Casement

The world thinks there are two kinds of women based on their ability to make up. Ones who wear 'make up' and the others who don’t. Let me introduce the third kind - the ones who try to 'make up'.

I am in awe of those women who have perfected the art of 'make up'. Mostly, these women just have it in them. Perhaps, the ‘sense of good looking genes’ have rolled into them for generations. Like woodward’s gripe water, these women have a long lineage of lipsticks and mascaras. Invariably, they spend more than half of their salary in making sure they look good at work. Their training must have started as early as their kindergarten days when they dressed up their Barbie dolls with mom’s make-up kit. Well, the point is - I am in awe of them!

Then, there are these other women who just couldn’t care less about how they look. I am not sure why most of these women hail from South of India, but unfortunately they do. Gokul Santol is the be-all and end-all of 'make up' for these women. To them, harmony of colors in make-up is an un-invented phenomenon. When you come across a lady wearing an inch of white coating on her face, just don’t give her those nasty looks. Do not even sympathize with her. She just doesn’t know. Ask her why ‘malli poo’ and ‘reebok shoes’ don’t go well together, and she may think you are kidding with her. The point here is - she doesn’t know and doesn’t know that she doesn’t know! Believe me, ignorance, in this respect, is BLISS.

Now, the heroines of my post - those who follow Robert Bruce’s lesson - try and try until you succeed. I sympathize with these women, and please, you do too - because I know what it is to try to make up without actually looking made up. I belong to this elite group of women. For us, comprehending the contents of the 'make up' kit takes about a year approximately, and an eternity, precisely. We are never sure about what goes where. Distinguishing between a blusher and eye shadow is the most difficult part of it. What finally comes to our help is ‘inky pinky ponky’! Lip liners are my best friends, while eye-liners are my frustrating foes. The former help me draw an outline on my lips and ensure that I color withing the boundary, right where a lipstick is supposed to be. On the other hand, if at all, there is a time I regret playing ‘mottai madi’ cricket, without learning a thing or two from my Barbie sisters, it is only when I fumble with eyeliners. The lines sometimes come out like graphs. Worst are the times when the line comes out perfectly right, because in that enthusiastic moment, I wouldn’t know where to stop. When the jolly ride of my fingers finally stops, it ends up like Saroja Devi’s ‘kuruvi vaal’ (sparrow-tailed) eye lines. In a make-up kit, there are at least four different brushes. I googled to know their names - Flat brush, cotton swab brush, powder brush and eye-liner brush. While powder brush is easily identifiable, the rest need some kind of logical elimination technique to arrive at the right identification. Removing the make-up is more painful than its application. Yeah, really! Doing and undoing something, in an interval of five minutes is painful. Isn’t it? But, ‘satisfaction’ or ‘give-up’ emotions never reflect on the mirror when we look at ourselves. And then the vicious circle of making up and removing goes on until, it is late for work or party or wherever. Thus, the saga of hard work and determination continues...