Sunday, August 13, 2017

Red Lipstick of Hope

I read this article 2-3 years ago. Today again I got a forward. It's from Bollywood actress Twinkle Khanna. It is so beautiful.

"My grandmother is 77. She has perfectly coloured hair with not a root in sight, her nails artfully manicured and her clothes always immaculate. I tease her about her interest in all these superficial things and she exclaims that I, in my dal-stained jeans, have always been a total disgrace to the family. Every Friday, she goes to do her prayers in the prettiest cotton saris with a string of pearls around her neck. 

What is so extraordinary about her story, you may wonder? She is a woman who has seen three out of her four children die before her very eyes. 

Sometimes I think the tiny joy she gets from her little indulgences is what keeps her going and distracts her from the anguish she must have gone through seeing what she has.

.......... I go to visit a family friend in the hospital. She has been dealing with cancer for a while now and though she is lucky to have tremendous family support, only she knows what it is like to deal with fear and pain on a daily basis. She is sitting on her hospital bed in her pajamas, with a turban jauntily perched on her head. And on her lips, she is wearing the brightest, happiest red lipstick. When I ask her about it, she says that whenever she feels low and run down, she puts on her lipstick and it just cheers her up tremendously. 

A pretty dress, a new haircut, a string of pearls are all trivial material things that should not matter because they have nothing to do with our inner self, but we forget that our physical form is strongly connected to our identity. It is how we interact with the world around us. 

When my family friend puts on her red lipstick, she is telling the world that she still has hope. Sometimes, the only thing you have left is hope. Hope that every tomorrow hurts a little less than yesterday."

Full article link here

2 comments:

Anony said...

>> Sometimes I think the tiny joy she gets from her little indulgences is what keeps her going and distracts her from the anguish she must have gone through seeing what she has.

This is a moving article. Twinkle Khanna seems to be a sensitive person and she has great advice too..!

I know someone who gets out of a bad mood by listening to really sad songs ("old melodies of Talat Mahmood, Kishore Kumar, ..."). Somehow that works for him :-)

mystic-soul said...

Indeed. Trivial things sometimes become extremely important (and nostalgic). You reminded me my one old post

https://zindagi-ki-diary.blogspot.com/2015/03/locket.html