Wake up to make-up

The recent demonetisation action has everyone wrapped up in finding ingenuous ways to put their black money to use. Among these has come the announcement that chemists will accept old currency and since many a pharmacy also sells make-up, women have found a convenient way to burn a hole in their partner’s pocket by asking him to go and stock up on all that they may need by way of cosmetics for the coming two years. Because, have you seen just how much these things cost: paying for an anti-wrinkle cream would make me worry and wrinkle up even more about where will my next meal come from.

Between eye shadows and concealer, BB cream and brushes for every skin, face part, and tone, I have never needed more makeup ever before to just look normal, the way I used to before I stepped into a shop to attempt buying make-up. Clearly the government knew just how tough it is to engage in this activity, which is why they allowed it. Because once you are done with the paracetamol and the antacids, there’s only that much of a bill you can rack up; the remaining must come from the women’s section. I recently got educated (more like schooled) while trying to purchase some cosmetic boxes and sticks and what-not. Here are a few things I picked up:

There is nothing to snigger about cosmetic brands and their product names. Urban Decay is a top-seller, another sells under the name of Bleach Black, and there is nothing to snigger about Double-Fisted Fuchsia nail-polish. The world has seven colours, my phone screen claims to have a million. Eye shadows and lipsticks come in exponentially more shades than even that!
Lipsticks is a misnomer because now we have lip crayons, lip gloss, lip pencils, lip…pretty much anything that can be used to draw a line or leave a stain.

BB cream is not the name of a late jazz singer. There is a host of products for the category called nude makeup. There exist more brush sizes to highlight cheeks than Michelangelo needed to paint the entire ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. The essence of make-up, as I eventually realised, is to make you look like you aren’t wearing any. But to get it right involves putting on layers of stuff in first place. Yes, absolute conundrum.

Ladies, if beauty is in the eye of the beholder why worry so much. Keep things simple, also less toxic for the boy who kisses you goodnight. And most importantly for the man who sees you in the evening and expresses his desire to wake up next to you every morning for the rest of his life but then sees you the very next morning, doesn’t recognise you without the makeup and does a silent walk of shame, telling himself never to drink that much again. The rushed moral of the day is this: money today is like zits, it takes a lot to conceal it.

The writer is a lover of wine, song and everything fine