Sringar-Sandalwood Dots to Dewy Brides
When I think of makeup in my teenage years in the 1990s, I realise how little we had and how much we managed to do with it. Beauty was not yet an industry that arrived at your doorstep through Instagram reels, beauty influencers and carefully curated vanity tables. There were no elaborate skincare routines, no makeup artists with ring lights, no contouring tutorials and certainly no conversations about fillers, Botox or cosmetic procedures. Yet we were always trying to look beautiful. We just called it something else. In those days, beauty was part tradition, part grandmother's wisdom and part jugaad. I remember how brides would sometimes wear little dots of sandalwood paste, alternating with crimson Sringar dots, on their foreheads. There was something wonderfully innocent about it. A tikli in the maang could transform an ordinary face into that of a bride. The idea of bridal beauty was simply very different then. We wanted a glow, but the glow came from things ...
