The Beauty Parlour (A Very Short Story)

Read the story of Reshma and Nida. Two different women, suffering from the same evil: domestic violence. This is their story.

Read the story of Reshma and Nida. Two different women, suffering from the same evil: domestic violence. This is their story.

It was another day at the busy beauty parlour. Reshma again sat on the massage table. Nida once again asked, “Ma’am should I do the special massage again?” Reshma nodded, closing her eyes.

Reshma was the wife of the richest man in the town. Every week she would come for a massage, at the same parlour. Nida was the one who did it for her, every time.

Nida would gently rub Reshma’s bruised body. The bruises that came over each night, when her husband thrashed her over food, sex or whatever he felt like. Nida would gently rub and massage those wounds until Reshma felt better. They never spoke to each other.

Suffering was their mutual language.

The only difference was that there was no one to massage Nida’s wounds from her husband, which she hid under her full-sleeved dresses.

Two years passed by.

One day, there was a huge hue and cry when Reshma just disappeared from the town. The beauty parlour also wondered why Nida did not come to work one fine day. They waited for 3 days, post that they appointed a new girl.

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Reshma could not be found ever again. After some time, the town moved on to another death, birth and marriage.

Twenty years later when the Internet took over India, a piece of news went viral, how two women fled their homes and built a beauty parlour in a remote town. And from that, they built 50 others across India, which not only employed women who suffered domestic violence but also rehabilitated them. The name of the chain was R & N beauty clinics.

In another small town, few people looked at the pictures of the two women that flickered on their smartphones wondering if they saw them somewhere.

Image via Pixabay 

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About the Author

Paromita Bardoloi

Proud Indian. Senior Writer at Women's Web. Columnist. Book Reviewer. Street Theatre - Aatish. Dreamer. Workaholic. read more...

210 Posts | 1,102,881 Views

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