Skip to main content

Sumalatha's story: A 'beautiful' life (needs a lot of hard work)


Sumalatha, a young mother of two from Banashankari, Bangalore, was married off very young (she does not say, how young but I suspect she was in her early teens). She is a 'mobile' beautician/expert masseur/stylist and makeup artist. That is, she meets clients at their homes, zipping around on her trusted Scooty Pep. 

 “My mother was an 'ayah', a woman who massages/bathes new mothers and their newborns. I did the same work too,” explains Sumalatha. At that time, she was still a teenager and already mother to a daughter. "Then a friend told me I must do more. So I saved up from my earnings and did a basic beauticians' course at a parlour in Kumaraswamy Layout." Armed with these new skills, she started offering home-made face packs, facials, beauty treatments, massages and even, bridal make-up, at clients' homes. 

Over time, her fame grew, completely  word-of-mouth. "My charges are lower than that offered by parlours. And I ensure I use good quality products," she says, matter of fact. Most of what she earns she has to plough back into the tools of her trade, and there are transport costs as well. So she is often working from early in the morning till late at night.

Ten years from when she began, Sumalatha now has two daughters and has graduated to conducting beauty workshops, sometimes, under the aegis of AWAKE--the Association of Women Entrepreneurs of Karnataka, and at times, under schemes run by the Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike. She earns enough to send her older daughter (now 14) to boarding school and she is also training five girls as 'ayahs' "because there is so much demand for that particular service". 

Incidentally, Sumalatha herself is only 28 years old.  “We can do anything if we work hard,” she observes.

(This short piece was part of a larger article I did on beauty parlours and womens' empowerment, for The Hindu Sunday Magazine. Unfortunately, I couldn't include Sumalatha's story in that feature.)

Check out the TH piece here:

http://www.thehindu.com/features/magazine/the-business-of-looking-good/article4698602.ece




Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Why is it...

Why is a magazine always more interesting when your friend is poring over it? For that matter, when you stop at one of those little ricketey jewellery shops that dot M G's and Brigades, why is it that you're suddenly surrounded by an inquisitive crowd of men, women, boys and girls? I guess that's just human nature. Or like that other universal law of nature -- when you desperately need to flag down an autorickshaw, you won't find a single one and the roads will be emptier than the Sahara during a dust-storm. But when you don't want an auto, you'll find those little black and yellow beetles-on-three-wheels sidle past you with the drivers giving you the onceover through their rear view mirrors! But then when things go wrong, the day begins wrong. You wake up with the feeling that you've had a terribly embarrassing dream in which you've done rather weird things/stuff that you wouldn't admit to in the waking world. Then the coffee filter refuses to well,

An eight-legged ode to life

Shared a ride with a spider the other day. Didn't want to, actually. Just didn't spy it (him? her? well, not sure), in time, else I'd have vaulted out. Still, now that we were together, I was forced to acknowledge this other presence. And forced to, for once, actually observe a spider in action. Each time our auto swerved--and believe you me there were potholes aplenty on our route-- spider would swing precariously on an unbelievably thin thread. The auto went right, spider swung left. The auto braked hard, spider was flung up, furiously. Cars honked, cyclists tottered dangerously close, other autos trundled past at breakneck speed. But spider didn't get dislodged. Spider didn't perish. That silken thread was pulled tortuously taut more than once, but it didn't break. And spider's balance never slipped. Watching this most un-comely of creatures perform a tightrope dance to survive in our urban jungle, fascinated me. Spider's confidence that it

Never just a cold

Sometimes it's just a sniffle Still feels so awful. Makes me want to waffle. Sometimes, it's the sneezing. So constant it's not pleasing. Incessant, very unpleasant. Sometimes, it's a whooshing in my ears. Head feels cloudy and unclear. And that I can't really bear. Sometimes, I just can't breathe It even makes me wheeze. Causes me so much grief. Sometimes, it's that streaming nose Terrible to lie comatose, Feebly trying to stem the flow. Because a cold is never, ever just that. Leaves me like a wet rat And knocks me out flat. _______________________