Come into my parlour…

For Karuna Thorat, beauty is just a matter of a scrub, a polish or some colour. This beauty parlour assistant, who has been working with ...

For Karuna Thorat, beauty is just a matter of a scrub, a polish or some colour. This beauty parlour assistant, who has been working with La Belle Beauty Parlour for Women, Camp, for the past four years, believes that every woman has the ability to look good.

If you expect to find a jaded lady who gets bored by the very mention of the word facial,’ you would be mistaken. For Thorat loves her job and nothing makes her more happy than watching a transformation take place before her eyes. Says she, “It’s this part of my job which gives me a kick. Often, we have a lady coming in looking drab, and after we get to work, she looks so much better”.

Thorat’s day begins at 10 a.m. “The mornings and late evenings, when there is no rush, are devoted to making preparations for our customers, boiling the manicure and pedicure instruments, taking out the clean napkins and towels and so on”.

In a day, she attends to about 10 or 12 ladies. Their treatment could include anything from a five-minute eyebrow shaping to a time-consuming two-hour face treatment. “All the girls in our parlour are taught to handle all jobs. So there is no question of being specialised in a particular field. That way the customer won’t get stranded just because the girl who specialises in a particular job is not present”.

Which is why though Thorat can do everything from a haircut, perm, facial or manicure, what she enjoys doing most is colouring hair. “I love it because it gives the most dramatic results”.

But there are times when the client can be quite aggravating. Says Thorat, “Some of the ladies are such kitkitis. Waxing sometimes creates a problem because some women develop ingrown hair, and even after we pull the strip twice or thrice, the hair does not get removed. And they blame us for it. Finally, we resort to threading”.

Thorat spends a better part of the day standing and that can get hard on the legs. But not for her. “I have never suffered from leg-aches. I think it’s all in the mind, the more one thinks of aches and pains, the more one is prone to getting them”.

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She is the busiest when there is a to-be bride at the parlour. “Nowadays, the girls are so confident. I have yet to come across even one suffering from bridal jitters. They come for a full body treatment and the whole team takes about three to four hours to get her ready”.

Though Thorat loves to see a woman transformed, the best compliment she ever received was a hug. “There was an elderly lady who was getting ready for her daughter’s marriage. The next day, she came looking extremely happy. She hugged me, thanking me profusely for making her look so good. She said that everyone at the wedding complimented her on the way she looked.” No wonder Thorat wants to continue in this line to her very last day.