I grew up pampering my
skin with mom's home made masks using besan, curd, lemon, multani mitti, egg, honey
and of course the store bought.... Fair and Lovely!
My mom always believed in home made remedies.
On Sundays besides experimenting in the kitchen with recipes to feed my
brothers later in the afternoon, I would open the kitchen cupboards to pull out
the clear bottle of besan. Digging into the "besan" (chick pea flour)
bottle I would scoop a couple of spoons of the light yellow flour to
begin my Sunday beauty ritual to brighten and clean my face. My mom had handed
me down this simple recipe for a facial.
Traditional Face Mask and Rub
Mix 2 tablespoons chick pea flour with 1/4 teaspoon of of turmeric powder in 1
cup of plain curd. Leave on for 5-10 minutes. Rub off in a circular motion and
then rinse off.
This one is great for a general cleaning. The turmeric acts as
an antiseptic, while the chick pea flour removes excess oils on your face.
Here are 4 more that have been my favorites!!
Egg White Skin Tightener
As far as masks go, it can't get simpler than this…it leaves your skin
tightened and feeling very refreshed.
Separate the egg white from the yolk. Beat for a few seconds. Put the egg white
on your face and relax for about 15 minutes. Wash off with lukewarm water. Your
skin will feel tight. But I guess it may not smell as fresh...I usually use a
few drops of lemon after.
Curd, Honey & Lemon Mask
Mix 1 1/2 teaspoons honey, the juice from 1/2 of a lemon, and 3-tablespoon curd.
Apply to face and let set about 15 minutes. Then wash off with lukewarm water.
This one makes your skin feeling soft. I like to use strained curd for this
one.
Rose Petal Mask
Rose petals not only smell good but are good for you. Did you know that a
mixture of sugar and dried rose petals is used in making Paan? Here is the rose
petal mask recipe. Mix 1 tablespoon curd with 1 tablespoon honey, 2
tablespoon rose water. Add few fresh rose petals and blend to a smooth
paste. Apply and leave on for 20 minutes before washing off.
Multani Mitti is fuller's earth. Light brown in color and comes in a rock form clayish. It
is good for drawing excess oils from the skin and stimulating circulation to
the skin.
Clay Mask For Pimples
Mix 3 tablespoons of fuller’s earth (multani mitti) with 2 tablespoons of rose
water and add a dash of lime juice to get a paste of medium consistency. Apply
a layer on your face and allow it to dry. As it dries,your skin will feel
tightened. Wash off after it's fully dry. Apply a light moisturizer.
Something about Multani mitti
Multani Mitti. This was a stuff which students of our
generation, more than fifty years ago, used to use in order to keep
their wooden slates neat and tidy. I do not know why this stuff was named
after Multan. It was off white in colour and used to come in small tablets. I
doubt it very much that its source of supply was located in such a far
flung area as it was commonly available even in small villages and clusters.
However, I have no clue why it was named after Multan.
In my childhood, I used to write on a wooden slate called Takhti.
Needless to add that I used to study in an Islamic madarsah. The educational
technology used there was several hundred years old, if not older. My Takhti
was a rectangular slate made of wood, about a little more than a
foot long and at least half of a foot wide. At the one end, there
used to be a small handle with which was used to hold it.
The Takhti was used for writing. In order to make the
writing visible and legible, the surface of the Takhti was made smooth
with either chalk called Khariya or Multani Mitti, which was a special kind of
earthy soil. It used to come either in round or rectangular tablet like soap.
It had a special property of getting dissolved in water quickly. The
solution was applied to the surface of slate and was kept in the sunlight to
get dry. Once dried, the surface would become smooth on which one could write
with black ink. A special pen made of Farhadde(dry munja stack) shoots was used to write on Takhti.
The trick to make a good farda pen was to choose a Farhaddewhich was neither very soft nor very tough. The ability to select a farda suitable for making pens came only by experience. My teacher at the
primary school Mr. Hans Raj had a special knack to make pens. He would
select thin, round and smooth bamboos. He used to keep a very sharp knife with
which he would convert a Farhadde shoot into a fine pen. He would not let any
body use his knif nor he himself would use this knife for any other purposes.
These precautions were taken to protect the edge of the knife from getting
corrupted. There was a special name for the knives used for making pen. These
were called Qalam Tarash.
It was quiet widely believed that if you have practiced writing on a Takhti,
then, your handwriting would become beautiful. If somebody’s hand writing did
not reach up to standards of acceptability, then it was suspected that the
person in question must not have practiced writing on a Takhti.. As there are always
exceptions to the rule, my performance defied this general principle as my
handwriting, despite the fact that I had been using a Takhti for
several years, did not improve and would put both Mahatama Gandhi and Sir
Winston Churchill to shame, both of whom have publicly admitted to have bad
handwritings.
The ink was kept in a inkpot. In my childhood, the inks were
manufactured and sold in a powdered form. We would make a reasonable solution
with water and store it in a pot called inkpot. Sometimes, in order to make the
solution perform better, babool wax was added to the solution.
The takhti and inkpot were not harmless creatures as they
are made here to be. At the time of need, they could be used as deadly weapons.
When there was a war between children, the warriors would throw inkpots and takhti
at each other using them as missiles. Putting black ink at the face of a fellow
classmate was a favourite pastime. Making a white kurta soiled with black ink
was also fun. Sometimes, accidents also happened with these apparently harmless
instruments. In my childhood, a boy named mahavir from nearby willage Laxmanpura had an accident with a pen that
some body pushed her hand and the pen he was holding went straight to her eye. he was taken straight to hospital but his eye was damaged for ever with the
result that he became one-eyed for the rest of her life.
That was the educational technology of the bygone era. A dry
black slate and chalks were used in city schools. A
few decades later, when my children went to school, they were using paper and
pencil right from the beginning. They had never seen a Takhti and
a Farhadde pen. They did not use dry slates either. Their hand writing is not
bad. My
children were using a fountain pen from very junior classes. I am not
sure who was at a loss, me or them.
Some time a feeling hits me that our generation has
seen the kind of technological changes that no generation before us
could have seen nor any generation is likely to see in future. I started
with a wooden slate and a bamboo pen and ended up with a laptop which has 55 mega
bytes memory and a laser printer. I still rarely use my pen but only to sign
checks. When electronic signatures become legal in our country, probably I
would stop using pens altogether.
From a wooden slate and bamboo pens to a computer screen, indeed
it has been a long journey.
xoxo
