GLOW
By M. S. Sahu
Ranjini studied her face in the bathroom mirror. The fluorescent tube light didn’t come on, but sunlight slanted through the window, catching the faint fuzz on her cheeks. She opened the blue box and mixed two spoons of cream with half a spoon of powder in a small steel bowl until it went pearly white. The lemon-ammonia sting, the scent of hope, filled the room. She checked her watch, applied the paste, avoiding the eyebrows. The cool paste prickled near her upper lip. Ammonia fumes stung her eyes and nose.
Her father’s sister, Radhika athai, was talking to Ranjini’s parents in the next room. “Maragatham’s family wants a fair, homely, convent-educated girl for their son,” she said. At the ten-minute mark, when Ranjini rinsed off the paste, the face in the mirror looked brighter.
“You’re glowing!” said a classmate, and Ranjini smiled back, pretending surprise.
Two weeks earlier, as the nadaswarams echoed at Ranjini’s sister’s wedding, Radhika athai had whispered, “Your sister is lucky. So fair. The groom’s family didn’t even ask for dowry. For you, Ranjini, it will be different. The dark tax.” Her chest tightened.
Her father said not to worry, Lord Krishna and Lord Murugan were both the color of dark rain clouds. But no one praised rain clouds at weddings.
Her school friend Shyamala had offered advice. “Don’t worry. Just visit the pharmacy and get Jolen. In ten minutes, you’ll glow at every wedding reception and party. Everyone does it.”
After that day, it began. A private routine with Jolen and the bathroom mirror. Her secret act to brighten and glow before a family wedding, a reception, an identity card photograph, or a job interview. She continued this practice even after leaving home and moving to Pune for graduate studies. Even after she married her fellow graduate student Ashok Kale (no dowry, because theirs was a love marriage). The ritual became part of her life, and Jolen disappointed her only twice. Once, when she left it on too long and developed a raw rash. The other time, when she didn’t apply the paste evenly and ended up streaked.
It began as nothing. A small, pale dot below her right eye, the size of a mustard seed. Ranjini thought it was the ghost of a pimple. When she rubbed moisturizer over it, the spot shimmered faintly and refused to darken with the rest of her face.
Two weeks after the first spot appeared, the speck had spread into a thin, milk-white petal against her cheek. Under the bathroom light, it looked almost deliberate.
A month later, she could feel the blotch, a sting when she washed her face. It was dryness, maybe sun sensitivity, she told herself. The area multiplied, one near the lip, another on a knuckle, and a third near the collarbone. They were asymmetrical, expanding and merging. Each morning, she checked again, searching her skin like an anxious cartographer mapping new boundaries.
Her colleague frowned as she saw it. “Maybe it’s a reaction to some chemical,” she suggested. “Don’t worry, try dabbing some turmeric paste on it.” The turmeric left a yellow halo around the white. She tried neem, tulsi, and lemon juice. Nothing changed.
Ranjini dabbed her usual shade of foundation on a pale patch. In the mirror, she seemed fine, but daylight revealed the patches, quiet and defiant. She tried a darker shade the next day. It matched for a moment, then went dull gray.
Ranjini and Ashok searched the condition online, his hand steady on the mouse, hers tight around a coffee mug. Probably nothing, he said. They sat silently, faces lit by the laptop screen. Ashok mentioned a dermatologist his colleague once saw. She said yes before he finished.
The waiting room smelled of Dettol. The ceiling fan chopped the air. The dermatologist at Ruby Hospital listened and examined Ranjini’s face. “Thyroid issues? Anemia? Sunburns? Injuries?” A nurse drew blood. “Avoid the sun, apply steroid cream, and return in ten days.” But the cream stung. At night, she watched the shapes on her body, slow and white as clouds crossing brown earth.
Days later, the dermatologist noted something on a pad, then switched off the overhead light. In the darkened room, he picked up a small handheld device, a Wood’s lamp, and brought it close to Ranjini’s arm. The beam bathed her skin in violet-blue. Under it, a white area on her forearm glowed.
Her immune system was attacking pigment cells, he said, and the white patches might spread. Or not. Ranjini heard the phrase, acquired autoimmune loss of pigment, and nodded. “It is vitiligo. It’s not contagious. It’s not from poor hygiene,” he added. “We can control it with medication.”
At the bathroom mirror, Ranjini realized she didn’t need Jolen anymore. The glow had arrived on its own, uneven, permanent. She opened the box and breathed it in.
THE END
Author Bio: M.S. Sahu’s flash “Hair” was published in the December 2025 issue of WWPH Writes.