Nagalakshmi
Bengaluru
14.07.2018
I paid a visit to my favourite neighbourhood salon after two months of not being in town. I requested for my usual services from my preferred aesthetician, Nagalakshmi. She was the one who attended to me the first time I went to that salon, and since then, I’ve always preferred her. She does a good job, and I always leave feeling good.
Nagalakshmi is a sweet lady, small in size with a bright smile that can make a dull day better in an instant. She led me to a corner room in the salon, gave me the waxing gown and asked me to change while she went out to get the wax and other tools. I quickly changed into the gown and sat on the bed, waiting for her to come back.
Once she was back and had set up everything, I stretched my legs and let her get to work. As she applied the first patch of hot wax on my leg, she started talking to me. It quite took me by surprise, for I was the one who usually initiated any conversation, with her usually being shy and meek. She asked me how I was doing in life, and why I hadn’t come in a while. I told her about the movie I was shooting for, how my dream is finally getting realised and how happy I am. And then, just as suddenly as she had started talking, she went quiet. As I watched her peel off the next wax strip, the pain of having some fifty hairs pulled out of my skin was buried under my own questions for her. I was curious about this person in the room applying and peeling off wax, making small talk and quickly getting her work done. I had never really had much of a conversation with her in my previous visits, tending to distract myself with my earphones plugged in and pumping in music. But this time, I realised that here’s a person brimming with her own stories, questions and dreams.
I found an opportunity to get to know the smallest and intimate details of somebody’s life, the way you sometimes share some things only with people who you’ve never been close to. Someone who you least expect to share those things with. I wanted to see if I could be that someone for her and maybe get her to talk about her trials in life and her desires.
I wanted to know about her dreams, her family and what matters to her. And so, I asked her. Nagalakshmi, with a shy smile, said “I don’t really have any big dreams. I was married off when I was only 15 years old, and I never had the chance to even think about what I want to do in life.” I prompted her to tell me more about her marriage, and it was a slow unravelling of her story. It’s one of determination, loyalty and unconditional love.
She goes, “I come from a small village in Andhra where it is the norm to get girls married as soon as they attain puberty. I was in ninth grade at that time and my parents made me drop out of school. Then I was faced with a man who wanted to marry me and would go to any extent to make sure he does, even if it meant blackmailing me. Which is exactly what he did. He scared me by telling me that he’ll take me to someone who’ll curse me with black magic if I don’t get married to him. I was too young to know anything and too afraid to question. I didn’t have a choice, and I had to say yes.” Thus began Nagalakshmi’s married life as a young wife of only 15 years.
“My parents never liked him from the beginning and they didn’t want me to get married to him. They were not happy when I did, and I moved out of the house. My husband was working as an electrician, but he also had a small piece of land where he used to work. He taught me the ropes of the work and I started helping him with the farm work. That, and managing the house and my daughters is what I did for ten years after getting married.”
Working on her husband’s land taught her a lot about perseverance and courage. They managed to barely make enough money to sustain themselves, so they never had the means to find a proper house to live in. They had to live in a small hut made of mud. During the monsoons, rain would slowly seep in through the cracks and from under the walls, making it a dangerous house to stay in. On particularly rainy days, the roof would sometimes even cave in, and Nagalakshmi, by the sheer need and will to protect herself and her daughters, learnt how to patch holes in the house and repair the roof when it caved.
As her daughters grew older, it was becoming increasingly difficult for Nagalakshmi and her husband to sustain themselves in their small village. After some deliberation, it was decided that they would go to Bangalore in search of better opportunities. Upon reaching Bangalore, her husband, with the help of her brothers, managed to find a job as an electrician and a small house to live in.
Nagalakshmi barely knew anything of the world outside her small village, and suddenly, there she was in a big city teeming with people doing a variety of different things she hadn’t seen before. She discovered a new itch in her to make something happen. Something which would give her daughters a better chance at life than she had had. She wanted her daughters to have everything that she didn’t — proper education, the freedom to get married only when they want to and a diverse range of job opportunities for when they’re older. She could see what Bangalore had to offer, and she wanted her daughters to have a different taste of life.
As I turned around and let my legs dangle over the side of the small waxing bed, she took my hand in one of hers and gently blew at the hot wax on the other hand. We continued talking, both of us in our broken Hindi mixed with English, stuttering through the conversation, but somehow making sense of each others’ words and responding promptly. She told me how she found a job in a small salon, where she first learnt the workings of a “beauty parlour,” and then went on to work in bigger salons, having ended up working in YLG, where she currently works.
The more we talked, the more Nagalakshmi opened up, much like a flower in slow bloom. She felt more at ease, and the topic of conversation reflected her comfort level. She told me about how her husband would come home drunk every night and hit her regularly. It got to a point where she even thought of committing suicide, but stopped herself for her daughters. She knew that her daughters would suffer if she wasn't around. That’s when she decided to stick around for her daughters and help them in every way possible, no matter what. Despite her parents’ regular insistence that she leave her husband and come back home to them, she stayed loyal and determined to be there for her family.
As she inspected my now hairless hands for any stray hair, she continued talking. “Every cloud does have its silver lining, and by some twist of fate, my husband turned over a new leaf upon my mother’s death. He stopped hitting me and became more responsible. He is now working other small jobs in addition to his main job, and is contributing more towards the family’s income. He is also over his alcohol addiction and has become a better father for our daughters, someone who could truly be there for them.”
Taking the post-wax oil in one hand and her phone in another, she scrolled through her gallery to show me a video of her youngest daughter dancing to her favourite Telugu number. As I watched the video, she applied the oil and told me about her daughter’s passion for dancing and how she will one day become a great dancer. Beaming with pride about her daughters, she blotted away the extra oil and kept away all her tools.
Now, ten years since coming to Bangalore, she’s a happy, smiling woman, proud about how far she’s come,content and grateful for everything that she has in life today. She says that she’ll keep working for as long as she can, so that she can support her daughters until they learn to stand on their own two feet. They mean the world to her, and she wants to give them everything they desire.
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