The latest in the wedding countdown...

I'm sitting in front of the comp with Chandan paste smeared all over my face. I shall now explain how it all happened.

We had gone to INA market this afternoon to get jazzy blouses stitched, only to be turned away by the tailor-man, who said the 'master-ji' had gone back to the village!!! Rather disheartened, and not a little hungry, we decided to get some other work done while we were there (read: Visit Durga Masala Shop, where all Kashmiris go for their most basic needs, such as monj-achar). While mom got the guy there to put together a nice big pile of things for us to take home (including monj-achar!), I did what I always do there: look lost, look around, and give all the other Kashmiri aunties there a surreptious once-over. You can never be too careful.

It was in between trying not to catch the eye of one such fellow-customer, and wondering why mom couldn't have pretended not to have seen the turnips at the veggie-vendor, that the Chandan sticks were discovered. Of course, I had already got myself one of those, but what will you do when a whole bag of the same peeps shyly at you from between hokh-syun and vaer? Nudge mom and watch her add it to our pile of stuff, of course!

The helpful masala-man seemed pleased with our purchases, and as a bonus, he informed us that we could get a stone chakla just around the corner. Now, this piece of information was invaluable, since the only thing between me and perfect skin (apart from all the dust and pollution and whatnot) was the absence of an appropriate stone to make the paste on! So I sat and after half an hour of hard work managed quite a decent amount of the stuff... which is now smeared all over my face, special emphasis on the various eruptions which do so much to distract the disinterested viewer from the fact that my face has other features as well!