PERSONALITY
TREND
FASHION
SPECIAL
ARCHIVES

Kamala Das

The ultimate moisturiser is a reasonable amount of love

Mata Amritanandamayi is the most beautiful woman I have met in my life.

I have met many famous beauties including Salvador Dali's model, Kikan Massara, who was proposed to by one of our maharajas. Kikan wrote last month that she had returned to Stockholm to live out the rest of her life in her own country.

Kikan is still blonde and lovely. I have also seen winners of beauty contests but only with their make-up on.

Mata Amritanandamayi uses no make-up. Her dusky face gleams with a faint trace of perspiration. The depth of her eyes is unfathomable like that of ancient oceans. Her smile is rivetting. When you see it, you feel that you cannot take your eyes off her.

One day, years and years ago, Basappa of Mysore, my husband's classmate of old days, dropped in with his statuesque daughter, Malati. She was to take part in a beauty contest. She won the title, went to England and is reported to have married an Indian millionaire who lived in London.

Malati was a sensible young woman. Most models and the winners of beauty contests get lured by manufacturers and travel around promoting their products. They become part of the ad world. Excessive use of cosmetics and make-up ruins their faces in a short while.

The make-up blocks the perspiration. The skin takes on a dry, dead look. Being called beautiful makes them complacent. They do not try to acquire skills. They do not try to grow. Their personalities get stunted. They do not read the newspapers. The depth of their ignorance sickens those who come into their orbit.

Ultimately, after the applause dies down in life's auditorium, they wilt and wither. They attempt suicide. They discover the emptiness of their lives. If they had been a little less glamorous, they would have learnt to sing or to manage a computer. They would have learnt medicine or law. Or else, cooking. They would have turned themselves into good mothers.

While in Bombay, I came across an elderly woman who had tinted her hair red. She wore slacks and frilly tops which did not flatter her corpulent proportions. She wore pink face powder and lipstick. She went from house to house, making friends with the housewives and selling beads and hairpins. She told me that she was an actress and that she was frequently called in for bit roles.

She was smelly and decrepit. No girl who had seen her would have aspired to become an actress. She had liquor on her breath and smelt of cigarette smoke. She said that some of the older actors had been once in love with her. Perhaps she was telling lies. Perhaps she was fantasizing.

Women secure in the love of a husband and children did not deteriorate in looks as rapidly as the independent ones. Even in their sixties, they looked comely. The ultimate moisturiser is probably not Lancomé or L'Oreal in plenitude, but a reasonable measure of love.

Illustration: Laura Fernandes