My father, tall and well-built but with a bare upper lip, had watched my interest in the matter and asked me, "I see you have a fancy for mustache, don't you?"
When I nodded my head he continued, "The relationship between the mustache and the wearer is too difficult for you to understand. Forget it, OK?" he thumped my back.
"Why don't you have one, Papa?"
"I didn't feel the need for one." He dismissed me.
For reasons I could not understand, I had felt a compelling need for one and watched films and photos of all my heroes of that period with particular interest.
Finally, I selected the broad and straight mustache of Clark Gable, one of my favorite heroes. I watched the mirror every day to see any perceptible presence of hair to indulge in my fancy.
The whiskers took their own sweet time to show up. Impatient and burning with rage, I yelled, "Come on, show up. I won't eat you up."
The fuzz, probably dormant, heard my shouting and showed up the very next day. I jumped in the bathroom and started meticulous planning to grow a mustache the way I wanted. I showed off the growth on my lip to my classmates and stood them a treat, but they showed no interest in the matter.
My happiness was short-lived as the whiskers took a long time before I could trim them to any shape. I wished I had some fertilizer to make them grow faster and taller.
After six months, when my father bought me a shaving set, I bought a pair of German scissors, known for their sharp edges, out of my pocket money and hid them in a drawer well beyond the reach of my parents and my elder brother who followed in my father's footsteps.
One fine day, when I had enough material to start my operation, I closed the bathroom door, trimmed the whiskers to a flat shape, smoothed the edges with singular care and made a neat line on top and at the bottom. Finally, I took out the photo of Clark Gable, compared the mustaches and smiled with satisfaction. I was not even half the size of my hero, but my mustache matched his, almost.
I had nourished the new whiskers with consummate care and took immense pride in them. I reveled when my classmates called me Gable and girls appreciated my taste and complimented me for my efforts. My mush won the admiration of everyone, except my elder brother, who instead of sharing my enthusiasm, paraded me in front of his buddies as if I were a circus animal. "Look, my brother thinks he is a cine star," he said and made me look like the town idiot. Since he outweighed me, I pocketed my pride. The more he made a mockery of my new acquisition, the more my resolve grew to keep it in excellent shape.
My relationship with my brother, cordial till then, had been ruined, and the chasm between us widened as we grew up. It continued till he finished college and left to join the civil service. While leaving home, he presented me with a new razor. "You better shave it off as you look like a clown," he said.
After his departure, I could indulge in my fancy without any let or hindrance and reveled in its growth and the attention of my schoolmates particularly the girls.
After college, I joined the navy which didn't permit a mustache without a beard. I hated to grow a beard as much as I hated to shave off my mustache. Left with no choice, I started to shave off the mustache. While I was halfway through, one of my seniors caught me and paraded me in front of everyone. It was part of the initiation process, a euphemism for ragging for new recruits, and I could do sweet little about it except to bear the indignity of going around with half a mustache. My seniors had a hearty laugh for the next two days and never gave me an opportunity to shave off the half left. When I finally said good-bye to my loving friend, I couldn't help shedding copious tears. Since then I had found my image was nothing much to look at and looked down on it.
When I was in my mid thirties, the navy had changed the regulations and permitted officers and men to grow mustaches. Like a man released after serving a long-term, I literally jumped with joy and renewed my association with my dear mustache. Unfortunately, my wife delivered an ultimatum. "You better choose between me and your mustache," she said in a stentorian voice.
"What's wrong?"
"The bristles hurt when you kiss me. Off with it," she said with finality. It was Hobson's choice, and I stayed with a clean upper lip for three decades until I arrived in Orlando and met Bill, a family friend of my children.
Bill, a tall, handsome fellow, had a most lustrous mouth growth- a handlebar mustache that looked immaculate and showed the immense care its owner had taken in its maintenance. At every opportune moment, he called himself as a sexually dynamic Mustached American living in Orlando, a city declared Mustache-friendly and encouraged people with stache passions.
"You see this handlebar," he said twirling his lip sweater. "In our club, we call it a hirsute appendage of the upper lip with graspable extremities."
While I admired his handlebar and its extremities, he continued, "I can't stand you guys with bare upper lip. In our club we think all bare lipped mortals as dimwits suffering from BULD a debilitating disease."
"What's this BULD?"
"It's Bare Upper Lip Disorder, terrible. We think these fellows are fit for treason and stratagems."
"Look, I've been with bare lips for four decades."
"I wonder how you survived in this world, and I'm sure you missed out on women," he said.
Bill, an authority on all lip sweaters, soup strainers and mouth umbrellas, had shown me pictures of people with different varieties of mustaches and explained at length how the Mustached Americans are growing in clout and influence. He had also shown me videos which depicted some charlatans masquerading as Mustached Americans for various reasons.
"I want you to watch this video clip. 'Occupy your upper lip' movement is gaining strength in Chicago."
He had informed me of the American Mustache Institute and advised me to start a mush and compete for the award in memory of Robert Goulet. "You have a sense of humor if not a voice like his," he said.
"But I'm not an American."
"No matter, this year the award has gone to a Canadian and soon it will be an international award," he assured me.
It was a Eureka moment I was waiting for, and I brooked no further opposition from my wife and children.
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