Beauty
Text by Avani Thakkar. Photography by Joshua Navalkar. Styling by Swati Sinha.
While I was growing up, daring to show up on school grounds with painted nails was seen as an episode of teen rebellion, warranting an intense telling-off for disrupting uniform code. Years later, with freedom from classroom rules, nail polish is akin to a second skin for most of my friends – they change the colours on their fingernails almost as often as they change their clothes.
Unlike painful hair-removal ordeals such as waxing and threading, which have seemingly lost all purpose in the last year, the therapeutic act of brushing on a smooth coat of nail polish bore the test of pandemic-time and transcended the gender divide. The appeal of this all-accessible, pain-free beauty ritual lies in its ability to provide an instant mood lift, allowing us to feel slightly “human”…