I am one of the most un-Indian Indians you'd ever meet, besides the fact that I am brown and I have a stomach that will digest just about anything (except MSG--I get severe MSG poisoning if that nasty sh*t is in my food). I speak four languages, none of which are an Indian language, and worse, I have no interest whatsoever in Bollywood.
Amidst a country of people obsessed with celluloid and the lure of color, dance and romance in a three-hour film, I am an outcast. I would be thrown out of India if I lived there.
My parents are fans, of course. Growing up, I remember nights where they would sprawl in front of the telly and my brother and I would be bored out of our wits and resort to watching Captain Planet on the TV in our room.
Some songs from movies, though, have been embedded in my mind, like this one:
I decided to delve deep into the realm of Bollywood, a massive industry that churns out 800 films annually. That’s double the number of feature films produced in the US. Fourteen million Indians go to the movies on a daily basis (about 1.4% of the population of 1 billion) and pay the equivalent of the average Indian's daily wages (US $1-3).
I sat down one afternoon with my parents and had them list the most memorable actresses in Indian cinema; not contemporary ones, though. I needed to start with the basics. I needed to go back in time.
And boy, beautiful Indian women are aplenty. I sought inspiration from one particular one: Hema Malini. She is not only an actress, director and producer, she is also a Bharatanatyam dancer-choreographer and a politician.
Malini is touted as one of the most successful Indian actresses, and she appeared in over 150 films in her career span of 40 years. The irony was, her first director threw her out of a Tamil film he was directing, saying she had no star appeal. Hema resolved she would make it big where it mattered the most: Bollywood.
To help me with my task of mimicking her makeup, I headed to one of my favorite places in Singapore: Little India, specifically to Mustafa Centre, a Target-like shop that stocks everything from beauty supplies to DVDs to regional fruits. AND it opens 24 hours. It’s manic, it’s genius, and it’s one of the places you have to go to in Singapore if you get to this part of the world.
I started with Rouge Bunny Rouge's Prelude In The Clouds Aqua Primer on my face before my usual Face Atelier Ultra Foundation, before dabbing Bobbi Brown's Creamy Concealer Kit under my eyes.
I finished it with my latest favorite beauty product, Alison Raffaele's Transparent Finish To Go, a compact, travel-friendly powder with a retractable Kabuki brush and a mirror as well. A cylindrical-shaped dream!
Most Indian women have beautiful eyes, and we're not shy about showing them off. I started with my brows first: I filled them in to make them stronger, as Hema Malini had hers.
Indian actresses of yesteryear used one bright color on the eyelids and lined their eyes heavily, so I was gonna do just that. I found a stupid-cheap blue eyeshadow in a bargain bin in Mustafa Centre and honestly expected nothing of it, but the color payout turned out to be pretty wicked for something that was $0.75. Like I said, stupid, laughable cheap. I dabbed the color on with an eyeshadow brush.
And because I'm stupid when it comes to cat eyes and balancing my eyes (I can never tell if my cat eyes are balanced--is that weird?), I used a name card as my guide for a harsh line for the eyeshadow, and the same name card guide for my eyeliner.
On my cheeks, I mixed Bobbi Brown Pot Rouge in Pale Pink and Revlon Photoready Cream Blush in Flushed to create a natural dewy... well, flush.
On my lips I dabbed Bobbi Brown Pot Rouge in Pale Pink again before a layer of MAC's Cosmo over it.
Bindis, a salwar kameez and some accessories later...
What do you think? Can I take on Bollywood?