The "Parlour" Story

                Vanity!.... That dear constant companion of most women… and many a man…. Let’s focus on women for the day… After all, we are the ones who go out of our way to satiate the Gods of vanity… Thereby laughing, living and learning in the process… Who among us hasn’t had endless trips to the tailor to get just the right stitch and the right pattern for our clothes… Who among us hasn’t spent many a hot afternoon scouring the roads of Jayanagar and Commercial Street, trying to find just the right matching-set for our sari’s and dresses, to look perfect just for one evening….and finally who among us hasn’t poured many a weekends’ time and energy on beauty parlors!!

                My earliest memories of the parlor are from my childhood when I used to accompany my mom when she went to get her eyebrows shaped. I remember those experiences as a combination of curiosity at being in a completely different environment from the rest of my life and terror because my mom’s eyes always filled with tears at the end of the ordeal. I couldn’t really figure it out, since although she was tearful, her face lacked the expression of pain which usually accompanies the tears.

                I started to make sense of it all only in college when I went for eyebrow shaping for my own. Slowly I started discovering various other options available like facials and head massages. They gave me a sense that this whole ordeal can be associated with pleasure too. When I finally discovered pedicures, dipping my feet in the hot water, ah! That was Nirvana!

                Years later, by the time I started working in Bangalore, I had gotten used to the feeling of utter relaxation offered by these places and had come to love the experience. However, in Bangalore, I discovered the ugly side to the story. Marketing was roaring wherever I stepped in. There were always members of the staff urging me to go for just one more service, just the next expensive product; turning the supposedly relaxed afternoon into one filled with  constant pushy chatter. The worst part of it was, the tool used for marketing was one’s own insecurities about one’s self-image. The women would point out of the worst part of one’s features and suggest, “don’t you think it’s worth paying a little more money so that it becomes a little more bearable for people to look at you?”  I started cringing at their meanness and dreading what was supposed to be my afternoon of relaxation. To top it all, at the end of the ordeal, when I asked hubby how I looked, he gave a standard “Very nice”, unsure of what has changed at all! Exasperated, I was on the verge of losing my faith on the whole thing.

                                Then one day it finally happened. I met her in my favorite place, Boutic in Shimoga, which has double the cleanliness and half the prices of Bangalore. She was beautiful in a green salwar which was their uniform, wearing a small speck of a matching green bindi and had beautiful burgundy-streaked hair. She started pedicuring my feet with perfect systematicism. The absolute lack of marketing from her end was disconcerting for me. It didn’t take me long to realize it was because she couldn’t speak… She made my wheatish-complexioned feet shine ! I didn’t pity her for her job for attending to other people’s damaged self-images - by this time I had learnt that these women hold immense power; they can make you feel guilty about your tanned skin or frizzy hair and make you go for procedures costing a few thousand bucks! – I asked for a magazine instead. When I said “Thank you” on receiving it she flashed me one of the prettiest smiles I have ever seen. In the middle of my screaming in agony and her enjoying the bittersweet feeling of plucking my eyebrows, we bonded. I came out of there with a politically incorrect but definite conclusion that the world would be a much better place if more people couldn’t speak ;)