Grandma’s vanity case

My grandmother was a beautiful woman. I, in my formative years, couldn’t have noticed it, but what I heard others say about her has been my impression of her looks. I do have her photograph in our family album. I vividly recall her wherewithal with which she maintained herself. It wasn’t a vanity case from a branded cosmetics house, but a scattered ensemble of earthy and available homegrown stuff.

Women of my grandmother’s vintage washed their hair at least once a week with lassi. They believed that it was good for nourishing hair and was a good agent against lice. Women in those days removed unwanted hair by plucking them after applying common ash. Tweezers called nak-choonti were the possession of rich women and were generally sold by tribal women, who would also bring tongs for sale, vending them in the streets, along with an offering all gratis, a puff of snuff for older women.

Ghee and malai were natural moisturisers that were abundantly used. For brightening up the complexion, especially at weddings, a paste of turmeric powder called ubtan or batna was extensively and invariably used. The paste was also used on hands and feet, since these parts would be visible to onlookers, despite the all-body-wrap of cloth for a bride.

Though lipsticks and nail paints were unknown to these simple folks, they did fight shy of using them. Mostly nautch girls, or the more liberated tribal women, paradoxically, wore nail paint. It wasn’t the shade of the lipstick or the nail paint that mattered, but the colour of it that struck — tomato red or blood red.

Women did not flaunt one or two braids, but a set of caterpillar-braids that stayed for weeks without combing and washing. Artificial and coloured ones were also woven into the hair. Haryanvi women used what was called a choonda — a puff made up of fine flannel cloth. The colourful choonda was symbolically a woman’s pride and nothing base would be attributed to it.

Folklore was woven around a woman’s beauty during swangs —street plays. The footwear or the juti, the ankle-ornament or payal, rings for fingers and chutkis for toes, and other silverware decking up a woman, used to be the subject matter of describing her looks poetically by amorous men. More than anything else, the bangles that a woman wore were the most important, cosmetically, not only to wear and flaunt, but also symbolic — of being married. Henna is still applied in different designs by women, especially on festive occasions, ritualistic ceremonies and weddings, but in my grandmother’s times, they just had the entire palm of the hand fully dipped-and-dried in it.