Dorian Gray

Now that I am no longer a child, I can see, that God is the God who can see the black and the white and the grey, too, and He dances on the grey! Grey is okay.”― C. Joy Bell C.

Recently my childhood friend decided to blend with nature. She said she would begin by being natural; she started life afresh with Almighty’s blessings. She was brave enough to give away every strand of her hair that was coloured and that had helped her remain a Dorian Gray. With time her hair grew back once again, but she has remained firm and valiant in her decision of not colouring her hair. She has sported a new look and definitely looks wise and gifted. Though my friend grew comfortable with the situation, the world around her responded in numerous ways to show their pleasure and displeasure; many felt that she  looked as good as an eminent personality while a few others could count her expressions  and say that she needed a grooming time. I have learnt and understood that people give more importance to what they see rather than what they hear. The responses had been similar when my young cousin turned grey, when my brother and sister in law felt that it was an awful lot of time spent in hiding veracity.

When a blonde person greys, it is easily acceptable as the grey colour does not make any difference in the looks of the person, but when an Indian grows older, he feels that the grey strands of hair are a reflection of depleting youth and gray matter. It also makes one contemplate the heroics of diminishing youth.

My father’s family consists of the healthiest people who have never felt sick. Their fitness has been illustrated in their vigour, enthusiasm, healthy skin and their demeanour, but the only drawback in the lineage was the untimely greying of hair, which has been attributed to the growing wisdom exactly like the wisdom tooth which arrives late in life.

I was one of the offsprings who had inherited the gene to grey early. The first grey hair, which was visible in my early thirties turned me pale making me pine and feel sorrowful, but the second one taught me to reflect on the situation. Some said it was the bore well water that had initiated greying owing to lower magnesium levels. Thereafter, I began using the collected potable municipal water with sufficient nutrients to avoid getting any more greys. The exaggerated thought process produced a low appetite and I began losing the black hair. The grey curls stood stronger than ever.

The grey ones started growing on the scalp at an enormous rate, I was thankful as it wasn’t above the forehead. Slowly the greys multiplied and I resorted to a hair colour which triggered the remaining black ones to change to grey. I had reconciled to the situation that I was not very young and greying of strands was a part of life. One of the months when I had a busy schedule, I could not colour my hair. I was correcting books in the classroom of a school where I worked for. Harshal, a student from the seventh grade loomed in as he brought in a few more books for correction. As a habit, he smiled at me and asked, “Ma'am, do you need anymore books for correction? I looked up at his face, it  was pallid with fear, he said, “ma’am, you are growing old, you have a lock of grey”. I felt my world of make belief burst, I said I have them, the curious child asked a few more questions, but I had to change the topic and drive him away. Though the conversation shook me, I could do nothing till the weekend owing to the numerous responsibilities at the workplace and home. At home, when my son saw the grey strands on my forehead, he gave me a hug and whispered, “Are you going to die”? I had to assure him that I was young enough not to die. I told him gently that I was gradually gaining the gray power of professionalism and leadership.

My explanation cheered my son, and thereafter whenever I would colour my hair he would ask me to perk up my gray power. As I grew older, the zest to keep myself young and going kept reducing my gray power. When I joined the engineering college, the students kept me on my toes. There were all kinds of students, the intelligent ones, the hardworking lot, the procrastinators, the visual learners, the auditory ones, the ones who loved art, music and so on. The college subjected us to two months of vigorous training in technology, education, counselling and many other fields to help us gain the confidence in handling these students.

 The student class of seventy was the most difficult in understanding, but my long experience in education helped me bond quickly with them. My grey strands were well covered habitually though now I felt it was reasonable to have a few grey wisps visible. When I first addressed them as dear children, they burst laughing. I asked them smilingly, “shall I address you as students?   There was pin drop silence, and they said, “We don’t mind it ma’am? Slowly the students and my colleagues got used to me addressing the students as children; they on their part began feeling more comfortable owing to the grey power I had. They would speak to me about everything in the world, on my part I realised that at every age people need to be understood as human beings. It was a difficult time for the students to accept the situation, though they were the best at the school level, they still had teething troubles in a professional college. They had to face the world as individuals, make everyone realise that they had grown competent, display their skills, respect their seniors, and many other times it was facing a traumatic loss of a dear one. Language was a field where they could express themselves wholeheartedly. Now when I climbed the stairs, or had a lot of books, and other teaching aids, I had my students accompanying me, climbing up the high stairs or waving at me when I would hop into the car to go home. My grey strands no longer terrified me of aging; in fact these have turned into the gray matter for the grey power that paved my way to be a Dorian Gray

“Never let hard lessons harden your heart; the hard lessons of life are meant to make you better, not bitter.” ― Roy T. Bennett

**Dorian Gray as an Idiom:

Someone who never appears to age. In his novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde told the story of the titlecharacter who made a Faustian arrangement with an artist to paint his portrait, the proviso being that Gray would notage, but the face in his painting would.