Punctured Vanity

They appear unannounced, especially when you don’t want them to and exactly where you don’t want them. You try your best to make them go away, but the buggers seem to feed on your misery and multiply. You curse, you fret, you crib and just when you finally start accepting their annoying presence they start disappearing one by one. 

They are every adolescent’s nightmare come true. Skin care companies make their fortune out of them. When I was growing up, pimples were an alien concept. I did have many of my friends afflicted by this wretched syndrome. I would be privy to their sob stories, the various treatments that they had to subject themselves to. I would tch tch in sympathy and happily wolf down my bread pakora without a care in the word.

Fate, alas had other cruel plans for me. Here I am mother to a teenaged daughter, bemoaning my pimples, the resident evil. It’s that time of the year again; the dreaded season change and they are back with a vengeance. It usually starts with one attention seeking red dot, right on the centre of your cheek. Despite your various attempts to get rid of it, it becomes bigger and three- dimensional. Each night before you go to sleep, you swab it with an astringent which claims miracles and a rocking social life. You wake up in the morning groggy eyed and rush to the mirror to check its well being. Not only is it alive and kicking, the pesky thing has had the audacity to procreate. Now instead of one infuriating pimple you have half a dozen of them to deal with. You let out a blood curdling scream.

It’s been over ten days now. I have a school reunion party this weekend. I was planning to take on the role of the dazzling diva for the benefit of my ex flames. I still have a few days left and have been following a punishing regime. In fact, I have become a little desperate. I have ditched the astringent in favour of the toothpaste. My bedtime beauty ritual has become a tad longer now. I painstakingly apply toothpaste on each one of them. Yes, I look a little scary but I don’t care. I give them penetrating looks hoping they will wither away in shame. The shameless buggers are taking their sweet time. In the meantime I am practising my smart one-liners. If I can’t floor them with my beauty I can always fall back on my wit.