Of bliss, ego, beauty and salons

When depression weighs you down and it feels like the world is crashing down on you; that there is no one who truly cares and everything in life generally seems meaningless, pick up your purse and immediately head to the nearest posh beauty salon.

I have often wondered whether the training at such salons involve making all customers believe they are balancing beauty pageant crowns on their head. The signs are deliciously subtle and barely discernible, but for those who look for them, they are as obvious as botox on Bollywood.

From the time you sit down flipping magazines and wait for your turn, taking turns to curse the translucence of someone’s skin and the slimness of another’s waist to the time you step out of the parlour with a considerably light wallet and loaded ego, the charm offensive lasts.

An appreciative glance here and an admiring once-over there as you get your pedicure done, delivered with such finesse that you shed five kilos and 10 years on the spot.

The spotlessly well-groomed 20-something would handle your thinning grey-streaked hair like it’s a cascading black waterfall, while gently enquiring about the shampoos you use.

The bounce returns to your locks and curls and the spring gets back to your steps as you catch in the mirror the other attendants’ fleeting glance at your hair, leaving the secretly delighted Rapunzel in you turning cartwheels.

The girl who cleanses your worries away, hydrates your parched moments, and massages that ego ever so gently enquiring every few minutes if you are comfortable makes you pity the deprived life of Cleopatra.

Those few minutes or couple of hours at these parlours make us feel so rich that we often end up valiantly tipping a sum that would have covered our entire beauty regimen at the neighbourhood parlour.

I do not see this level of attention and pampering even in the airline and hospitality industry. More often than not, the emphasis is on delighting all customers of all shapes and sizes. Talkative customers are regaled with anecdotes and gupshup while reclusive clients are given their space.

Rather than be in-the-face about all that is wrong with you, pinning you down to spend more on the spot to fix the problem, they deftly counsel you and suggest easy tips to follow at home.

They end up becoming your trusted friends in those moments where you want to hand over your entire body to them for a complete overhaul, pay them through the blackhead-free nose and feel grateful for all their blessings received.

Now contrast this with the levels of customer care in some other stores. I was once outside a prominent silk sari store at South Extension, New Delhi, looking for a spot to park when the store’s fat, bald, old attendant (okay, he was not that fat or bald or old) waved at me and said, “Aunty, jaiye jaiye, aage parking milegi”.

I brusquely nodded, tightened my grip on the 5k I would have spent at the store, controlled my quivering lips, and kept driving only to stop at the nearest salon. I then rushed into the arms of the hairdresser sobbing.

Surekha Pillai is an independent communications consultant based in Delhi and can be reached at surekhapillai@gmail.com or @surekhapillai on Twitter