When I went Lipstick shopping

During my solo wanderings in Bangalore about a couple of years ago, I once wandered off into the Ladies section of Central Mall just off M.G Road. I did not realise that until the lady wearing a black shirt with a Lakmé logo came up to me and asked how she could be of assistance. I walked away visibly embarrassed that day.

Brushing that thought off my mind, I walked into a ‘The Body Shop’ outlet along with a friend who wanted to shop for lipsticks. We walked straight past the lipsticks section to the handbags area. I asked my friend if she forgot that she came for lipsticks. As thought I had not spoken to her at all, she looked at me and said, ‘Knowing me, tell me which of these handbags I would choose?’

I knew about handbags as much as a science student would on Dual Aspect accounting. I decided to play the standard card and pointed my finger at a pink bag associating the colour with the archetypal girl. She looked at me, a murderous look that and said, ‘Don’t you even dare tell people that you know me from now’ and stormed off to the lipstick section.

It was, of course, mock anger as she signalled me to join her. She was attended to by two slim women in black outfits holding two lipstick tubes each. They began making marks on her left hand just away from the webbing close to her thumb. After about seven or eight shades, she turned to me and showed me her hand. Once again, she dismissed the colour I chose and said, ‘Huh…this one?’ I was flabbergasted; as though being bad with men’s clothing and accessories was not enough…

The ladies in black let my friend make her choice and huddled to the other side of a little podium on which a huge mirror was placed. And it happened, what I feared the most. After trying out a few shades, my friend called me to the little podium next to the mirror. She looked at me and said, ‘Which one?’

I looked at her hand and there were no tubes in them. Assuming that I misunderstood her question, I said, ‘Yes, this one’s good.’

She said, ‘Haah, which of these? Upper or lower lip shade?’

That is when I understood that she had applied two shades, one on the upper lip and the other on the lower. I decided to learn the hard way instead of lying and said,

‘But I can’t find any difference at all.’

It was such an honest statement that the ladies in black were stifling their laughter. I felt like I was the only ignorant person in my vicinity. I was reminded of how I would feel during all my Integral Calculus classes.

Tired of my examining the colours on the tube, she snatched one away from my hand and said that she was going to choose that one. It never made a difference, they all looked the same but I did not dare say that. We walked out of the store with me wondering how women can afford to spend thousands on their lipsticks, eye liners and kajal. I can never conjure up spending 160 bucks for a new Axe…