That's the beauty of life. The most beautiful of things (read the perfect cup of tea) are not made up of just one element. It is the harmony and the combination of various elements over a period of time that carves out its shape and its nature. You can't get the taste of tea when you put tea leaves and sugar in your mouth and drink water and milk over it. All the elements of tea are there, but the perfect cup is made when just the right amount of tea is brewed for just the right amount of time and just the right amount of milk and sugar are added to it to suit your taste. Like things beautiful and precious, it takes care and experience to get all the elements 'just right'.

There is no doubt that beauty, in all its essence, is pleasing to both the eye and the heart. However, the beauty of beauty itself is in the fact that it is multi-faceted. When asked, people do not have one simple definition for inner beauty. For one it was compassion, for another it was honesty, while it was intellect for another. Beauty, for a writer is in the expression of his words, for a mother it is in the happiness of her children, for a prisoner it is in freedom, for a philosopher it is in the strength of an argument... the truth remains, that while in our life we may be caught up in the vanity of the face, the hair, and the clothes, it is what we do and what we say that eventually lasts after we're long gone from the world. Socrates was far from a hunk, but we remember him for his unmatched acumen. On the flip side Helen had all the beauty of the world in her person, except that in her case beauty seemed more of a curse than a gift of God.

Well, let's face it, as long as we have beautiful people and cosmetics that are just right, vanity will overshadow compassion and intellect, and heads will turn towards it... But (yet again), the ability to keep heads from turning back, sprain the necks, and to mould hearts, does not come from superficial beauty. It comes from the heart and the mind, for it is the beauty of the mind that gives beauty its spark of life, and not vice versa. Needless to state the examples of Abraham Lincoln, Churchill, Mohammad Ali Jinnah and Gandhi... they were no lookers. Einstein had the worst hair in the world, but we don't remember him for that, do we?

One day we were talking about a marriage proposal that had come for my cousin. She made a sharp remark on the proposed groom's looks. My Nani instantly retorted, “Pagal larki tumhayn uski shakal ke sath thori rehna hay...aadaten achchi honi chahiyen bus” (you don't have to live with his face... he should have good habits).

Commercialism does no credit to a beautiful mind either. Everything these days is a success if it is 'packaged' the right way, from people to daily commodities. Agreed that the influence of beauty cannot be ignored, and anything presented to us the 'right way' makes it easier for us to swallow it, since it is human to err and better to err on something beautiful rather than not.

Granted that indulging our vanity just a tad bit is good for self-esteem, but what eventually prevails are the qualities which makes us who we are on the inside. Sir Walter Elliot and Elizabeth Elliot might have had the looks and also the resources to indulge their vain whims and fancies, but despite all that they were the ones who ended alone and bitter, only because their persons were hollow. Mr Darcy on the other hand had the strength of character rather than the charm of a face like a Greek god's which Wilhelm did. You know it, and I know it how the actions of each served him.

We can see that the strength of outward beauty is as fickle as an egg shell, but what it holds on the inside is what actually we use it for and is good for us — it also turns into a delicious cheese omelette while the shell only turns hollow and useless.