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 sitting on our dressing tables rather than from an expensive serum. Vicco Turmeric cream was almost a beauty institution.  It was supposed to give us that turmeric glow, and many of us believed that regular application would eventually give us the radiance of a Bollywood heroine. My cousin Juna ba has been the most loyal customer  of Vicco Turmeric cream since as long as I can remember!

Then there were creams like Charmis and Fair & Lovely, products from an era when the beauty industry openly sold us the idea that fairer skin meant prettier skin. We grew up surrounded by advertisements in which a darker, ordinary-looking girl would apply a fairness cream and suddenly become confident, successful and desirable. Looking back, I can see the problematic message in all of that. But at the time, we absorbed it almost without questioning it. Fairness was presented as an aspiration, and many of us simply accepted the vocabulary of beauty that was handed to us.

Our haircare was equally fascinating. Lice, for many girls of our generation, were an occupational hazard of growing up. I have my own particularly vivid memory of it.

One summer during my school holidays, I was visiting my grandmother. At some point, she examined my hair and discovered the unwelcome little visitors. There was no quick Google search, no frantic online order for an anti-lice treatment and certainly no WhatsApp message to my mother. Grandma did what grandmothers did. She took out an inland letter. Yes, an actual inland letter. She wrote a long narrative to my mother, informing her that I had lice and needed to be treated. The letter would have travelled through the postal system, carrying with it this very ordinary piece of family news. Today, the idea seems almost comic. We can send a photograph, a video or a message in seconds. Back then, a small household problem could become an item of correspondence.

And the remedies were just as wonderfully homespun. There were things like Ghon Phoni, those fine-toothed combs that required patience and determination, and home remedies passed down with complete confidence. Camphor in coconut oil was one such remedy. The smell alone was enough to convince you that something serious was happening. Mediker shampoo was another product that was frequently  used to remove lice. 

And then there was hibiscus. Before "conditioner" became a category with dozens of specialised formulations, hibiscus leaves could be soaked in water and worked into a slippery gel. That homemade gel was used on the hair as a natural conditioner. What we considered an ordinary household remedy would probably be packaged today in a beautiful bottle, given an exotic name and sold as a premium botanical hair treatment. That, perhaps, is the great irony of beauty. What was once ordinary can become fashionable decades later.

Our teenage faces were makeup free. Makeup kits, used by aunts and "grown-up" cousins were modest. A compact, perhaps a lipstick, kajal, some cream and maybe a little talcum powder. We didn't have primers, setting sprays, colour correctors, liquid illuminators or twenty shades of foundation. And somehow, we managed.

Makeup wasn't expected to transform us into someone else. It was supposed to make us look a little more presentable.

My own wedding is one of the memories that makes me smile when I think about how far bridal makeup has travelled. On my wedding day, I had, as one might expect, been made up rather enthusiastically. There was a point when I looked at myself and thought I looked fine. My younger brother disagreed. His verdict was devastatingly simple: I looked like a brinjal. A brinjal!

There are some beauty critiques one remembers forever, and that was mine. Apparently, whatever the makeup artist (a family friend  who always got brides readied in the neighborhood) had done did not meet my brother's exacting standards. I took one look at myself, decided he had a point, or perhaps simply decided that I could not bear to be photographed looking like a vegetable, and washed the whole thing off. For the juroon, I went back to basics. Just kajal and lipstick. And somehow, that felt more like me. There is something wonderfully liberating about remembering that moment now.

Today, a bride's makeup is planned months in advance. There are trials, mood boards, references, skincare schedules and carefully selected foundations. The bride can show her makeup artist an Instagram photograph and say, "I want this exact look." Then came the great transformation. Television, Bollywood, fashion magazines and eventually the internet changed the way we understood beauty. Global brands became aspirational. The makeup counter became a destination. Foundation shades multiplied. Lipsticks went from a handful of familiar colours to entire walls of possibilities.

And then came YouTube, Instagram and the beauty influencer. Suddenly, makeup was no longer something you simply applied. It was a technique. We learned about undertones, primers, baking, contouring, strobing, cut creases and false lashes. We learned that there was a correct way to shape eyebrows, apply concealer and make the nose look slimmer. A makeup bag that once contained five things could now require an entire drawer.

Bridal makeup underwent perhaps the biggest transformation of all. I remember the brides of my younger years: beautiful, certainly, but often recognisably themselves. There might be a little foundation, kajal, lipstick, some rouge, jewellery and a traditional tikli. The bridal face was inseparable from the woman herself.

Today's bride can look almost impossibly polished. There is airbrushed-looking skin, carefully sculpted features, individual lashes, perfectly shaped brows and strategically placed highlighter. The modern bridal face is built in layers, with products chosen to withstand hours of photographs, ceremonies, lights and emotions. And then there is the dewy bridal look. I find it fascinating because it represents such a complete reversal of what we once considered beautiful. The goal today is often not to look heavily made up but to appear luminous, hydrated and almost lit from within. Skin is supposed to look like skin, only impossibly perfect skin.

A modern bride may spend months preparing her skin before the wedding, combining facials, peels, professional skincare and carefully selected products. On the wedding day, her makeup artist may use high-end foundations, cream blushes, liquid highlighters and setting products to create that coveted bridal glow. And makeup is no longer the limit. Cosmetic procedures have entered the beauty conversation with a confidence that would have seemed extraordinary when I was a teenager. Botox, fillers, lasers, skin resurfacing and a host of other treatments have become part of the modern beauty vocabulary. The distinction between skincare, makeup and cosmetic enhancement has become increasingly blurred.

What fascinates me most is how technology has changed our expectations.

In the 1990s, we looked at film stars and accepted that they were somehow different from us. Today, we can zoom into a celebrity's skin, watch a makeup artist recreate her look and buy the exact product used. Beauty has become visual, immediate and endlessly replicable.

And yet, beneath all this sophistication, I sometimes think we haven't changed as much as we imagine. The teenage girl applying Fair & Lovely in the 1990s and the bride sitting under a makeup artist's ring light today are responding to the same ancient human desire - to feel beautiful, special and confident. Only the language has changed. Our sandalwood dots have become designer bindis. Our homemade hibiscus conditioner has cousins in expensive botanical hair masks. The simple cream on the dressing table has been replaced by sophisticated moisturisers, serums and primers. The little compact has become a carefully curated makeup collection.

But sometimes I miss the simplicity of those days. I miss the smell of coconut oil. I miss the ritual of someone patiently combing through hair to get rid of lice. I miss the inland letter that carried my grandmother's message to my mother. I miss the little sandalwood dot on a bride's forehead and the understated elegance of a tikli in the maang. And I certainly haven't forgotten the day my younger brother looked at his sister, all dressed up for her wedding, and pronounced her a brinjal.

Perhaps that is the beauty of nostalgia. It doesn't remember everything as perfect. It remembers the ridiculous bits too.

When I look back, I realise that our generation had its own kind of beauty.

It was resourceful. It came from kitchens and cupboards, from grandmothers and mothers, from sandalwood paste and coconut oil, from hibiscus leaves soaking in water and a fine-toothed comb wielded with determination. We had fewer products, but we had rituals. And perhaps that is what I remember most.

The products changed. The technology changed. The standards changed. But the desire remained wonderfully, stubbornly the same, namely,  to look into the mirror before an important day and think, Yes. I look beautiful. Even if, occasionally, your younger brother thinks you look like a brinjal!