Real beauty … through my eyes!

Beauty is talked about and mentioned so often, yet everyone’s perception of it differs from person to person, almost like a fingerprint…unique in its own way.

I have my own perception, but to be honest, this has changed over the years from a beautiful portrait or painting to gorgeous looking women to what it is now. I don’t perceive beauty as being physical all the time anymore. There are beautiful people, beautiful sights and beautiful moments.

A person classifies beauty based on appearances and, of course, on what is on the inside, which sounds very clichéd but is very true.

To me, a beautiful person is a woman, who does not work in a 9 to 5 job but from 9am to 2pm and 5pm to 10:30pm, and also has to be called in to work at random hours of the night. Nothing slows her down as she has done this year in and year out. She has to do everything for everyone, whether it be sorting out car registration or being awake before you leave the house for work so she can get a glimpse of you. Her love is unconditional. Her love is maternal. This woman barely sleeps but is awake to everything around her. She can sense tension and can tell when something is wrong or bothering you. She never complains whether it be, her aching feet or her aching heart that misses her husband, who was there by her side for so many years only to be taken away. The children might think they lost their father but that does not compare to the loss of a soul mate; it trumps us no matter what. Yet, this woman lives on, doing whatever it takes to make the lives of her children run smoothly. She is selfless, which can be annoying a lot of the times but then to imagine her not being around is very scary to say the least. This person is my mother. She is a beautiful person, with a beautiful heart and a beautiful soul. This is true beauty to me.

Moments can also be a form of beauty. There is one moment I would have loved to experience first-hand but then again, my name is not MS Dhoni. Cricketers, especially batsmen, know when you’re in form or not. First of all, you get your body behind the ball, as your feet are quick to move. Secondly, when an out of form batsman strikes the ball, he either does not hit it off the meat of the bat and if he does, he does not hit the gaps but instead, hits it straight to fielders. When fortunes change, the ball hits the meat and you don’t feel it PING off the bat and you don’t hit the fielders anymore as you bisect the standing fielders almost at will.

During the 2011 ICC Cricket World Cup final versus Sri Lanka chasing 274, Dhoni promoted himself up the order knowing he was not in form. Realizing the gravity of the situation, Dhoni led from the front hitting an unbeaten 91 off 79 balls. Where does beauty come in all this you ask? Well, the moment Dhoni hit that ball into the stands for 6 to win the World Cup for India after 28 years of waiting, 1.21 billion people watched in awe and saw their dreams come true; whereas Dhoni just stared at the ball disappear into the crowd. He then smiled and that moment has probably been etched into my mind forever as one fantastic moment of beauty.

This is beauty to me. I am sure that there are more examples I could have drummed up but these two stood out in my mind when the topic was brought forward.