A classical description of money, attributed to some highly rated economist, is crisply stated as ‘Money is what money does.’ The term beauty has its time-honoured perception expressed in a simpler yet fascinating statement, namely, ‘Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder,’ thus lending beauty a canvas with no boundary and the beholder a wide world of freedom. Of food, it is said that one man’s bread is another’s poison. Taking one from this ancient saying, one is prompted to remark that one man’s beauty (not limited to human species), may look ugly to many others. An example of this diverse view suggests itself effortlessly: Visitors to the city can be heard saying, ‘Mysore is a beautiful place’ only to be treated as laughing matter by hard-boiled Mysureans who are part of its long history. Similarly, the owl is a beautiful bird in the eyes of naturalists but people at large …?

Poets, Essayists and Novelists writing in a multitude of languages have gifted to the world scripts about beauty that should open the eyes of those who are blind to the Virtue, be it of females, beasts, birds and places. The world’s earliest poet Kalidasa stands out when it comes to describing beauty of females through the means of the figure of speech, simile.

Every country across the world has its icons amidst their populations, both in the past and our times. Given the diversity of the ethnic features, it may be inappropriate to either judge between beautiful and ugly looks or rank the individuals in beauty contests, although crowning females as Miss World and Miss Universe has become a multi-million dollar event, in which many females from India have made it to the victory stand. Some old-timers are heard saying that beauty is just skin-deep, reducing a sublime matter to mundane level, a remark that may not gel with the youth anywhere in the world.

Beauty, described by litterateurs as a many-splendoured asset, mercifully doesn’t have any measure in quantitative terms. Understandably, women of South Korea are said to have rebelled against their society’s rigid beauty standards, as reported in the media recently. All said and done, beautiful whatever and the beholder are best left to themselves.