My first encounter with a beauty parlor was in my teens and in Bihar so a lot of this essay takes me back in time and place. I don't remember the name of the woman who ran the parlor but it was located inside a maze of back alleys away from the main street and the storefronts of the marketplace. I usually went there with my mother and once we got deep enough in the maze, the sounds from the street would die down. That quietness followed us into the parlor. The woman was younger than my mother, neatly dressed and chatty. She would get to work on me quite unprompted- almost divining what improvements my teenage self needed to shine from within and without. My mother had her hair cut sometimes but that was usually not the reason for our visit.
The process was completed in under thirty minutes if there were no other customers - which was often the case. But there were busy days and we would need to wait. Perms were common then so I observed women getting those. Getting your hair streaked with bleach was not quite in vogue yet but there were some folks who were "edgy" enough to try that. It was fun for me to observe the transformation these girls went through - they came in one person into the parlor and departed another. The woman was like a magician with her jars of spells and potions. I remained mostly as I was but the act of "beautification" felt good anyway. My mother was always pleased with the results and that was an important metric in my life at that point. I did not think of the beauty parlor as an escape from the male patriarchy - maybe it had been but the fact just escaped my attention. Maybe that is where the inner glow came from.
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