By Sanskriti Arora
Your face is still yellow
Mother said as she prepared her face for Bharatanatyam class. The dance
teacher wanted to enact the performance for
their show tomorrow. The turmeric had stained her face making it seem lifeless,
without any blood and joy.
Her mother plastered white cold cream, filling every crevice of her slightly ugly
face. Whitened, Katyayani stared at herself
and then her mother in the mirror and found the same determination as before in
making her perfect, so that she could
call her her child while she danced clumsily. She cannot be ugly and bad at dancing,
The material of the red blouse made
the skin of her breasts itch, and she tried to dig her blunt nails into the course cloth
as her mother dug black pins into her
hair bun. She set her headset made of fake gold on the line of forehead, just where her
hair began and noticed her hairy forehead.
Her remedies were weak. She needs a foolproof way to pluck the black hair from her
fairly pale face. Katyayani admired
the golden on her head and adorning the borders of her saree. The fan descended from
her waist to her calves in perfect pleats.
She fiddled with their perfection and mother swatted her hand away, protecting them.
Her mother held her face in her left
hand as she decorated her eyes with kajal. The more the kajal, the bigger her small
eyes would look. Mother admired her
eyelashes. Finally, hair in the right place, she thought to herself. She had done
something right after all. Long, and thick
eyelashes and the hair on her child’s head. What’s that? Katyayani asked as she saw
her reaching for concealer. Something
to cover your dark circles. She finally tied her red ghungroos on both her feet and
her mother took a last look at her.
By Sanskriti Arora
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