I started wearing kajal when I was in school. This, I picked up from a senior of mine. She was, *takes a loong breath*, the epitome of grace. She carried herself really well. She was smart, and her eyes lined with a thick layer of kajal, looked out of the world, dripping gorgeous. Well, it might sound like I had a crush on her but mainly, it was her eye-makeup I used to drool over. And then, I learnt how to do it.

Gradually, it became this cool trend and all the girls in school were out and about with eyes rubbed in heavy kohl. This was in 2006.

A little over a decade later, I still love my kajal. It is my prized possession that does this quick trick of massive transformation every day. On most days, I don’t prefer stepping out of my house without filling my eyes in with that magical concoction that seems to set everything in order. Its presence is essentially meant to evoke goodness and confidence inside of me rather than the people looking at my eyes lined with a thick layer of black stuff.

My point is, us women, we don’t wear kajal for people, we wear it for ourselves. Having said that, there are some days when we just don’t feel like doing anything to our faces.

There are days when we wake up with this ridiculous feeling and all we are thinking about is somehow managing to get to work which poses itself like a mountain that is going to be really, really difficult to climb.

So, we don’t apply kajal, because it’s not a priority.

There are also days when we don’t really give a s**t about how we look and get out of our house in our natural avatar.

So, we don’t apply kajal, because we don’t want to.

But, the problem is, people get so used to the kajal in our eyes that, for them, it’s like a part of our body that goes missing every time we don’t wear it.

So they make these ridiculous statements and ask pointless questions like,

“Hey, you look tired. Are you sick?”

And some, would like to compliment and pass a judgement at the same time.

“You know natural is the way to go. Makeup sucks. You look very pretty without any.”

We get it. You’re concerned about us. But, why does this concern suddenly come flying down from the sky like an almost dead bird on days when we don’t have kajal on? 

Why?

Wearing it or not is a personal choice which we should be allowed to practice at all times without being bombarded with these questions by each and every person in our vicinity. It is our kind request to spare us from your queries because we are, to be honest, quite sick of hearing them. Yeah, perhaps it’s not the absence of kajal, it is you who is making us sick. 

We were perfectly fine until that unfortunate moment when you came and destroyed every little piece of calm in our lives. And really, how many karma points did you earn as the result of that kind question? Let me tell you, -9000. 

So yeah, leave us women alone. Live and let live.