Makeup brought me joy when nothing else could 

As a queer kid growing up in Sundernagar, a quaint Himalayan town, in the late 2000s, there were few things I enjoyed as much as going through my mom’s collection of beautiful things. Every morning, she would get ready in her chiffons, pearls, and high heels before leaving for work. Watching her put on her favourite brown lipstick—a stick of chocolate that smelled of baby powder—is one of my earliest memories from my childhood. We only had sluggish dial-up internet at that time, so in the two-hour window in the afternoon, between coming home from school and her arrival from work, I would slowly let myself into her room and ransack her closet to entertain myself.

Every visit led to a new discovery. While my friends were playing video games, I was swatching shades of plum, cherry, and raspberry on the back pages of my notebook. Occasionally, I would dab some on my cheeks to see if the colours looked any different. Something about the creamy texture and soft fragrance scratched an undefinable itch in my brain. Satisfied with my explorations of the day, I carefully arranged the lipsticks just as she left them and waited for her to come home. How good could a seven-year-old possibly be at hiding his tracks, I wonder now, but my mom always let me believe that I was.

When I moved out of my parents’ house at 15 and started living in Chandigarh, I found a community of people who loved the same things that once made me feel like an outcast. We would discuss our favourite runway makeup moments and try to replicate them after school. I remember the time I experimented with silver eyeshadow for the first time, inspired by Pat McGrath’s dreamy work at Maison Margiela spring/summer 2016. The sharp edges, the metallic textures—they made me feel like a Marvel character, but in the campiest way possible.

College was everything I could have ever imagined as a kid. Styling assignments, photography exams, fashion journalism reviews… It felt like I could finally fully express myself creatively. This is when I truly let my imagination run wild—hand-painting each strand of my hair with pink and green face paint to mimic Vivienne Westwood; using slime, pearls, and eyeshadow to recreate Björk’s Utopia (2017) album cover; creating leopard-print cut-out brows to match a leopard print turtleneck.

Makeup was also how I found myself reconnecting with my mom as an adult. I would buy her a new lipstick each time I went home, and she would gleefully colour-code them in her vanity, even trying shades that were previously off limits for her. It became a shared love language.

I was 22 when I got an unexpected call at five in the morning after an uneventful New Year’s Eve party. My mother had quietly passed away in her sleep just hours after I last spoke to her on the phone. She was only 45. The months after her funeral were unbearably painful. I felt trapped in my childhood bedroom. The same pink walls that once felt like home were no longer the same. I couldn’t sleep for days, sometimes weeks, turning to old Hollywood movies and oddly timed long walks for comfort. As I watched Joan Crawford’s character describe a bright red shade of nail polish in The Women (1939), a black and white movie, I had an idea.

I went back to my mother’s room to look for her makeup box and started building a look. The sadder I felt, the brighter I would paint my cheeks, eyelids, and sometimes eyelashes. A Pierrot-inspired blue teardrop here, some gemstone freckles there—the process brought me joy I hadn’t experienced in months.

To my amusement, my younger cousins wanted to help me photograph these looks so I could document them. Tired of all the tedious gatherings filled with unknown relatives, we were all looking for an escape from our maudlin routine. We would scout a new location every day and shoot for hours in the sun. Then I would go back home and start thinking about a fresh mug all over again. Red eyeliner to match a red shirt, pink blush to complement the pink baby roses in the background. Sometimes I would feel punk rock after gluing sharp pins around my eyes and sometimes the day would lead to a softer palette. Sparkly eyeshadow and gemstones mimicking teardrops gave away the state of my mind. As corny as it sounds, it was my way of turning my sadness into something beautiful.

Sadly, she passed away before she could see this part of me. But I still try to imagine her reaction when I’m trying something new. Maybe she would have loved my graphic eyeliner, maybe she would have been averse to my blush blindness? There’s no way to know.

The heartache of losing her may never go away, but now that I’m older I have learned how to manage it better. When other distractions fail, I just put on my favourite mixtape of unreleased Lady Gaga songs and have fun with makeup, covering my entire face with highlighter to look like an ethereal sea creature one day and painting my eyebrows gold to channel Gustav Klimt the next.

During my yearly visits to my hometown, I still like to spend a few quiet moments in my mom’s bedroom, rearranging her makeup, most of which is way past its expiration date. I might never be able to use those products again, but they remind me that beauty is not frivolous. The lipsticks are cakey, but they still smell the way they did when I was a kid. And each time I twist open a tube, it transports me back to a simpler time. Me playing with makeup instead of action figurines, and my mom pretending she can’t tell the difference between a used lipstick and a brand-new one.