Lovely Beauty Parlour

On an ordinary Wednesday, an orange sun split the grey sky, like a broken pumpkin on ash cement. 

On garbage-lined streets, cows fed on peeling posters of paunchy men, whose faces were happy and content in a way that only men’s can be, confidently taking up space even in a filthy underpass, even while they wore gaudy shirts and flashed yellow-toothed smiles. One man, a politician, wore that sickly smile right until the cow munched away at it. 

What the cow was not drawn to was a poster featuring the face of a beautiful actress, a former beauty queen, her pond-green eyes sparkling with joy and innocence. The headline in thick black font read ‘Beauty Contest’ and a description of the candidates wanted:

‘Tall, Fair, Slim, Unmarried, Age 18-22, 8th Pass OK. 

Send full CV/biodata. Attach 5 photographs with close up, full-length indian dress, full-length western dress. Back and front. 

Send one 30-second video, chest up, giving a short summary of candidate.

There was also an email address. The deadline to apply was 24 November. We only had 2 weeks. 

—

This is how ideas took root in our home — if Amma thought that something was a great idea, she took the seed of the thought, coated it with layers of practicality and promise and force-fed it to Appa, who, even if apprehensive at the start, slowly digested this thought and eventually caved in to doing whatever Amma wanted him to do. Amma rarely waited for his approval though; this was all merely a formality.

After I told Amma about the poster, she began to speed through this little household game we played, and threw herself into sourcing outfits for my photos. My sister, Shalini, Amma’s default co-conspirator in matters concerning the household, also jumped into action. She took a violet saree from my mother’s wedding trousseau and hand-stitched it for four days to make a fitted silk dress that hugged my hips and showed off my collarbones. She copied the design from a picture of a celebrity in a Filmfare magazine. 

Outside our home, a wave of competition had taken over the town. All the girls who were previously thick as thieves became secretive and townsfolk already picked their favourites. Smiley Akka and her family were clearly on my side, they sent over fresh buttermilk each afternoon and prepared foul-smelling concoctions to apply to my hair. Thenmozhi loaned her wedding saree to me for the photos — a beautiful green Kancheepuram silk with embroidered gold mangoes blossoming on the zari border. She was too pregnant to compete anyway. Appa instructed Babu, the assistant at our family-owned photo studio, to take my photographs against our most expensive backdrop of a blue sky, coconut trees and a frothy ocean. By the time we had e-mailed my photographs and bio-data, I lived in a constant state of what I can only describe as optimistic anxiety, just waiting to hear that I had been chosen. Not to sound vain, but I was the tallest, fairest, thinnest, smartest girl here. It was only a matter of time. 

—

Lovely Beauty Parlour appeared to be the only neutral party in this scenario — and a prosperous one at that. The business had never been busier. Appointments were backed up for days. All I had ever wanted since I was a young girl was for my face to be on the hoarding for Lovely Beauty Parlour. The signboard currently featured a South Indian beauty queen on one side and a blond man with spiky hair on the other side. “Who is this hero?” Amma had asked us once. “He is in that English movie, Amma — Jack Ephran,” I replied, annoyed that she didn’t remember him. “Nobody knows all these fellows. They should put Vijay or Shahrukh Khan. Then everyone will come.”  

It was now a unisex parlour, one of the only places in town where men and women could congregate together. Lovely Beauty Parlour used to be fairly run-down in the past but had recently been renovated by the owner’s daughter, Trupti Madam, a very stylish Chennai-return. The beauty parlour now gleamed with promise — the sparkling of mirrors, the smooth leathery chairs, the smell of shampoo and nail polish mixing in the air, like the glamour that exuded from the beauty magazines that Trupti Madam stocked. She was always freshly powdered, not a hair out of place, nails painted perfectly, eyebrows in a severe arch — she seemed almost incongruous in this little town of ours. She should have auditioned for this competition. This occurred to me when I was getting a Chandni facial (which involved a heavy application of milk cream and turmeric), upon the insistence of my mother and Shalini. 

“Why didn’t you apply to the competition, Trupti Akka?”

She laughed loudly as she tucked a large toothed comb under the side of her neck, tilting her head towards it as if it were an imaginary phone.

“Joke, ah?” she asked, as she tied my hair into a tight bun so it wouldn’t touch my face. She had also massaged my head with coconut-hibiscus oil because she said it appeared dry and unkempt. She always threw in comments like this that chipped away at any confidence I had, but she also threw in free treatments, like threading of my upper lip (because I looked like a man), shaving off my sideburns (because I looked like some hero), and plucking my eyebrows so thin that from a distance, it looked like I had none at all. 

“No, really. You’re one of the most beautiful women in this town,” I said.

“Thanks, thanks.” she smiled, looking touched.

“So, then?”

“‘Then’ means?”

“You’ll also enter?” I suddenly wondered if this was a good idea. Perhaps I shouldn’t have brought this up. My chances of winning would drop significantly. I scratched at my dry elbow and then hoped she hadn’t noticed since she might suggest bleaching it.

“I’m married, kanna.”

“So? Mohan Anna won’t approve?” I asked, innocently, wearing a thick paste on my oval face, like chutney spread on an idli.

“Arey, what is there for him to approve or not approve? The prize is an NRI groom, I don’t want that.” 

I felt like the lights in the salon were suddenly all too bright, reflecting off the line of mirrors and making me dizzy.

“One husband is enough,” she continued, guffawing loudly.

“Anyway, all the best to you, ma,” she said, kindly, wiping her hands on her apron and leaving me to attend to another customer. But not before she whispered in my ear, “If you come two-two times a week no, 100% you only will win.”

I spent the next fifteen minutes in silence. Even when Trupti Akka came back, wiped my face clean, and spritzed it with strongly scented rosewater, I felt like I was having an out-of-body experience. While I fished out money from my purse, she said to me optimistically from across the tiled counter, “If you win, no, I will put you on the poster outside. What pride, what publicity — and free service for life! You bring all your NRI friends here only.” She smiled and winked, and I noticed for the first time that her mascara was clumpy and that she had overlined her lipstick a bit. All of a sudden, everything seemed wrong with the world. 

—

“You knew about this, Amma?”

Unperturbed by my seething anger, she continued preparing lunch. “Actually when we took the photos and all, I didn’t know anything but that girl, Starlet, her husband is the office pune at the police station — she mentioned something to me,” she stated casually while adding curry leaves to her pot and mixing the sambar.   

“Why didn’t you tell me then?” I asked, outraged, feeling this stress reversing the effects of the facial I had earlier. 

“I thought you also would have come to know somehow and you didn’t care.” More stirring ensued.

“Lies!” I shouted.

“Arey, so what? I don’t know why you are doing this drama.” She banged the steel ladle twice on the edge of the pan to shake all the curry off, set it down on a steel plate and then wiped her hand on the pallu of her sari.

“Drama? I don’t believe this!” I said, rubbing my forehead.

She walked up to me and held me by the shoulders, looking me dead in the eyes. “So you want to live and die here only? Stupid girl. Don’t you know how this world works? It doesn’t matter what you do, as long as you’re an NRI.”

I pushed her hand away and sat on the plastic chair by the dusty window. I heard the laughter of children on the streets, kicking at a ball, and a lonely dog somewhere in the distance barking angrily at a rumbling scooter.

“If you go, at least one headache is less for us,” Amma said, as her hand gestures became more animated and her voice rose in pitch. 

“I’m a headache?”

“Not you. You know what I mean, arranging your wedding and finding a match and all.” She sat down with a sudden frustrated heaviness. 

“Have you forgotten what happened to Kaveri?” I asked her. She didn’t say anything at first, just dabbed her forehead with the pallu of her printed cotton saree and put her head down on the table.

—

In 2015, the beautiful Kaveri met a tourist from America and after about two weeks of covert rendezvous, her father insisted they marry immediately. The American expressed no resistance and even hosted lunch at Kaveri’s father’s home to celebrate. In two weeks, she returned unceremoniously, draped in a gray kurta and dupatta, sullen as a raincloud. In the six years since, nobody knows what happened. Did he beat her? Was she infertile? Was he already married? Did she escape? Did he send her back? Did she even make it to the US? Was he going to come for her? Nobody knew.

—

“But Amma, see what happened to Kaveri,” I repeated. 

Amma sighed as if this were an exam, and I was trying to pick up a discussion that was outside of the current syllabus. 

“That was love-shove — all nonsense. Arranged marriage is like this only. You specify what you want and if the criteria matches, you get married. This is the same only, no? Criteria is beauty and cooking — end of the day that is all anybody wants.” 

—

The idea of marriage was complicated. It was a rite of passage or a death sentence, depending on who you asked. But you never asked these kinds of questions here. Women grumbled and complained to each other, but they all pushed you toward a man anyway. Movies never helped either — the wedding was where the curtains were drawn. 

The truth is that marriage had been on my mind once. Deepak was a slim, tall fellow who lived a few streets away from us. I met him under the most clumsy circumstances when he ran after Shalini and I to return her earphones that she’d left on the bench at the bus stop. We thought he was a sleazy man stalking us and ran all the way to our house, before he threw the headphones at us exasperatedly. He was understandably annoyed with us. When we spotted him at the bus stand two days later and walked toward him to apologise, he pretended to run away from us. I laughed so hard and almost instantly, as we looked at each other, his eyes tearing up and me, clutching my stomach, I thought I would like to do this for a lifetime. Shalini says she thought we were both stupid and that none of it was that hilarious but I could tell she liked the idea of us. We shared a few months of fervent romance at the end of which he unromantically left to take a job in the city. “If we ever want a chance at a good life, I have to go,” he said, very matter-of-factly. “But I like it here. We can work here, we’ll have enough. There’s even a bank branch here now; you can work here now.” “Come on, even if I get the best job, I’ll always be my father’s son here — an alcoholic, dishonest butcher. I want a chance to be someone else. Or nobody at all. Just not this. Don’t you want to see the world? To leave this place?” I didn’t understand it then. Yet, here I was, a candidate for a marriage that took me all the way across the world. What would he think if I won? What would I do if I won? 

—

The day I receive the email stating that I have been selected is bittersweet. I am elated and deflated at the same time. Amma is thrilled, informing everyone within earshot. Before we can even engage in bitter conversation, a khaki-clad policeman is at our door, with another squirrely man holding a laptop, demanding to see this email. They sit on the sofa, giving us no information, but asking for sweet tea and biscuits.

“But why do you want to see this?” Amma asks, twisting the pallu of her saree around her forefinger over and over again. Her nervous fidgeting makes the air in the room feel thick and hot. She signals to Shalini to call Appa, who is at the studio.

“Tell me, pa — whose father are you? Your daughter also entered and lost, ah?” Amma tries to extract some information. The policeman just sips his tea loudly. 

The squirrely man scrolls and taps on my phone, then copies some digits onto his laptop. The policeman nods and hands the phone back to me. They look satisfied. 

“Sir — all ok?” I ask. He nods. “Don’t delete or reply to this email. Don’t answer if any unknown number calls, ok?” He speaks firmly, adjusts his cap, and prepares to go. The squirrely man follows close behind him.

Appa walks through the door, just as they are leaving.

“Vanakkam.” He folds his hands respectfully. “Any trouble, Sir?”

“Sir, not at all. You have escaped trouble narrowly. This ad is a scam — there is no groom and all. Just responding to this ad puts you at risk. And nowadays, even known people turn out to be criminals, and you people are trusting some strangers with your young daughter.” He shot Amma a judgemental look. “These appear to be people calling women abroad, making them prostitutes or those dowry bride types, you know? We are suspecting a major scam. Don’t answer any calls, and inform us of any suspicious visitors, we have taken all needed information from that email. Thank you, I’ll take your leave.”

Amma has covered her mouth with the end of her sari, her eyes wide and terrified like she has seen a ghost. Appa’s gaze jumps from the policeman’s face to mine, then Shalini’s and then Amma’s. 

“I didn’t…know,’ she mutters, softly. She repeats this over and over again to each of us.

“Stupid.” Appa says. 

We don’t know which of us was speaking to or whether he was addressing all of us collectively.

—

On TV that night, it is like watching a sinister version of my life play out. I can almost imagine my own reflection looking back at me from the glitching screen, women huddled in sarees, pallus draped over their heads, but their features blurred, talking to the camera. 

“They said they would take me to my “husband from London” but we have been waiting here in this port for 4 days without food.” 

The newscaster returned with a grave expression, rolling her R’s severely. ‘Police cannot rule out the occurrence of such cases in other villages, most recently, the police have nabbed two suspects from Oosikonda, a small town near the Palar River. They have been slapped with cheating charges and the indecent representation of women.’ 

The camera cuts to another victim whose voice is hardened as she shakes her fists in front of the camera, “Castrate the whole lot of them, filthy pigs!!!” She shouts some expletives that are bleeped out. 

Over the next few weeks, TV and press coverage dies down. But rumours and scandals in small towns take on an eerie life of their own, moving through the town like ghostly residents, surfacing ever so frequently that you could never really forget about them. I have a variety of dreams that stay with me for hours after I wake up. In one, I am trapped in a large crate, blindfolded and can only hear voices through the narrow slits. I dream that a creepy man outside the public toilet has locked me in one of the stalls and is negotiating prices for me outside. On another night, I am calling out to Amma and Appa from the TV set, trying to reach out to them but they are frozen on the uneven sofa, staring blankly at the screen. 

—

Six weeks later, Trupti Akka changes the signboard outside her beauty parlour. The doe-eyed celebrity has been replaced with a side profile of my face, wearing a string of jasmine that is pinned to my thick, ink-black braid. I recognise this picture as one I had submitted to the competition. I don’t know what to feel when I walk past it. Seeing my innocent eyes next to Jack Ephran, I feel a longing for this old version of myself, perhaps a sliver of joy for her — this was her dream after all.  

Shalini squeezes my arm, whether to console or to congratulate me, I don’t know. Amma however is visibly utterly distraught.

“Now who is going to marry her?” Amma wails, slaps her forehead three times, turns around and walks away, clutching her purse full of copies of my photos and biodata, her hope of a suitable groom for me caught up in the dust of her sandals.