Let's Talk Lips

I live in a city where the weather is dry all the time, even our monsoons aren’t humid enough. In school, we used to carry around our little bottles of Vaseline that used to leak and ruin our bags, and lip balms made their first appearance in our town well into my teens. I used to think that a lip balm should be used only when my lips begin to crack, because of which I have tasted my own blood for way too long and laughed out loud with my mouth in the shape of a butt hole because if I smiled any wider than that, my lips would most certainly turn into the bloody version of Niagara Falls.

Around my fourteenth birthday, I decided that it is high time I started using something on my lips, mostly out of the fear that I might end up looking like the Mouth of Sauron. I started experimenting with whatever I had at home. Lip balms just seemed to sit on my lips, doing pretty much nothing. Ghee smells nice when used for cooking, not when it is constantly on your lips, right under your nose. The only thing that helped was my good old Vaseline.

As it turns out, there is a reason behind all this- your lips get used to the instant relief your lip balm provides and they stop building their own protective barrier, making you reapply even more balm, thus creating a vicious cycle of sorts. Basically, keep it simple, and you will be fine. 

Everyone’s lips react differently to different products- these are some of the things that worked for me:

Signs You are a “Grown Up”

It is my twenty-fifth birthday today, so I got to thinking about things that make you feel like you are an adult. When you are really a child masquerading as an adult.

1.     Your body craves vegetables.

2.     Troy and the girl are the villains of High School Musical who ruin Ryan and Sharpay’s dream that they worked so hard for.

3.     Every sweet makes you wonder, “will this be the thing that turns me into a diabetic?”

4.     Grocery shopping gives you an adrenaline rush.

5.     You disagree with Ariel that she is old enough to take her own decisions.

#MeToo: A Cheat Sheet

Systemic sexism, harassment and assault is unfortunately very common in the world. So common that it has been normalised to a point of “Eh, happens to everyone”. We have forgotten that this is not normal, and it makes me see red and I want to angry-punch a wall. You should too.