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Business of beauty... the Moghul style
THOSE VISITING the Moghul museum in Delhi's Red Fort must have been intrigued by the medieval cosmetics on display. Maybe primitive by today's standards, they actually came into vogue long after the dawn of civilisation.
According to Moghul historians, the axiom that "fairness hides a lot of sins" made girls use herbs and ointments to make their skin look fairer. Gram flour, creams and oils sold in Chandni Chowk, herbs from Ballimaran and spices from Khari Baoli were employed for the purpose. There were 16 Shringars or modes of make-up. And so when Pakeezah sings her famous song, "Main tau karoongi solah singar re" she is giving vent to the old charms of beauty that made a woman shine like the harvest moon.
Sandalwood paste, amla oil, besan, butter, henna, honey, kajal or surma (kohl), haldi (turmeric) and clay application and baths in the early morning with water cooled in the moonlight were what kept girls of rich Delhi families occupied in Moghul days.
Ice was applied to puffed eyes and it could be bought from Turkman Gate, outside which were "ice-fields", where water was frozen during the winter months for use in the royal court. In summer the ice was brought from the Himalayas by a well-devised system of bullock and horse transport. Nothing was beyond the ingenuity for the grand Moghuls, who could even afford to drink wines from Portugal, Spain and France to offset the after-effects of strong English liquor.
Their begums and daughters and those of their nobles had ample means and time at their disposal to indulge in the game of beautification. The hoi polloi copied them to the best of their ability. However, one thing surprising about those times was that young women of both high and low families ate really well, seldom missing a meal, but their diet was well balanced and they were robust and full of life. Undisturbed beauty sleep was one of the essentials of a good life, though unlike Cleopatra they did not bathe in ass's milkIn the Moghul days there were certain families that practiced the public idolatry of women. These women were high-profile call girls, the pacesetters of fashions of those days. The courtesans of Chawri Bazar graced the mansions of the nobles outside the Walled City. Intimacy was limited to the one who showered favours. Until he continued to do so there was no question of a rival. Nawab Najaf Khan, Wazir of Shah Alam, changed his dancing girls whenever he came to know that she had entertained some other noble, for he had a perfect spy system. Some were even ostracised for indulgence in unnatural sex.
Those were the days when women used hot ashes to pluck out unwanted hair and craned their necks to watch the kites sailing into the sky to develop a long swan-like neck or the proverbial goblet-shaped one. Gossip had it that they used broken matkas (chatties) to shape their hips.
Lotus and honey were used as a hormone preparation to develop the vital parts of anatomy and urad dal avoided to cut down on fat, disclosed Haji Zahooruddin to this scribe over 40 years ago. He was referring to the Delhi of the 18th Century when his great-grandfather was alive and Kamal Kakri (lotus stem) was much in demand, along with bee-wax.
But about the same time in the West, Alexander Pope, a great observer of the social life of his days, had this to say about the beauty-aids employed by women:
"Here files of pins extend their shining rows/puffs, powders, patches, Bibles, Billet-doux/The busy Sylphs surrounded their darling care / These set the head, and those divide the hair...."
Now sprays, dyes, wigs, eyebrow-pencils, bindis, nail-polish, lipstick, shampoos, skin-cleansers and the whole perfumery of the East and West produce glamour girls. But in medieval Delhi, anklets, trinkets, bracelets, bangles, girdles, necklaces, eye-darkeners, ivory combs, ghararas, chudidars, shalwar-kamees from Afghanistan and the rokish turki cap or gold-cloth turban added to the appeal of the affluent women.
Boutiques now cater to the needs of modern girls. In the olden days girls in Delhi spent sleepless nights in a bid to keep the diya burning with spices and oils of many kinds to produce the best kajal (kohl) possible. Thy also spent many anxious moments to prevent the milk in the earthen pot from curdling, so that they could apply the cream to smoothen their skin. But now young women have just to walk across the street to get cosmetics which can change their complexion in a trice.
We cannot really imagine a fair and lovely world without beauty-aids. Just by putting a rose in her hair Eve must have attracted a tired and worn-out Adam, by a whiff of her Grecian perfume and a smile, Helen seduced Paris of Troy, and by a mere swish of her gharara Lal Kanwar, a dancing girl, captured the heart of the decadent Moghul Emperor Jahandar Shah (1712) in the Dewan-e-Khas of the Red Fort. The Emperor decreed that he wanted glamour and charm in society and not ugliness, though his reported remark (later repeated by the Victorian, Sir Joshua Oilfields) that ugly women should be drowned has to be taken with a pinch of salt. Still it gives an idea of the importance of beauty in his harem.
But he was only following the trend set by the earlier Moghuls, even though in an exaggerated way. Nur Jahan was an adept at cosmetics, the rose perfume discovered by her mother being not only her favourite but also of Jahangir. Her niece Mumtaz Mahal was full of make-up too, because Shah Jahan liked her better that way, and so was Uttam Bai, who became famous as Nawab Qudsia Begum after her marriage to Mohammad Shah Rangila. Noor Bai too had stolen the dandy Emperor's heart but lost it after she betrayed the secret of where the Kohinoor was hidden in Nadir Shah. The Persian invader took away both the fabulous diamond and Noor Bai with him in 1739
The Red Fort museum would do well to popularise such information for the benefit of visitors not aware of the colourful past of moon-faced begums, who could lure the heart of many a fastidious nobleman, European merchant or soldier of fortune, like Sumroo or Benoit de Boigne, thanks to indigenous beauty-aids.
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