Earrings and Imperfections!

I was switching channels (a very rare event by the way, I normally do not watch TV)- The thin anorexic girl sashayed down the ramp with some itsy- bitsy pieces of cloth placed in strategic positions. Not that it would have mattered if they had been missing! I mean (even though I am not a man nor have I got the other “tendencies”) how can you get turned on by a skeleton? I got stuck here not because of the wonderful haute couture but because this “beautiful waif” was pierced all over her body! She had a ring in her belly button; her nose and ears were of course pierced; she had one on her cheek bone and one on her tongue! She made it a point to stick it out to the camera and I felt so gooey after that you just can’t even imagine.

 

I got my ears pierced after a lot of cajoling when I was about ten and then it turned septic because I insisted on going swimming and of course the hole closed and no one bothered me about it for a long time. When I was sixteen, an aunt insisted and she took me to a jeweller and got it done! But the hole’s fate was identical and I think everyone sort of gave up! But when I turned eighteen, I wanted to wear a pair of earrings so got it done by the “gun” method and this is still alive and kicking! Though for years I could not indulge myself with the fancy artificial earrings as the great big ears would turn septic! I did not want to go through the torture of the process all over again so I was stuck with a pair of gold earrings (Guaranteed not to turn the hole septic!) In short- my brief foray into the feminine world was in a state of limbo.

 

When I got married, I was given numerous gold earrings as gifts. For one whole year I played “being bride”! I changed them and my bangles to match the sari I wore (Believe me almost for one whole year I used to dutifully wear a sari whenever we went out and that was every day!) It was too good to last; the first offspring made her appearance and I forgot about dressing up. Life was all about how to feed, clean and put the little one to sleep! In fact sometimes I would forget the earrings all together!  Once I had to attend a wedding, I took out my heavy jewellery set with an equally heavy pair of earrings; they wouldn’t go into the hole! I did all sort of acrobatics to get them in, it did go in but my ears were sore for at least ten days! I decided then I would wear a smell ear top always as the process of going through the torture would be too much!

The fashion of making multiple holes in the ear had begun when I was in college but I had never dared to indulge in it. I admired other people but I never ventured into this supposedly uncharted territory! (I used to wonder how and why people go for such things- I use the word “people” because the men had also started .......)

The history of piercing a hole in the ear is fascinating! Most ancient civilizations had this ritual. But the one I believe in is – there were a lot of human sacrifice in the ancient times. For this sacrifice they needed a perfect species, so beautiful maidens were put up on the sacrificial alter and hacked with the ceremonial sword. One of the clever parents (most probably the mother) decided if they were to make a hole in the ear of the child he or she would not be perfect anymore and thus would be bypassed for sacrifice. Then slowly after this they must have discovered that they could decorate this and lo and behold the first earrings were born!

The ear-piercing holocaust continued to encompass my life for the next ten years. The first born had to go through it (she had inherited my genes so had to go through the cycle!) She also had to get it re-pierced at least twice.  The second born had hers pierced when she was four months old; my south Indian friends advised me that when the child is so young her ears are soft so the pain is minimal and her resistance level is so high that nothing would happen to it. So there I went the jeweller shop and went through the whole process. (Thankfully my sister was there to hold the baby!) Alas! We discovered my very dominant septic gene was present here too! And there again the unfortunate cycle of piercing- septic- healing- and back to piercing! The days I have spent with the two heads smothered in my lap while I clean up the area with Dettol, put Neosporin ointment on the offending place and still keep the thin gold wire in with the hope that the hole would stay put, cannot be chronicled!

Like one of my elderly friends had advised me, bad things cannot go on forever, take heart! This period in life is over. Both the young ladies have decently pierced ears and are enjoying being girls; wearing different earrings and changing them too (Though the terrible teenager still needs my help!). There were short bursts in my life when I was a little free from child rearing when I would go into what I call my feminine phase; I would buy a lot of earrings; match them with the dress I would wear; religiously remove them before I went to bed (the scare of a oozing hole was still there!).

Now that I am at home most of the time I forget to slip them on and only wear them when I go out. Thankfully these days the earrings have very thin needles so they go in without a fuss but I still can’t wear my wedding ones.

The one positive thing in all these tribulations is – most women of my age have ear holes which have become too big as they have been ill-treating these signs of imperfections and some of them have even had to stitch them up! But mine are still very small and I think I can avoid that surgery till I die!