The Blog that Never Was and the "Beauty" of Saving Souls

After a wonderful week in my hometown where I hammered out my inaugural blog, ate my parents' food, worked it off at Jazzercise and did remarkable little else, I was welcomed back to the real world (if the term can be be applied to life as a flight attendant) with a 1 am call from my friendly crew scheduler.

He informed me that I was going to Miami for two nights!! Then (not quite) apologetically (enough) added that it was via Houston and Philadelphia at 4.30 am for the next two days.

So, I took a power nap on my new comforter (I love Target), and headed to the airport where I proceeded to spend four days in a sleep-deprived fog.

On my day of leisure I did begin drafting a blog entry filled with witty insight but if you had a choice between editing a blog post or frolicking in the waves in your gym shorts (my swimsuit was a causality of a 1 am quick call), what would you chose?

Anyway, as you can imagine, after that trip, I spent the majority of yesterday lounging at my favorite mega-bookstore. I was fully recovered in time to meet up with my favorite heresy-busting fellow September baby, Claire, and self-inflict pain in the name of female beauty norms.

Actually, I was eager to get a manicure, and I needed my eyebrows done too.

Now, I'm sure many of you are familiar with the concept of waxing or tweezing one's eyebrows, but if you are truly looking for first-class hair removal, let me recommend a trip to Little India and a good "threading".

In this procedure, your stylist takes an seemingly harmless piece of everyday button thread, winds it around her fingers, and forces your head back in a chair. She then creates an elaborate web by anchoring the strand in her teeth while still managing to chatter to overhead in rapid Hindi. You must then participate in this ordeal by pulling your own skin tighter than Joan Rivers as the professional above rolls the thread along your browline, thereby entwining each hair and tearing it out with such precision she could probably inscribe your initials. The results are amazing.

And if you are at all put off by the thought of gazing up the nostrils and curled lips of Ms. Patel, don't worry, your eyes will be watering in agony, so you won't mind the view.

I was quite proud of my stoicism on this particular occasion, but was humbled when, from the next chair, through clenched teeth I overheard, "I don't know how many souls are getting out of purgatory, but I am offering this up!"

Thank you, Claire, for reminding me of the redemtive value of suffering. Next time I'll remember to unite my sorrows to those of Chirst. And who is the patron saint of hair-removal anyway?

Later, newly edged and enjoying the warm weather, we decided to shop around this colorful neighborhood. Claire was in the market for some new head coverings, and what better place to find a Latin-Mass appropriate chapel veil than Little India?

And who should greet us at the first store?

The four-foot cardboard cut out of not just any open-shirted, rippling-abbed Bollywood heartthrob, but the very man who broke into anquished song as I lay awake in London on my token international trip, jet-lagged, difting in and out of sleep as he difted between unintelligiable English and subtitled Hindi.

It was a bittersweet reunion. I now knew where I could get my double-disc special edition DVD of "Kal Ho Naa Ho", but that in it he meets his tragic end.

So perhaps it was his soul that Claire hurried to heaven, but at any rate, the next time I'm trying to deciper melodramatic dialouge over epic dance routines, I'll be peering from under perfectly shaped eyebrows.