With relief she heard Malathi’s voice. “I will give you my story. But my English is not so good, and I want you to understand everything properly. So Mr. Mangalam must translate it from Tamil.”

Mangalam jerked up his head, frowning with wary surprise. He looked like he was about to refuse, but Malathi spoke as though he had assented already. “Better not change even one word. I know enough to catch you if you do.”

When I failed tenth grade for the second time, my parents figured it was no use wasting more money on my school fees and decided to marry me off. I had no objections; it was not as though I had anything else to do. Having navigated their way through the weddings of two daughters already, my parents knew that the local matchmaker would ask for a photograph. If they could provide her with one in which I looked better than normal, my chances of finding a husband-and theirs of negotiating a smaller dowry-would be highly improved. Though in general thrifty and suspicious, they knew the importance of a well-chosen investment. That is how I ended up at Miss Lola’s Lovely Ladies Salon, the premier beauty shop in Coimbatore.

My mother had been to Lovely Ladies only twice, but Miss Lola knew her right away. “The bridal photo special, again?” she asked. When my mother nodded, Miss Lola looked me up and down and pronounced that I would require more work than my sisters. My mother gave a sigh but did not disagree, and the two of them fell to bargaining about the price of my beautification. When they had reached an agreement, Miss Lola gave a volley of staccato instructions to the pink-uniformed girls who worked for her, ending with “Bridal Special Silver Level with Hair Oil.”

Two girls whisked me to an inner sanctum filled with elegant women undergoing the complex and painful process of improving upon nature. I was settled into a reclining chair and shrouded in cotton sheets. And it was here, in this moist, air-conditioned room decorated totally in shades of pink (Lola’s favorite color) and fragrant with astonishing and exotic substances which my naïve nose was incapable of identifying, that I saw as though illuminated by lightning the path of my future.

Until this day, I had thought of marriage as an inevitable destination. The only other choice a girl from a middle-class Brahmin family, handicapped by respectability, had in our sleepy town was to teach at the Sree Padmavati Girls Higher Secondary School. But teachers were meagerly paid and resembled chewed-up sticks of sugarcane, and I had no desire to become one.

I confess: sometimes from our veranda I spied on other kinds of women, receptionists and typists who worked for Indian Oil and Godrej, and waited across from our house for the company vans to pick them up. Torn between disapproval and envy, I noted the dresses that exposed their knees, their shoes with platform heels, their permed hair. They wore lipstick even in daytime, erupted in laughter at frequent intervals, whispered prodigiously when men in expensive cars drove by, and ignored the lascivious remarks aimed their way by lesser males. But they were Kerala Christians-members of a forbidden, scandalous species that I could never join.

Lola’s girls, though, with their perfectly arched eyebrows, glowing skin, and prettily coiffed faces hanging over me like radiant moons, were different. As they plucked and exfoliated and massaged oil and pinched blackheads and slathered my cheeks with Fair & Lovely cream, clucking soothingly when I yelped and assuring me that the end result would be worth it, I felt a strange kinship with them. They camouflaged me with sufficient foundation, face powder, kohl, lipstick, blush, and Vatika Pure Coconut Hair Oil to pass as one of Lola’s lovely ladies. They attached a glistening bindi to my forehead and clipped fake diamond earrings to my ears. They pinned a sequined sari, kept in the salon for this very purpose, to my upper body (since that was all the photo would show) to manufacture curves where none had existed before. One of them ran to fetch Lola’s nephew, who ran the photography business next door, while the others demonstrated facial expressions guaranteed to delight mothers-in-law, causing me to burst into laughter, something I never did in the presence of strangers. But they were no longer strangers. They had charmed me with their daring jokes, their code words for particular beauty procedures, their gallant laughter in the face of the drudgery that I guessed awaited them once they stepped out of the magical perimeter of Lola’s salon.

The next morning, when my mother armed me with a parasol to protect my newly lightened skin and dispatched me to the bazaar to buy bitter gourd, I used the money to rent an auto rickshaw. Half an hour later I was at Lola’s, begging her to let me work for her. Lola must have seen something-perhaps a glint of determination in my eyes reminded her of her own younger self. Although she had a room full of clients, she took the time to listen to my pleas. When I finished, she asked, “What’s the matter? You don’t want to be a bride?”

To which I answered, “I’d rather be a bride maker.”

Lola, who had been divorced twice and thus knew what was what, said, “Smart thinking.”

And just like that-although she hadn’t really needed another employee-I became one of Lola’s girls.

There was a dreadful hullabaloo at home, as you might imagine. My parents stormed into Lola’s, demanding that I be handed over. But she coolly informed them that the wife of the police high commissioner (her client for many years) was due in that very day for a gold-leaf facial. One word to her, and my father could end up in jail with charges of harassment. Once they crumbled, she took pity on them and pointed out that I would be excellently compensated. And if I should change my mind and wish to take on the yoke of domesticity, I would be provided with a Bridal Special Diamond Level photo, gratis. A Diamond Bridal photo was not to be sneezed at. My parents gave grudging permission, expecting me to tire soon of catering to spoiled society ladies.

Freed of parental interference, for the next six months I soaked up everything I could learn, from eyebrow threading to hot waxing to clay masking to hair perming. This last, most difficult skill Lola taught me herself. It was a job she entrusted only to her top girls. Pride filled me as I memorized the different kinds of rolls and tongs and end papers, the distinct amounts of time that provided Lola’s clients with various degrees of curliness, and the secret proportions of potent chemicals that, if used wrongly, could exact a heavy penalty.

AMONG THE CREAM OF COIMBATOREAN LADIES WHO FREQUENTED Lola’s, the richest and most powerful was Mrs. Vani Balan. Wife of an industrialist who had made his money in cement, she visited Lola’s every two weeks and underwent our most expensive regimes. In spite of the substantial tips she left, the girls avoided her. They didn’t like the way she flicked the rupee notes at them. Besides, she was finicky and hot-tempered and had been known to throw things if a treatment did not turn out the way she had envisioned it. Only Lola was capable of handling her at such times, and even she would pour herself a full glass of rum and Coke after Mrs. Balan exited the premises.

For some reason that no one at the salon was able to fathom, Mrs. Balan took a liking to me and began to ask specifically for me when she came in. Although I was nervous around her, I was flattered, particularly when, one time after I assisted Lola in perming her hair, Mrs. Balan said I had a gentle touch.

I was not Mrs. Balan’s sole favorite. She had a maid named Nirmala who often accompanied her to the salon and sat in the waiting room looking through the latest American magazines, which Lola’s other nephew, who worked in a government office in Hyderabad, procured for her through unorthodox means. A slim, sweet-faced girl with surprisingly elegant hands, Nirmala would turn each page with attentive consideration, although she could not read. When Mrs. Balan emerged from the inner sanctum, she was ready with a flask of chilled juice. When they left, Nirmala carried with utmost care the packages of expensive foreign cosmetics Mrs. Balan had purchased. Once, in preparation for a wedding party, Mrs. Balan was undergoing a whole-body makeover that would take several hours; I asked the girl if she wanted a snack. She shook her head shyly, though I could see that she was hungry. When I brought her an orange, she was taken aback. “For me?” she said, as if she could not believe someone would consider her important enough. She thanked me several times, calling me Elder Sister. The appellation touched me. I could see why Mrs. Balan, who was surrounded by people who believed that the world owed them everything and then some, would find her refreshing.