Women Who Whistle

WWW – What is arguably the most common acronym for the World Wide Web, has another connotation for me.

I belong to that category of women – the ones that whistle. Hence the acronym – WWW – Women Who Whistle.

And it’s jolly good fun too.

I suppose the habit stuck to me while reading ‘Little Women’ – donkeys years back (might I add), when Jo (Josephine) is reprimanded for whistling, as it was boyish and unfeminine. Jo, the obstinate mule that she was, obviously stuck to her whistling routine, much to Meg’s annoyance.

There! I said it. I probably began whistling to annoy people.

Except that it turned out, many found it unusual / cool, and I often had requests for renditions of cat calls, loud whistles and the eternal favorite – whistling to popular Bollywood / Hollywood tracks. And since modesty is just not one of my virtues, let me add too that I am also pretty good at it still (Tilt of hat, victory bow.

Of course, there were the odd / exasperated looks I got from an entire class of aunts who tut-tutted and shook their heads in dismay, narrating stories of unladylike girls who whistled in gay abandonment. My refrain that some girls sang; my thing was whistling, didn’t really gather the endorsement I was hoping to garner. There were also constant references to that ancient poem which never failed to elicit a baleful look from me, going somewhat like this:

“A whistling maid and a crowing hen
are neither fit for God or men…”

Hearing the above was enough to make me pucker up and go into a five minute frenzy of whistling loudly, tunelessly (deliberate), accompanied by its equally cacophonic drumming of palms on any wooden surface. It sounded like a cageful of angry birds who were drumming for all their worth…Oh yeah, tit for tat was definitely in vogue back then…Pleas for putting an end to whistling fell on my intentionally deaf ears. The only thing that worked was being presented with a stick of gum or a candy bar, which seemed to do the trick – well at least for sometime…

I also bayed for anyone’s blood who proceeded to recite the following:

“Grandma told a curious thing
Boys must whistle, and girls must sing.”
Ha!

Eventually, I’ve turned out pretty fine…I can hear a multitude of aunts sighing with relief. I still whistle occasionally – I call them my happy tunes. I whistle ditties to children. I whistle in the shower (and drown out the sound of the pesky neighborhood kids who scream like banshees in the park while playing footie). I also whistle to my Labrador, who cocks his ear to one side and looks at me from the corner of his eye, a half-amused, droll expression plastered on his face. Whistling is severely underrated, I think. Perhaps it is the sheer knowledge that what one can whistle, the iPod can do a note-to-note perfect rendition…Maybe there ought to be a law making whistling compulsory at schools – like they do at La Gomera, a Spanish island where the government is trying to keep the national whistling language, el Silbo, alive...

A recent invite for an audition to the country’s premier whistling organization, was an honor...which unfortunately now has to be put aside for a later month, thanks to the cast on my leg. Drat! Just my luck!

But as is said, I’ll be back. Like the wind (pun intended)...

Getting into one's hair

For as long as I can remember, I have had a complex relationship with my hair.

I have my fair share of “dreadful” hair days even today, when nothing on earth can possibly drag me out of the house, programs of wine tasting / shopping notwithstanding.

Then I have the days when all I can think of is going the bald way, or getting them shorn like new army recruits. Between these days of insanity, I also have the my-hair-refuses-to-grow-no-matter-what-product-I-use-on-it days, the cribbing-about-my-lackluster-hair days, and the plain I-just-don’t-like-my-hair days, interspersed with the four times a year the-jerk-at-the-salon-cut-my-hair-too-short moan.

Way back in school, I was resigned to my curly, unmanageable mop of hair, held in place with what could only be a zillion hair clips, and which would, invariably fly pell-mell, when I would shake my ringlets. An incident in my secondary primary school is still etched in my otherwise muddled, amnesiac, absent-minded head, is of my classmates, who, for want of a pen stand, decided that the curls on my hair were the perfect place to keep their pens / pencils. Imagine my surprise (and the teacher’s displeasure) when a couple of pencils and / or pens (I fail to remember which), darted across my desk onto the cold, tiled floor, when I tossed my mane….distracting the entire class from a surprise test…let’s just say that I had more to worry about that day than just my poor score at the test…

College was the time which unleashed all my pent-up creativity with my hair. Styles came and went. Bangs, pony-tails, feather-cuts, pinned-back - you name it. Various hues also passed their fair share across my otherwise, natural chestnut-brown hair. (Long live hair mascaras – that was our favorite refrain). One evening, when my name was boomed on the PA System, announcing that I had a visitor, I came sprinting down the stairs, two at a time. As good luck would have it, I met a chum on the way, who intimated me about my father’s arrival – her one look at my brinjal-colored hair had me sprinting back upstairs to my room, dash to the shower, shampoo and towel in hand. 3.5 minutes later, I was transformed from hippie hell’s own aubergine-haired child to presentable teenager. Whew! That I had a serious case of the sneezes, oh well! That’s quite another story. Atishooooo!!!

And then one day in college, I decided – enough was enough. Curly was ugly. Period.

Chop chop chop, the stylist snipped “em off with barely-concealed glee. I hoped they would grow – glossy and poker-straight, and look straight from the pages of the fashion glosses we pored over for hours. I couldn’t have been more wrong! The hair grew back – oh yes. BUT CURLIER THAN EVER! Much to my utter disgust.

Next in line was the last solution left in the book - permanent straightening. What followed were the mandatory visits to nearby salons of repute. The decision had been made – curly was no longer what I wanted. It was poker-straight hair, all the way.

And no – even the teeny-weeny wave wouldn’t do.

The day dawned – appointments had been made well in order. The night before, I stared and stared at the mirror, asking myself if I would miss my curls, and all that tossing around of ringlets…but my mind was set. Punctual me arrived bang on time…

5 hours in the salon, and when I emerged, gone were the curls and waves. I had given the no-no to the stylist, who insisted that feathered bangs would look grrrrrreat on me. The glossy hair all over my head felt nothing less than great. However, I was still uncertain about how I looked.

With unsure steps, I descended the stairs. It being evening time, the small box-shaped market was teeming with people. While crossing a display window at a jeweller’s, I glimpsed a young woman, walking with unsure steps. Her hair looked great though.

She smiled back. A dimple sparkled. Her cheeks flushed, she tossed her tresses slightly.

And walked on, a spring in her step, renewed confidence written boldly over her face.