consider your prematurely bald head a distinguishing feature of your personality – after all, not everyone is lucky enough to have one.

• To counter acid remarks about your empty dome, have a few humorous answers handy. Try saying a bald head is like heaven – there is no dy(e)ing, Or say God created few perfect heads, the rest he covered with hair. Make sure they appear spontaneous. For best results, rehearse before a mirror.

• And when a women makes references to your bald head, put on your deadliest “bedroom-eyes” sexy look and say, “you know, bald men are different!” For all you know, she might want to verify the veracity of your declaration!

Happy Balding!