The yellowed fluorescent bulb in our hostel bathroom cast an unflattering light as I examined my face for the hundredth time that month. At twenty years old, my chin remained as smooth as the polished brass lamps at the local temple despite my friend's constant reassurance that "college is when it happens, da."
Prabu, my classmate, walked into day one of college with his beard - full, majestic, and seemingly overnight. Meanwhile, I was still waiting for my facial follicles to acknowledge they existed at all. "Just wait, it will come," said many! I had dreams of growing a beard like those ancient Tamil sages.
My attempts to join the "Beard Club" remained a dream that never came true. I once applied a homemade paste of onion and coconut oil that someone swore would sprout facial hair. All it did was make me smell like a masala dosa for three days.
Swimming at the village well (a natural manmade pond) was another exercise in humiliation. While most fellows worried about the fear of water, I counted seconds until I could retrieve my glasses after what I called a failure of floating. Without them, everything became blurry figures shouting incomprehensible instructions from the edge.
Sometimes during power cuts, I would sit on rooftop, staring at the night sky above our coastal city (with my glasses on, of course), mapping constellations and dreaming of cosmic nebulae. Out there in the universe, perhaps there existed a planet where beardless students with somewhat terrible vision were considered the pinnacle of evolution. Until that discovery, I continued checking my chin every morning and hoping the next day would bring either facial hair or waterproof glasses that didn't cost a fortune.
Although it has been two decades since those feelings, and I still don't have a beard and do have my glasses, I am no longer troubled by it. I understand these are part of my identity, and I'm no longer bothered about it. Growing wise?